SBJ Unpacks: Welcome to the 19th annual Sports Business Awards!

Tonight in Unpacks: The sports industry’s leaders are gathering tonight at the Marriott Marquis Times Square in N.Y. for the 19th annual Sports Business Awards, presented by Sports Business Journal. We’ll be celebrating and recognizing the leaders, visionaries and day-to-day practitioners who personify excellence in the business.

A crowd of more than 1,000 is expected for the biggest night in sports business. For a full list of the 89 nominees in 15 categories, please go here.

Also tonight:

• Pam Kramer leads Kansas City’s World Cup moment
• UFC begins building unprecedented venue at White House
• The SCORE Act got benched. Now what?
• Op-ed: Athletes’ foundations need stronger support

Listen to SBJ’s most popular podcast, Morning Buzzcast, where Joe Lemire, Jenn Azara, Ethan Joyce and Rob Schaefer recap the prominent themes from Tech Week, such as the rising importance of data when it comes to improving fan experience (or selling to fans in venues), as they prepare for the second day of panels and discussion in NYC.

The winners of the 2026 Sports Business Awards are set to be honored Wednesday night at the Marquis Times Square in N.Y. There will be 15 awards handed out, along with two more honors as Fenway Sports Group founder John Henry will be recognized as the recipient of this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award and Soccer Without Borders will receive the Celebration of Service award.

Thirteen categories are determined by a group of industry executives. Read more about the nominees below:

• Agency of the Year: Brand Consulting
• Brand Activation of the Year
• Best in Property Consulting, Sales and Client Services
• Best in Sports Media
• Best in Sports Social Media
• Best in Talent Representation
• Deal of the Year
• Sports Breakthrough of the Year
• Sports Event of the Year
• Sports Facility of the Year
• Sports League of the Year
• Sports Sponsor of the Year
• Sports Team of the Year

Sports Business Journal selected award winners in two categories — Athletic Director of the Year and Executive of the Year. Read more about the nominees below:

• AD: Dan Bartholomae, Western Michigan University
• AD: Scott Dolson, Indiana University
• AD: Mark Harlan, University of Utah
• AD: Kirby Hocutt, Texas Tech University
• AD: Candice Storey Lee, Vanderbilt University
• Executive: Rick Cordella, NBC Sports
• Executive: Michael Jordan, 23XI Racing
• Executive: Jimmy Pitaro, ESPN
• Executive: Mark Shapiro, TKO
• Executive: Mark Walter, TWG Global

As CEO of Kansas City’s host committee for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, Pam Kramer is responsible for ensuring the tournament’s smallest host market by metro-area population makes good on a generational opportunity to showcase itself to the world.

As if that’s not enough pressure, she and her husband will also be running a de facto bed and breakfast, with as many as 20 friends and family members cycling in and out of their home throughout the tournament.

“We have a chart at our house with bedrooms one, two, three and four,” Kramer said. “And then every day, who’s staying in that bedroom? Who’s sleeping on the couch? When are we getting groceries?”

For Kramer, who has spent virtually her entire life in the region, the effort is worth it to ensure her loved ones get to experience Kansas City during the biggest sports event it has ever hosted.

It’s a full-circle moment for Kramer, whose foray into sports came during the 1994 FIFA World Cup while working in marketing for tournament sponsor Sprint.

“City to city and country to country, the fan bases and the excitement around it lit a fire in me,” Kramer said. “Phone service is one thing — at the time, it was not what it is today — but people care a lot more about sports and I thought, ‘I want to do something that people really care about.’”

After leaving Sprint in 2006 to focus on raising her two daughters, Kramer became a fixture in the Kansas City sports community through a variety of part-time and contract jobs.

She spent four years consulting for Chiefs President Mark Donovan, leading the NFL team’s business-side communications. After Chris and Angie Long purchased an NWSL expansion franchise in December 2020 to play in Kansas City, she helped the organization find its footing as interim CEO.

By early 2024, Kramer considered herself “sort of retired” while serving in another short-term role as fractional COO of the Kansas City Sports Commission & Foundation. But then, like something out of a heist movie, she was asked to take on one last job.

Local World Cup host committee board members Kathy Nelson and Jake Reid, the top executives at the commission and local MLS club Sporting KC, respectively, approached Kramer about leading the city’s hosting efforts. The job meant raising money, coordinating with FIFA, working across state lines and turning a regional bid into an operating plan.

Driven by her love for the region, she accepted the challenge.

“I did not want this to be a missed opportunity for Kansas City,” Kramer said.

Kramer played a key role in raising public funding from state and city governments on both sides of the Kansas/Missouri border to support the nine-figure hosting effort. That funding has come with high expectations and varying interests from a wide range of contributors. Kramer estimated she spends at least 75% of her time on stakeholder management, an area in which Reid says she has excelled.

