Sunday Forum: How not to manage a crisis

Good Sunday morning. A few things for the week ahead …

• The PR miscues of Mike Vrabel and the latest on The Team
• Stories of the week: Haslam Sports Group is quickly, quietly becoming a force
• Lessons, reflections and appreciations from SBJ’s Champions
• Watch list: Strong recommend for AMC’s “Rise of the 49ers” but less on “Jail Blazers”
• This Week’s Forum: Two power brokers on why they are so bullish on the sports sector

→ Here is what I’ve heard about the sale of The Team, formerly Wasserman. Yes, the parties that have been mentioned, UTA, Permira, Patrick Whitesell’s WIN agency, are among the bidders, but many of them are more interested in pieces of the company rather than the whole. Casey Wasserman understandably wants a big number; he’s built a company methodically and successfully that had his name on it. But the decision on whether to sell off pieces will be a difficult one because it likely won’t result in the number Wasserman and Providence Equity want. The Team’s brand consulting business is incredibly appealing, and I would think any agency would want it for its high-profile clients and successful overall business. The unit has more than 1,300 employees, brings in just over 35% of the company’s overall revenue and has a very healthy bottom line of more than $100M when not including corporate charges. The question is whether brand consulting will be a drag on a deal multiple and just how much the PE/investor class values the brand consulting business.

→ Crisis PR professionals are all talking about the Mike Vrabel/Dianna Russini story, which has led to so many emails and texts this week. I’ll take this from the coach/team side. First, Vrabel’s initial statement was so poor considering what he knew — calling the report “laughable.” Two, why try to bully and battle with the New York Post? Three, what did Vrabel tell the Kraft family and did he mislead them? It’s hard to believe Vrabel’s initial statement was approved by the Patriots without them being misled by their coach. These were just some of the many missteps, all while Vrabel was reportedly consulting with crisis professionals. I’m not a PR pro, but how would you go with the initial “laughable” statement if you knew all this? Did Vrabel feel he could toughen his way out of a one-week story? Friday’s “Today” show prominently featured this story in its main news hole, with anchors calling it a “sticky situation” and wondering “what else is out there?” Three months ago, Mike Vrabel was atop the coaching/leadership pyramid. It’s hard to believe how far and fast he has fallen.

→ Don’t sleep on Haslam Sports Group. Jimmy and Dee Haslam are building a powerful sports portfolio and have done it pretty quickly. This week, they agreed to a $205M purchase price for an NWSL team in Columbus that will launch in 2028, and that goes with their ownership of the Cleveland Browns, Columbus Crew and Milwaukee Bucks. It’s not just teams, it’s also real estate and other entities, and they are actively engaged in the big issues. Additionally, Jimmy is deeply involved in the search for the next MLS commissioner. The Haslams are all in on sports business; and see ownership as a family business, with daughter Whitney Haslam Johnson and her husband, JW Johnson, playing critical roles. They admit they haven’t made all the right moves, and fans are surely still skeptical, but the family is clearly an influential player and in it for the long-term.

→ Sources are frustrated about all the anxiety around the World Cup with 46 days until kickoff. Many point the finger at the drip, drip, drip of angst-ridden media coverage, feeling that is “driving up the worry.” They aren’t wrong, as there are daily take-outs on the challenges facing the event. Just look at some coverage from this week:

• Yahoo Sports cited “genuine concern that growing negativity around the World Cup could not only temper [soccer’s] growth here but cause damage to its broader image.”

• The Athletic wrote, “The long-promised World Cup boom hasn’t yet materialized. Some in the U.S. tourism industry worry that it will turn out to be little more than a modest bump.”

• Even Politico weighed in, writing “an unexpected convergence of threats … is turning the event into a nationwide stress test for the governmental institutions charged with pulling it off. … Rather than offering a triumphal turn in the international spotlight, the World Cup has become a case study in the local hazards of staging a spectacle at a moment of global disruption.”

These will be the storylines until the event begins, but it will shift when the games kick off, because the U.S. knows how to produce large events. So, the focus will then turn to ticket sales, atmosphere, issues outside venue perimeters, how various host cities are handling the influx of global visitors and, of course, what social storylines resonate.

→ So many top commercial executives have asked me how Lon Rosen is going to remake the Los Angeles Lakers’ business operations. Why? Because many believe the franchise has tremendous commercial upside. We know the strength of the Lakers brand, but there are plenty of observers who feel the brand hasn’t been fully optimized and there is a great deal of growth around sponsorship, merchandise, international, memberships and other forms of monetization. Rosen is quietly making moves, bringing over Michael Spetner, who he worked with at the Dodgers, in the new, and critical, role of chief strategy and growth officer, and naming Ryan Kantor, who previously worked at the Dodgers but most recently at crosstown rival Clippers, as VP of global partnerships. I’d expect some other big announcements soon from the Lakers regarding their business side.

