Doug Bentz, Vice President of Marketing and Digital for the San Jose Sharks, holds several different responsibilities including performance marketing, branding, digital creation, content production, and customer experience (among many more). In his role, Doug Bentz works hard to make sure that branding for the Sharks matches their values and...

Don Costante is the Senior Director of Event Presentation & Production for the Kansas City Royals and doubles as the founder and CEO of Costante Group. Don Costante is a highly recognizable name in Event Presentation & Production circles across North American professional sports. In fact, two interviewees suggested we...

Greg Sargent, Director of Marketing at Canucks Sports & Entertainment (CSE), helps to oversee marketing efforts for several different teams in addition to Rogers Arena. The teams within Greg Sargent's scope include the Vancouver Canucks (National Hockey League), Vancouver Warriors (National Lacrosse League), Vancouver Titans (Overwatch League), Seattle Surge (Call...

Scott Cunningham, Vice President of Fan Experience at the Atlanta Braves, is responsible for organizing presentations and entertainment for all of the team's home games and events! As a huge fan of the allure of a sport event myself, I was excited to have the chance to interview Scott to...

Ryan LoScalzo, Manager, Venue Services at Washington Nationals, is responsible for managing behind the scenes work that goes on at National Park events. From programming, testing, and preparing all ticketed access points to incident tracking to lost and found management, Ryan's role plays a major part in the overall fan...

Autumn Spicer, Community Relations Manager for the Las Vegas Aces, is in charge of overseeing Las Vegas Aces player and coach appearances, as well as managing donation requests and calendar planning. Basically, it’s her responsibility to ensure that the team maintains a relationship within the community during the season and...

Martina Knezevic, Global Outreach Manager at IMG Academy, represents the global team and makes sure that all global messages meet her campus, and visa versa. A Croatian born in Germany, Martina now lives in the USA and travels to offices around the world in places like Brazil, China, Mexico, Japan,...

Christopher Flynn is the Senior Manager of the Oakland Athletics sports business academy called "The CORE." Christopher has been with the A's for almost three years and has seen the start and development of The CORE program. The CORE is an innovative sports business development academy, built around the A's...

Tanyn Walters is the Manager of Operations and Entertainment for the Austin Spurs (Spurs Sports & Entertainment). At her job, you can catch her doing anything from working on financial documents to hosting Hype Squad auditions. It is evident from her vast list of career experiences that Walters is a...

Zachary Galia is the Director of Social Media for the NFL's Arizona Cardinals, and today I had the pleasure of getting to know more about him and his position. I knew we had to get him on the SPort MAnagement (SPMA) Hub after seeing some of the unique posts across...

Elaina Pappas is the Vice President of Marketing & Fan Development with the Utah Jazz. We began following her work since she was named one of Utah Business’ 20 in Their 20s for her outstanding work with the Jazz in the 2017 playoffs. Her calm, poignant and confident demeanor caught...

Former professional basketball player Luke Bonner is the owner of Power Forward Sports Group (PWRFWD). PWRFWD is a consultancy specializing in player advocacy and sports marketing. They recently helped world-renowned gymnast Aly Raisman launch a signature shoe with YORK Athletics Mfg. But owning and managing PWRFWD is not the only...

Marco Arop is a Canadian track and field star. Born in Sudan and raised Canadian, Marco Arop, like fellow Canadian track star Sage Watson, studies in the United States. The only difference is, Marco goes to school at Mississippi State University. This year's Pan American Games in Lima brought a...

Dani Aravich is now a Community Relations (CR) Associate with the Utah Jazz. After achieving tremendous success with the Utah Jazz Sales & Service Academy, Dani decided to move to the team's CR department. Our interest in Dani's story began with a LinkedIn post shared about her move. The post...

Felix Welling is the Senior Director of Corporate Development at VfL Wolfsburg-Fußball GmbH. One of their main operations is the football (soccer) team who play home games out of 30,000-seat Volkswagen Arena, located in the city of Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony. The club is a 100% subsidiary of German automaker Volkswagen....