“Pam’s done a masterful job of making sure that everyone feels heard, feels like we’re delivering on what we said we were going to, but also not compromising the big picture of having to deliver the largest event of all time in Kansas City,” Reid said.

Operationally, Kramer has kept Kansas City one step ahead of its peers. More than a year before kickoff, the city had secured more than 200 buses to shuttle fans throughout the region, including free trips from the airport to K.C.’s downtown core and $15 round-trip rides to matches. The city’s plans for its FIFA Fan Festival and lavish VIP hospitality space called KC House, both designed by Populous, have largely been in place since last fall.

Perhaps the most impressive feat has been attracting England, Argentina, the Netherlands and Algeria to set up their base camps in the region. The four teams are more than any other host city, a direct result of Kramer’s involvement in pitching federations and hosting visits.

Kramer used to joke that the first line of her obituary would be about negotiating Sprint’s deal to become the first consumer brand with its logo on NFL coaches’ headsets. After this summer, however, her legacy may be something much closer to home.

Three Questions With ... Pam Kramer

Which of your past roles best prepared you to lead the host committee?

“I think the Sprint experience. I relied on it very early in creating structure. We’re a $100 million-plus startup that went from zero to the peak of our existence in 24 months. So, understanding very early that we needed HR policies, we hoped to get federal funding, so we needed a procurement policy. Those kinds of things, I would not have known if it wasn’t for my Sprint background.”

How have you distilled what you love about Kansas City into a sales pitch for visitors and international soccer federations?

“Lots of cities can say they have great restaurants and lots of cities can say they have — pick a thing, a rational benefit. But the way that we welcome people, the way that we are pretty down to earth and we’re not trying to be anybody. We’re not trying to be the fanciest or the slickest, but we’re going to make it easy for you to be here, and we want you to feel like you belong here.”

How will you define success for the region after the World Cup is over?

“I’ve used the analogy of Atlanta and the Olympics in ’96. That really changed the way the world sees Atlanta and the way people in Atlanta see themselves. So, it might be 30 years before we look back on this.

“But in the immediate moment, if people here feel like this moment belonged to them and they were part of the biggest thing to happen here, that’s really important. And then, if there is this feeling like this small place showed up in the biggest possible way. That’s hard to measure. There are all the economic indicators, and we’ll measure all of that. We’ll track the sentiment. But I think there’s a little bit of an intangible — we’ll know when we know.”

UFC will start the build-out of the temporary venue at the White House on Wednesday, with 350 truckloads of materials that will take hours to deliver on the premises. The unprecedented Freedom 250 is slated for June 14, and some of UFC Chief Content Officer Craig Borsari’s team will be on site today to start the installation after months of planning into figuring out how to stage a fight card on the South Lawn.

Because there has never been a professional sporting event on the White House grounds, Borsari said the UFC is having to install all sorts of equipment that would be ready to use at a normal arena or stadium. It’s also having to engineer solutions for certain issues like the South Lawn not being flat.

That’s just part of what is making this event different than the Noche UFC card in 2024 at the Sphere in Las Vegas. That was also a first-of-its-kind event, but one that was far more a technological task than a logistical test, according to Borsari.

“There’s several things that make it incredibly challenging,” said Borsari, who also serves as executive vice president and executive producer. “One is that we are trying to pull off a live event with 4,300 spectators in maybe the most secure location in all of America, so that comes with a variety of different challenges that make it very difficult for our teams to be on site and do what they need to do. We’re not at some open field where we don’t have to go through all the security measures that’s going to require for us to have heavy equipment and personnel on the property, so that’s one challenge.

“The other challenge is having virtually zero infrastructure on the grounds to tie into. When we’re going to a stadium or arena, there’s so much that’s already at our fingertips that we can tap into, including shore power, back-of-house infrastructure ... ushers and venue security -- all of that doesn’t exist here. So we’re really truly building this facility from the ground up.”

‘NO BLUEPRINT’: Among the most pressing things that Borsari’s team has had to solve is that the South Lawn is not flat, an obvious problem for a sports property that needs to stage a fighting canvas to allow for a proper competition. There is a 22-degree decline from the highest point of the lawn to the lowest, he said.

After having engineers take laser measurements of the South Lawn, the UFC determined it needed a 30-foot-high wall on the south side of the South Lawn to help make the temporary venue level. It is also constructing its “claw” structure over the top of the Octagon for lighting.

Practically every department within UFC is working on the White House event in some shape or form, and the property is also working with two consultancies on the event: live-experience expert Tait Towers and D.C.-based government relations services company Harbinger Strategies.

