SBJ Unpacks: Celebrating a legacy of service

Tonight in Unpacks: Wednesday’s Sports Business Awards marks the 10th presentation of SBJ’s Celebration of Service honor. This year’s winner is Soccer Without Borders, tying into the original honoree, the Homeless World Cup. SBJ’s David Bourne looks back at the award’s legacy in this week’s magazine.

Also tonight:

• Comets bringing Sun front office to Houston
• Roc Nation Sports International partners with Chelsea FC
• How 3D maps pay off for venues, fans
• Op-ed: Ditching entry-level workers for AI hurts the talent pipeline

Listen to SBJ’s most popular podcast, Morning Buzzcast, where Abe Madkour discusses what we know about the 2026 NFL schedule, the ACC putting its support behind a 24-team College Football Playoff field, IndyCar building momentum as it sells out the Indy 500 and more.

“A lot of sports organizations do a lot in the community. We can probably do more. We started doing something, we did it well. Let’s do more and build a movement.”

Those were the words of Mel Young, co-founder and president of the Homeless World Cup, after receiving the first Celebration of Service award from Sports Business Journal in 2017.

This year, when Soccer Without Borders receives the award, it will be the 10th honoree since SBJ launched the program to recognize groups that use sports to help the marginalized and less fortunate.

The effort started after SBJ was among the organizations invited to the Vatican as part of Pope Francis’ inaugural “Sports at the Service of Humanity” global conference. Leaders discussed the role of sports in the global society, and each organization was charged with coming up with its own way of continuing that mission.

Simply stated, the award recognizes the power sports has to improve society and build community — sports as a catalyst for social change and a vehicle for good.

As the Homeless World Cup was being honored in 2017, Young said the sports industry needed to do a better job amplifying the work it does. “We don’t tell the story so well about what sports clubs are doing in the community.”

The Celebration of Service award helps tell that story. Since being the first honoree, the Homeless World Cup, based in Edinburgh, Scotland, has grown to support 200,000 people each year across 75 countries and stages 20 tournaments. It has affected 1.7 million people overall.

The organization faced its biggest challenge during the COVID pandemic, Young said last week. “We were badly hit — like everyone else — by the pandemic, which meant that we had to cancel our global events in 2020, 2021 and 2022, and that had an adverse impact on all of our work. But we are determined and resilient.”

Homeless World Cup hosted its annual event in Sacramento in 2023, Seoul in 2024, Oslo in 2025 and the 2026 event will be held in Mexico City. In 2024, its story was told in the movie “The Beautiful Game,” distributed on Netflix. Young said it has been watched by millions of people in 187 countries. The organization is now in the market for global sponsors.

Other Celebration of Service honorees through the years use basketball as the center of their work (PeacePlayers International); multiple sports (PowerPlay NYC, Lost Boyz Inc.); tennis (Sloane Stephens Foundation); and figure skating (Figure Skating in Harlem). Since 2024, all of the past recipients have helped select the current honoree.

All past recipients are invited back to this year’s celebration, which will take place as part of the Sports Business Awards, May 20, in New York City.

Even with their name not officially trademarked, the Houston Comets made their reincarnation official Thursday, in a giddy press conference that also revealed the Sun’s front office staff will move with the players from Connecticut.

Seated side by side, Rockets alternate governor Patrick Fertitta (son of owner Tilman Fertitta) and President of Business Operations Gretchen Sheirr (who sold Comets tickets back in 2001) laid out the immediate plans for the franchise -- which included a full merger with Sun executives after the 2026 season and renderings of a new Toyota Center practice facility that will go under construction pronto.

“As soon as everyone leaves here today, I’m not kidding, walls are coming down,” Sheirr said. “...We are adding locker rooms, training area for them all on the surface level behind us. Those plans are underway. The permits are filed. So that when their season is over and they start to move here in the offseason their facilities will be ready.”