Shiva Keshavan is a six-time Olympian, ten-time Asian Medalist and the first luge athlete to represent India at the Olympics. Born in 1981, Shiva has no intention of competing on the world stage anymore. Now, Shiva thoroughly invests time, effort and energy into improving India's sport presence. As the President...

David Lasday is the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the Israel Lacrosse Association. David brings over a decade and a half of sport industry experience to the table. Also, he's played an important role in the growth of lacrosse in Israel. I've followed David Lasday's sport experiences over the years...

Gabrielle Sims is now the Senior Coordinator of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) for the Charlotte Hornets. She's well into her fourth season with the organization. Her awesome work with the Hornets caught our attention. Some of that work came before making the leap into CSR four months ago. Previously, Gabrielle...

Last September, Brandon Currie became the Assistant General Manager of the Niagara IceDogs in the Ontario Hockey League (OHL). At 22 years of age, Brandon Currie is still one of the youngest to assume this position for an OHL team. In today's business of sport, age is just a number....

Kyler Nurmsoo is the Event Manager for the BC Games Society. It was a long, long time ago that Kyler and I teamed up to investigate the "recent" policy of the National Basketball Association (NBA) regarding the use of technical fouls to curtain undue demonstrativeness by its players. In fact,...

Michelle Young is the Manager of Retail for the Toronto Blue Jays. We've known Michelle Young for over a decade. Michelle always loved sports. But unless you really got to know her, you didn't realize just how passionate she was about it. Michelle’s entry into the sport industry is unique....

Nino Bourikas is the Director of Community Marketing and Group Sales for the Niagara IceDogs Hockey Club. The IceDogs are one of the most illustrious minor hockey teams in the world. For an Ontario Hockey League (OHL) team, their city rallies behind them like few others. I've known Nino for...

Emily Almond is the Marketing Coordinator for the Durham Bulls, the Triple-A affiliate of the Tampa Bay Rays. Emily took time from the very little and precious amount of it she has to spare, to answer questions about her role with the Bulls. To no surprise, Emily is a well-educated...

Hannah Huesman is a Mental Performance Coach for the Philadelphia Phillies. You may recognize Hannah from her social media series #MentalSweatMonday. Or you may recall Hannah (Thurley) from her NCAA Division I Softball and/or Basketball playing days at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. With a background in Kinesiology and...

Jordan Stewart is currently one of Canada's most prolific and elite athletes in the sport of taekwondo. In the Men's under 87 kilogram category, Stewart is ranked #7 in the world. We've known Stewart for over a year now. In that time, we've followed his journey to stardom on his...

No doubt about it, Jessie Heims is a phenomenal athlete. And she's an athlete you're going to hear an awful lot about very soon. That's because the 2020 Tokyo Summer Paralympic Games are just over a year away. She's been at the Games before. In fact, at the young age...

In 2010, I interned for a baseball team that goes by the name the Thunder Bay Border Cats. My official title was Game Day Operations intern, but the job was wayyy more than that. I learned so many areas of the sports industry and what each entailed. Funnily enough, I...

Sonia Ścibor is an emerging star in the Sport Management field. But Sonia is unique from others we've featured so far. First, Sonia is the epitome of a global sport professional. She's traveled across the globe, to some of the biggest and best international sporting events to gain knowledge in...

Riccardo Nero, the Equipment Operations Manager Toronto FC Academy at MLSE (Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment Partnership) is one of the hardest workers in the sport industry. That is what Stéphane Côté, Stadium Operations Coordinator for the Toronto Blue Jays said when justifying Riccardo as his choice for who we...

Kris Hagerman is the Director of Football Operations for the Canadian Football League's (CFL) Edmonton Eskimo Football Club. We've known Kris for over a decade and have been following his journey since he was doing his Sport Management undergrad. Kris Hagerman started his journey with the Edmonton Eskimos in 2012....