Because of the security that comes with getting onto the White House grounds, the process of having a single truck deliver its contents and leave the site can take six to eight hours, Borsari said.

“I would say that the similarities [to the Noche UFC card at the Sphere] are that the Sphere and this event were incredibly unique in that we didn’t have experience pulling off events like each one of these,” Borsari said. “The Sphere was a technological challenge -- this is much more of a logistical challenge. But they were unique in that they were kind of trail blazers in the sense that we were doing this for the first time.

“So there was no blueprint, no historical events that we could draw from and learn from. We were kind of figuring this out both with the Sphere and this one as we were rolling up our sleeves and getting into it.”

College sports leaders’ latest push for federal legislation has stalled.

The SCORE Act, which plenty around the industry hoped would reach the House floor this week, was effectively cast aside after the Congressional Black Caucus pulled its support for the bill on Monday.

By Tuesday, the House Rules Committee postponed its markup of the bill, leaving it in limbo. And, more likely, dead.

“The financial pressure on athletic departments are real and it’s being wielded on Capitol Hill, as a weapon against the very athletes this bill claims to protect,” Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) said during a Tuesday news conference. “What the SCORE Act would’ve delivered are massive handouts to the NCAA, SEC and Big Ten dressed up with modest concessions for a select group of athletes at the wealthiest schools. Meanwhile, every other athlete at every other institution gets left out in the cold.”

The SCORE Act has been the preferred congressional action of the Power Four commissioners to effectively codify parts of the House settlement and grant college sports the antitrust exemption plenty so desperately crave.

And now that it’s not going anywhere? We’ll see.

Many in the industry remain optimistic a bipartisan approach from Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) could be the solution. Cruz and Cantwell’s bill has been percolating for weeks, and there’s belief language could be released for broader discussion as soon as this week.

There’s also, well, politics at play with all of this.

President Trump has staked some capital on college sports legislation in creating a presidential committee composed of myriad stakeholders from in and around the enterprise to peck away at potential options. With midterms approaching, it remains unclear whether Democrats will be willing to help deliver the White House a legislative win on such a contentious issue.

Players push back on NCAA employment argument

One notable moment from Trahan’s Tuesday news conference came from two women’s basketball players who pushed back on the NCAA’s position that athletes do not want employee status.

Michigan’s Brooke Daniels and Maryland’s Oluchi Okananwa, who joined Trahan for the call, were asked about the NCAA’s and conferences’ repeated assertion that athletes generally do not want to be classified as employees.

They were, shall we say, not exactly aligned with NCAA talking points:

Daniels: “They don’t want that employee status to be a thing because when you’re an employee, you get the right to unionize. Being an employee also opens up doors for international athletes like Charlisse [Leger-Walker] and other athletes that I’ve played with at my time at Oakland and even at my time at Michigan.

“When you also are employees, once again, you have to listen and have somebody else at the table, and you can’t just make rules based off of how you feel. You have to have rules and involve everybody. Being an employee pretty much formalizes that you have to have different agreements and approvals involving different people that are probably going to go against your underlying issues that you’re trying to bring forward.”

Okananwa: “It’s honestly comical to have them say that we don’t want to be seen as employees when we’re kind of already operating as employee workers. I mean, our sport is at the center of everything that we do, especially with our time here at the university. Rightfully so, because it is something that we love and something that we 100% signed up for. But I think it’s time and they know it’s time to come to the truth, which is that we are employees. We should be treated as such and we should be brought to the table with employee rights.”

I’ve been skeptical of the persistent contention that athletes don’t want to be employees, but it was refreshing to hear a pair of high-major players actually enumerate those sentiments.

One detail in the Alec Bohm lawsuit made my heart sink.

The Philadelphia Phillies infielder claims his parents used funds from the Alec Bohm Foundation, his charitable organization, to pay their personal expenses.

What a loss — not only because Bohm’s foundation has the potential to do good, but also because situations of charitable mismanagement are often preventable with a few good conversations.

The good work athletes do

Athletes launch foundations to use their platform for good. That impulse, the desire to give back, is something I see in professional sports every day.

Athletes fund youth sports programs in underserved communities. They build fields and facilities where kids can play. They support families through medical crises and show up at hospitals, fire stations, and schools because these communities mean something to them.

When done right, athlete philanthropy changes lives for the people they help and for the athletes themselves. The “giving high” is real. Athletes who engage meaningfully with their communities perform better, feel more connected to their purpose, and build legacies that outlast their playing careers.

That’s what makes situations like Bohm’s so heartbreaking. The people who should have benefited from his charitable work may receive nothing. And an athlete who wanted to do good now faces questions about whether his foundation was run properly.