Sheirr said meetings with Sun executives will commence next week “to see who is eager and excited to come to Houston...hopefully everybody.” But she mentioned team President Jennifer Rizzotti (once a fourth-round pick of the Comets) and GM Morgan Tuck will definitely join former ESPN reporter Kevin Pelton (the Comets’ first executive hire in Houston) in a new intertwined front office.

“I would imagine that when the season comes to a conclusion, they will actually start physically making that transition,” said Fertitta, referencing the Sun relocation. “But regarding the Rockets and what we have here, it would be foolish of us not to use some of the existing infrastructure and support, not just in the transition, but once they’re here to help them do their job at the highest level possible.

“But I think it is important to say that the Rockets are the Rockets, the Comets are the Comets. [The Sun] have great leadership, they have a very good team, and for the vast majority of the work is going to be expected to be done by that leadership team.”

Asked if the organization had a contingency plan if the name Comets cannot be trademarked for this second iteration, Sheirr said she was “very confident” the WNBA would be able to clear the brand. The original trademark had expired in 2021, and in 2024, a Delaware company TSTM Holdings LLC applied for the trademark for apparel purposes and more. But the league is in the process of reclaiming it, apparently.

Asked also if it was priority to reprise the name Comets -- considering the team won the first four WNBA titles from 1997 to 2000 -- Fertitta said, “It was immensely important. The Comets are so synonymous with women’s basketball and the WNBA in this town, and it just felt like it honestly didn’t make a lot of sense to go any other direction. There is such a special brand and identity that already exists. There’s such history and nostalgia, and for us, it wouldn’t feel right to have a different name, a different brand than the Houston Comets playing in the WNBA in this town.”

Sheirr -- once an entry level sales rep for the Comets when their mantra was “Drive for Five -- said 2027 season ticket deposits are already in the thousands and that marketing a WNBA team is “big business” compared to the last time the Comets were in town.

“[Comets] 1.0 was a startup,” she said. “And now we’re 30 years later, and these are big businesses that have huge corporate support, that have big fan bases, that have media rights. And so, the landscape of how the business operates has definitely advanced.

“We are now starting to talk to our current [Rockets] partners, hoping that they will continue partnerships on the Comets side -- and lots of new partnership conversations, as well. And I’m knocking on wood next couple of weeks to be able to announce some first set of partnerships”

In fact, when Fertitta was asked when he expected profitability, he smiled and said, “Immediately.”

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Chelsea FC, one of the most successful and popular soccer clubs in England and Europe, is partnering with Roc Nation’s global division to accelerate the club’s growth and fan engagement in the U.S. in the lead-up to the World Cup. The partnership will see integrated campaigns, exclusive content drops and live experiences over the coming months. Financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed.

The collaboration reflects the growing emphasis global soccer clubs are placing on the U.S. market ahead of the World Cup. Though the agency can’t yet share any specific dates for the partnership’s live events, Roc Nation Sports International CMO Rob Simpkins told SBJ that the partnership is intended to move beyond traditional game-focused fan engagement to instead create culturally relevant moments around the club.

“The goal is to move beyond the typical ‘90 minutes on the pitch’ engagement,” Simpkins said. “We want to show up in the conversations and platforms that matter to the modern fan — so expect activations that feel more like ‘moments’ in culture rather than just standard sports marketing.”

Simpkins described the deal as a “comprehensive, 360-degree marketing collaboration” that will span strategy, creative work and talent integration.

Since Roc Nation Sports expanded internationally with the opening of its London office in 2019, it has been deeply involved in soccer. The London-based arm of the agency has previously had similar partnerships with European clubs like Poland’s KS Cracovia and Italy’s AC Milan and Como 1907.

he agency also has been active in soccer representation over the past year, adding dozens of players as clients, including RB Leipzig F Yan Diomande and Manchester United Academy prospects Silva Mexes, Jaume Camacho and Camron Mpofu. Those signings build on a roster that already includes established stars like Brazil’s Vinícius Júnior and Belgium’s Kevin De Bruyne.