→ The college facility project that I am asked the most about — and the one most eagerly anticipated — is the $870M Ryan Field at Northwestern University, which will be the most expensive college football stadium ever built. My colleague, Bret McCormick, showcased this video and voiceover from his recent visit, and it’s worth checking out.

→ Game Creek Video CEO Pat Sullivan deserves a lot of credit for telling my former colleague John Ourand that his company was at fault for the recent Prime Video technical issue during an NBA playoff game. You don’t see such honest and candid admissions often in our industry, but it didn’t surprise me that Sullivan showed such leadership, as I witnessed firsthand how proud he is of his staff and their skills during a recent visit to Game Creek’s headquarters in New Hampshire. I could tell the staff knows they have a lot of responsibility to deliver a game broadcast, and when they don’t, it eats at them.

→ Our Champions celebration, presented by Proskauer during the CAA World Congress of Sports, always has some great anecdotes. Here are some highlights from the four Champions that were able to attend.

Allen & Co.’s Steve Greenberg: “A few mentors and partners I’ve had over the years have been instrumental to me. I want to start with my Dad. He taught me two really important things: how to treat people and how to compete. Unfortunately, there was one thing he didn’t teach me. I was playing in the minor leagues in North Carolina and a reporter came up to me and said, ‘So Steve, can you hit like your Dad?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, that’s why I’m here in Burlington.’ I’d also like to thank Alan Rothenberg and recognize Alan who got me started in the sports legal world. More importantly, Alan found Arn Tellem at the University of Michigan Law School, and that’s a partnership that’s lasted 47 years for me. Faye Vincent was a great mentor. My partner at Classic Sports, Brian Bedol, Herbert Allen, who funded Classic, and then was crazy enough to have the idea that I could be an investment banker. He said, ‘We’ll give you a phone and a desk and you’ll figure it out.’ That was 24 years ago. And finally, my most important partner for 55 years, my wife Myrna, who has been the steadfast ballast in my life who has taught me that work is important, sports are important, but there are other things even more important, like family and friends.”

University of Texas Executive Senior Associate Athletic Director Chris Plonsky: “What we do is important. I’ve spent my entire career in higher-ed settings, which included the conference office. What we do feeds the pipeline for everybody in this room, because if we do a great job with these 17- to 23-year-olds, they’ll be really good in your businesses, whether you’re representing them or whether they’re performing for you. We want to send out highly educated, sophisticated, committed, hardworking, disciplined, honest folks into the world to be productive citizens.”

Levy CEO Andy Lansing credited Larry Levy for hiring him at 27 years old for “a job I had no business doing, and he saw something, because I had the worst imposter syndrome ever. But I said back then, all those years ago, that I was going to prove to him every single day that he made the right call. And I still feel that way. The longer I get in my career, the more I think about what I’m going to remember when I’m done with it. I used to think it was the deals and the thrill and the adrenaline, but it really is the relationships.” He later added, “I don’t have one mentor. My mentor is a Frankenstein. It’s a little piece of this person and it’s a little piece of that person. And it’s actually people who I don’t like the way they conduct business. And I file that away and say, ‘Don’t ever do that.’ So, my mentor is a Frankenstein.”

Detroit Pistons Vice Chair Arn Tellem: “A career in sports is a privilege, a profound privilege. It gives you a platform, and with that comes responsibility, especially now. We live in a time of real division, people talking past each other, communities drifting apart, and yet you walk into any arena, any stadium, and you’ll see people who agree at almost nothing sitting side by side, standing together, celebrating the same moment. Sports has that power. It cuts through the noise. It reminds us of what we share, our humanity, our joy, and even our heartbreak. And that’s not a small thing. That’s everything.”

Tellem also cited his longtime friendship with Greenberg, calling him “my mentor, Rabbi and big brother,” adding, “Steve, your belief in me in such a formative moment changed everything. Steve saw something in me before I fully saw it in myself. The lessons Steve taught me have stayed with me every single day. I’m truly grateful and I’m thrilled we’re receiving this honor together.”

Quote of the Week

“We care. We want the club to be successful.” — Clearlake Capital co-founder and Chelsea co-owner Behdad Eghbali’s message to the team’s fans. It’s a tumultuous time for the organization, as fans took to the streets to protest ownership last week and the team fired coach Liam Rosenior after only 106 days. Few organizations face such a fan/PR challenge as Chelsea does right now.

This Week’s Watch List

I really enjoyed AMC’s four-part documentary, “Rise of the 49ers,” the story of how this team became one of the great dynasties of our era. One great story after another fills this 4.5-hour special, but it was the complex portrait of Bill Walsh that made the greatest impact on me. What an intense, yet complicated coach. You could just feel the tension that existed during his pursuit for perfection, and the anecdotes from his family only add to the character study of a person who literally touched every aspect of the football operation — but also dabbled in the team’s marketing. It was remarkable to see how obsessed Walsh was with winning. Everyone is fantastic, from the blunt recollections of Randy Cross, to the appreciative and reflective Steve Young to the distinct memories of Keena Turner and Jerry Rice. But I couldn’t take my eyes off Joe Montana, who has such a clear, quiet command in his memories and delivery. This is up there among my favorites.