For agents, team executives and industry professionals who guide athletes through these decisions, understanding the risks is essential. Because when an athlete’s foundation fails, it comes with a reputational hit and, more importantly, the loss of great potential for positive impact.

What’s missing from conversations

Too often, athletes staff their foundations with family members. Mom becomes executive director, and Dad handles finances. It feels natural because these are the people they trust. However, if those family members lack nonprofit management experience, they’re learning on the job, with the athlete’s money and reputation at stake.

If we’re serious about protecting athlete philanthropy, agents and advisers must help athletes ask:

• Is the athlete receiving regular financial reports showing where foundation money goes? Not verbal updates, but actual statements with documentation.
• Is the money being disbursed consistent with the foundation’s mission?
• Does the foundation have an independent board, or is it entirely family-controlled?
• Are foundation funds in completely separate accounts from personal or business finances? Mixing accounts is a massive red flag.
• Is someone with nonprofit expertise ensuring compliance with IRS and state requirements?
• If the foundation is paying salaries to family members, are those salaries reasonable and properly documented?
• Can the athlete explain to a reporter or an IRS auditor generally what the foundation does and where the money goes?

If an athlete can’t answer these questions, it may be time to connect them with qualified nonprofit support before problems escalate.

The gap that could lead to problems

I’ve had countless conversations with players, families, and representatives about launching charitable foundations. Enthusiasm is always there, and they genuinely want to make a difference. But too often, the early questions focus on tangible pieces: What should we name it? What paperwork do we need to file? Who can help us throw the first fundraiser?

Those are important questions. But rarely does anyone ask the harder ones that inquire about independent oversight, compliance, and systems needed to protect the foundation’s work and mission.

That’s the gap that leads to situations like Bohm’s. These foundations may navigate complex nonprofit regulations without the expertise or infrastructure to do so effectively.

Professional nonprofit organizations have systems such as independent boards, financial controls, regular audits, and transparent reporting that family-run operations often overlook or are unprepared for. This doesn’t mean a family can’t be involved, but proper structure, oversight, and accountability should be non-negotiable.

Athletes need independent oversight. They need people running their foundations who understand nonprofit management. Protecting an athlete’s off-field mission, part of their legacy, should be a priority.

It ensures that every dollar athletes dedicate to helping others reaches the communities they care about.

The industry’s role

Teams, leagues and agents are uniquely positioned to guide athletes toward sustainable, compliant philanthropy.

This means providing financial literacy and nonprofit governance education as part of rookie programs and player development initiatives. Connect athletes with qualified philanthropic advisers before they launch foundations, not after problems emerge.

Advisers can encourage athletes to start with simpler charitable structures (fiscal sponsorship, donor-advised funds, partnerships with existing nonprofits) before creating the complexity of a private foundation or a public charity. And they can make it clear that launching a foundation is a serious business decision that requires the same professional support as any other financial or legal matter.

The bottom line

Athletes are some of the most generous people in sports. They give their time, their platforms, and their resources to make communities better. That generosity deserves to be protected with the same professionalism and care they bring to their sport.

For the agents, executives, and advisers who guide them: Helping athletes structure their charitable work properly isn’t just good risk management. It’s how we ensure their desire to do good translates into lasting impact.

A charitable foundation is more than a family project. It’s a regulated legal entity with serious obligations. “But’” with the right stewardship, it becomes a powerful vehicle for lasting impact, reflecting an athlete’s values and changing lives.

The work athletes are doing matters too much to put at risk. Let’s help them get it right.

Connie Falcone is the founder and CEO of Firefly Athlete, a philanthropic advisory firm working with professional athletes and sports organizations.

• SBJ’s coverage from the first day of Tech Week panels includes the Valkyries using data to build a brand, a loyalty program helping the Mets gain repeat customers and venue execs hammering home the importance of installing a tech backbone as you construct your building.
• In a move that should resonate across the NBA, the Suns and Mercury extended their over-the-air broadcast deal with Gray Media through 2030 and consolidated both team’s DTC apps under Gray’s control through an impending Arizona’s Family Sports App, reports SBJ’s Tom Friend.
• Longtime sports business educator and administrator Jim Kahler will retire as director of the sport and entertainment management program at Cleveland State at the end of June, notes SBJ’s Bill King.
• MLB is working with Reliance Initiative for Sports and Entertainment (RISE) to promote baseball in India, with marketing and activations that includes a live event in October in Mumbai, writes SBJ’s Mike Mazzeo.
• FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem believes F1 engine manufacturers will get on board with his plan to switch back to V8 engines in 2030, but he’s ready to order the move unilaterally in 2031 if necessary, notes SBJ’s Adam Stern.