“Success in year one is defined by resonance and reach. We want to move the needle on how Chelsea is perceived in the U.S. — transitioning from a premier football club to a truly aspirational lifestyle brand,” Simpkins said. “If we’ve created moments that people are talking about outside of the traditional sports cycle, we’re on the right track.”

Hongwei Liu, co-founder and CEO of the indoor mapping firm Mappedin, says he undertook his first map-making project while an engineering student at the University of Waterloo in 2010.

“I made the bench for varsity badminton and decided I’d rather do something else,” Liu joked with SBJ. “The project I embarked upon with my friends was to map the indoors — to map the campus — to help people find classes and events. Every first year [student] has had the same experience [navigating campus].”

Sixteen years later, his company Mappedin has helped create digital maps of the interiors of more than 10,000 venues for more than 350 enterprise clients, ranging from malls (like Simon Property Group developments) and airports (think LAX and Miami International) to sports stadiums (such as Lumen Field and Energizer Park). The company has raised $35 million over the years, with the latest installment a $24.5 million Series B that Edison Partners led in April.

“A theme we’ve been thinking about and trying to solve for a while is how do you operationalize the physical world, and how do you digitize critical infrastructure?” said Ryan Ziegler, a general partner of Edison Partners. “That led us to [Mappedin], and when we saw what they built, we understood it would democratize [having a] source of truth to run operations indoors.”

Liu estimates one-third of Americans interact with Mappedin maps every year, but he is particularly bullish on the company’s growing sports practice, which now counts more than 50 clients. Here, Mappedin specializes in providing services such as personalized wayfinding for fans and security and operations assistance for venue operators.

“We think of it as an operating system for buildings,” Liu said. “It’s the same map that powers the front of house and the back of house, and it all works together.”

A category all its own

The idea of creating “digital twins” of venues is not new to the sports industry (see, as one example, OnePlan, previously named one of SBJ’s 10 Most Innovative Sports Tech Companies).

Liu pitches Mappedin as a different category, particularly in its ease-of-use and cost.

Mappedin’s core technology is a custom-built computer vision model that transforms 2D floor plans into interoperable, 3D maps. Once the models create the base layer, those maps can be manually edited by users — “We built a tool my mother should be able to use,” Liu quipped — or augmented by plugging in external data sources like security cameras, staff schedules or smart door locks. Liu refers to this aggregation as “sensor fusion.”

“You start to paint the map of what’s happening in real time,” he said. “And we’re doing this in a way that isn’t trying to do anything against personal privacy. It’s more — hey, someone slipped and fell in that corridor. It’s not ‘Camera 17,’ and someone has to figure out what that means. It’s right there. Somebody just fell. Who’s our nearest person to go help that person out?”

Fans get a different perspective. Mappedin’s Lumen Field map appears on the venue’s website (and Seahawks’ mobile app) and offers a navigation function that works similar to Google Maps. Search the route from Lumen Field’s North Parking Lot 2 to Section 109, and the map will show a green walking trail supplemented by detailed directions: take the stairs up the main concourse, exit the stairs and head left, walk straight for less than a minute and then hang a right at Dippin’ Dots.

“Every building, every venue in the world — where Google Maps stops, it is still a black hole,” Liu said, adding that this challenge is exacerbated by how much more often the interior of buildings change than their exteriors.

Liu declined to comment on Mappedin’s pricing, but he characterized the process of creating one of its operating systems as costing in the five figures (which he claimed is “100x” less expensive than it typically costs to create a full-scale digital twin). Mappedin also offers its map-making model as a direct-to-consumer app, so that anyone can sample it.

“We want to show, not tell,” Liu said. “We’re the new kids in most industries where we show up, and we’re really confident that we have something different.”