I can’t say the same about Netflix’s “Jail Blazers,” which tells the story of the Portland Trail Blazers during the early 2000s, a very talented group of players but filled with emotional, difficult personalities, that seriously clashed with the culture of Portland and the team’s fan base. Bob Whitsitt comes across — not surprisingly — as stubborn and sure of his strategy to build a team around troubled players, but he was also surprisingly compelling in talking about working for the late Paul Allen and the pressure to win a championship for him. There are some ‘God, that really did happen’ moments, but in the end, I just didn’t care enough about the characters to enjoy this.

→ Photos of the week are below, and if you missed Morning Buzzcast, check out this week’s episodes here.

→ Remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel.

→ The biggest night of the year in sports business, the Sports Business Awards, are May 20 in New York. Learn more and get your ticket here — it’s the best room to be in all year.

Now, check out our Early Access stories from the weekly print edition coming out tomorrow …

Two conversations at the CAA World Congress of Sports that should be amplified came on the final day. There were back-to-back, one-on-ones with two sports power brokers, Clearlake Capital co-founder Behdad Eghbali and sports industrialist/investor Clara Wu Tsai, and both shared insight into their investment thesis that should be clipped and saved. Here is why they stood out:

In her interview with Kara Swisher, Wu Tsai was refreshingly honest about the decision to buy the New York Liberty in 2019 (for a reported $10 million to $14 million), and the concerted efforts she and her husband, Joe, have made in becoming one of the WNBA’s most popular teams, which won a title in 2024. “Even though it looks genius in hindsight, it was pretty radical at the time to buy the team,” she said of the team that was playing in a small venue in White Plains, N.Y., at the time. “But we were the logical buyers because we own Barclays Center. It’s embarrassing; it’s a major team in a major market and these women should be playing in a world-class arena.”

They looked at the books, and she admitted it wasn’t a good business. “But we did see that they were the best female basketball players in the world,” she recalled. “We were playing in the best media market in the world and in a town that loves basketball. So, we thought, OK, those fundamentals seem interesting.” Their concern was over the lack of fan support and the amount of time and work it would take to turn things around. “We knew we would lose some money,” she said. “And in the first days, we had 2,000 people in an arena that sits 18,000. The question was, how long were we going to have to live with 2,000 people in the arena?”

So they invested heavily, improving facilities, the player experience and the executive team. What I also appreciated was her steely focus that the players are the product — the core fundamental. “Everything starts with the players,” she stressed. “The biggest investment you can make is in your players, because they’re the product. The first thing was to be able to attract great players that wanted to play for your franchise.” She backed that up by personally flying to Turkey in 2023 to recruit Breanna Stewart when she was a free agent. When asked what she said to land Stewart, her answer was naively refreshing. “I just listened to her,” she said. “We were early in our ownership, and I didn’t know that much about the WNBA and the history. I listened to her, and what her hopes and dreams were for the league, and what she wanted. We found that we were aligned, because she wanted to win, but she also wanted to elevate standards for the league. We were aligned on that vision.”

That signing gave the Liberty massive credibility and was the foundation of the team’s success. What also stood out was Wu Tsai’s long-term commitment: this isn’t a quick fix or side hobby — she wants to leave a legacy. “We want to build something with sustained excellence that’s going to stand the test of time,” she said. “All the investments that we’re making are really about that.” In a time in which ownership is under more scrutiny than ever, Wu Tsai is invested in sports for the right reasons.

The other takeaway — maybe not surprising — was you have two very successful business leaders, who are sports investors and incredibly bullish on the sector’s future. That could be seen as playing to the audience, inhaling their own exhaust or having a keen understanding of future business fundamentals — you’re free to choose.

“Sports, as a category, is still in the early days in viewership, fandom, fan engagement and the opportunity to really touch a lot of lives, even touch people in a world with AI, with content and with traditional media,” Eghbali said. “We see sports as passion, as religion and being 24/7/365 days a year and part of everyone’s lives.”

They both stressed that sports is more powerful in an era of AI-generated content. “Sports is maybe one of the few sectors that is AI-proof,” Eghbali said. “We think it’s a multihundred-billion-dollar opportunity, and we’re maybe at halftime of that opportunity. We think it will be a mainstay investment category for investors in the decades to come.”

Wu Tsai agreed: “AI is making sure that content is abundant, infinite and predictable, but live sports is the opposite of that. Live sports is, by nature, finite, and it’s also unpredictable. The world is becoming flooded with content and that really increases the value of live sports. Team owners are going to see it in two places: We’re going to see more people coming to games, but we’re also going to see more people watching. So, rising demand and limited supply, and that’s why I’m very positive on the value of sports.”

Again, comments to clip and save for the future.

Abraham Madkour can be reached at amadkour@sportsbusinessjournal.com.