This month, roughly 2 million students will cross a commencement stage, shake a hand, and step into the job market with a diploma and a plan. For the ones who dreamed of working in sports or entertainment media — and there are more of them than you might think — that plan may have been spoiled a long time ago. Not by choice. By default.

Because by May, the most competitive students at America’s top universities have largely already committed to their first employer. They accepted those offers last fall, or the spring before that. Banking and consulting companies recruited them as sophomores. Sports media, sports marketing, and entertainment media, for the most part, were not in the room.

By the time our industry posts entry-level jobs, the best candidates have already said yes to someone else.

A structural problem, not a passion problem

This is not a story about students lacking interest in sports and entertainment media and marketing careers. When I launched the inaugural Business of Sports class at Vanderbilt University this year, it filled to its 40-student maximum in the first of four registration windows. A waiting list formed before the second window opened. The interest is real, but the opportunities are limited.

The problem is structural. Investment banks begin recruiting sophomores for junior-year internships as early as January of their second year, a full 15 to 18 months before the internship starts. Those internships convert to full-time offers at a rate exceeding 70%. Consulting firms follow a nearly identical playbook. By the time a student enters senior year, the decision is already made.

Sports and entertainment media and marketing companies, by contrast, usually recruit for summer internships between February and April of the year the internship occurs. Entry-level jobs are posted on an as-needed basis, often after graduation. Finance and accounting account for roughly 30% of all internships nationally, while consulting takes another 12% of the best students. Sports and entertainment media and marketing combined represent approximately 2% of the total. That is not a gap. It is a chasm.

We’ve seenwhat works — we just haven’t scaled it

In 2009, I founded Vanderbilt On Madison Avenue, a summer internship program designed to expose top college students to careers in media and advertising. Many of the students who come through the program continue in media and build fantastic careers across the industry. The program works. But it has reached hundreds of students when the industry needs to reach thousands.

Banking and consulting are not winning the talent war by accident. They’ve built infrastructure; campus information sessions, early insight programs for freshmen, and sophomore internships designed explicitly to feed the junior pipeline. By the time a student receives a full-time offer, they have had two or three years of deliberate relationship-building with that employer. Sports and entertainment companies offer none of this. They rely on passion to carry students through years of uncertainty. The passion is real, but it is not a recruiting strategy.

The AI trap

There is a new risk compounding all of this. Artificial intelligence is already handling much of what entry-level employees have traditionally done in our business, such as research, writing, basic production, data analysis, and social content. The temptation for cost-conscious executives is obvious: Why build a junior hiring pipeline when AI can fill the gap at a fraction of the cost?

If we automate away entry-level jobs, we don’t just save money. We eliminate the pipeline through which we develop our next generation of leaders.

This logic is dangerous. Entry-level jobs are not just about output, they are about formation. They are where future leaders learn to navigate an organization, develop good judgment, and absorb the culture of an industry. Remove those early career experiences and you do not lose a few years of cheap labor. You lose the ability to develop the leaders of the 2030s and 2040s. Banking and consulting understand this intuitively. The analyst class is not just a workforce; it is a leadership pipeline.

What needs to change

The graduating class of 2026 includes students who would thrive in our industry. They are talented, curious, and genuinely excited to join in. Most of them have accepted offers elsewhere, not because they prefer those jobs, but because those industries gave them a path and we did not.

The fix is not complicated, but it requires elbow grease and urgency. It means recruiting sophomores, not seniors. It means building structured internship pipelines with genuine return-offer commitments. It means funding and scaling programs that introduce students to careers in sports and entertainment media and marketing, before they have already said yes to Goldman Sachs and McKinsey. And it means resisting the short-term temptation to replace junior roles with AI ... understanding that what looks like efficiency today is a leadership deficit tomorrow.

The talent is graduating right now. The question is whether our industry will finally show up to compete for it.

Dan Lovinger is the former president of sales at NBC Sports and an adjunct professor at Vanderbilt University and founder of Vanderbilt On Madison Avenue, an internship program connecting college students with careers in media and advertising.

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