NFL TV viewership in Canada was up 19% last regular season! A lot of that has to do with the work of the marketing department at NFL Canada. One individuals stands out to us. That is Rachel Farrell, who started working on the marketing and events side of NFL Canada....

In the coming days, you're likely to wonder who is Steph Curry's father? That's because Steph Curry's father Dell has a deep history with the Toronto Raptors. The 2018-19 NBA Finals will be contested between the Golden State Warriors and the Toronto Raptors. For Golden State and their star, Steph...

Most people know what mascots are. They’re people who dress up in a costume, usually an animal, and dance around at sport events to cheer up home crowds. A mascot is much more than that, though. Mascots give sports teams and their fans a common identifier and a unique symbol....

We've known Scott Hudson for several years now. He's a quiet and humble, yet personable and smart sport professional. We've followed Scott from his time in college studying sport to the industry where we find him today. From one NEW to the next. He started New Balance a couple of...

Stéphane Côté is the Stadium Operations Coordinator for the Toronto Blue Jays. We've known Stéphane Côté for three years and we have tracked his journey from the Toronto FC to his current role with the Toronto Blue Jays. Below Stéphane tells us what it is like to work for Canada's...

With all this talk by the Ontario government to maximize boxing and mixed martial arts, I can't help but look at how sport and society mesh. I also could not ignore concepts learned in a course I took called Sport Law when I saw this. Adding injury to insult (no...

Nicole Artuso is the Tennis Professionals Association (TPA) and Professional Events at Tennis Canada. So what this means is that she assists with all TPA-related responsibilities as well as all professional events put on by Tennis Canada. We’ve known Nicole Artuso for two years so we’ve seen some of the...

With our base in Canada, we see Toronto pro athletes a lot: on TV, online and on the streets. We've noticed some of the Toronto Raptors key players including Pascal Siakam, Kyle Lowry, Norm Powell, and Fred Van Vleet with their own logos. We've also seen the head coach, Nick...

Sport fans are addicted to sports. There is little else in the world that influences people to wear a group’s or organization’s logo on their clothing or to tattoo it to their skin like a sports team does. It is that influence on society that sports journalist Morgan Campbell attempts...

If you were to take a survey of 100 people and ask them how they came to be fans of their favourite sports teams, a vast majority of them would probably tell you that their favourite sports team was inherited or passed down from their parents. In other words, many...

Whether you want to be a plumber, a hair dresser, a social worker, or a sports manager, it’s important to understand the basics of financial management. In my personal opinion, this is something that should be mandatory in high school. It’s useful, practical knowledge that everyone can benefit from in...

This is a very broad ranging question for professional athletes who have agreed to contracts. In some cases, the rules are clear as to what the athlete has control over and what the team does. However, in other cases, you have to look deeper into the contracts, or the collective...

No, we're not talking about the Markham Centennial Centre or the Markham PanAm Centre in Markham, Ontario, Canada. We're talking about what was supposed to be a huge venue for the glitziest events, sport and What ever happened to the 20,000 Seat, NHL-ready multi-sport (and entertainment) arena in Downtown Markham?...

The game of golf is one of the oldest sports in the world. In fact, the modern game of golf originated in 15th century Scotland. Historians say that the first 18-hole round was created in 1764 at the Old Course at St. Andrews. It’s always been driven by a clear...

Many professional sport athletes are using digital media to connect with their fans in a way that they never did before. This article explores the trend in which professional sport athletes are creating their digital media, such as podcasts, video blogs and more to connect with their fans. With the...

It’s going to be a day full of expectations in Toronto, Canada today as four major professional sports teams will all begin action starting at 3 pm Eastern Daylight Time on Saturday. The Toronto Blue Jays will start things off with some regular season action at home against the Tampa...

For Toronto Raptors fans, Eric Smith is a familiar, neutralizing and harmonious voice. For decades, he has covered “Canada’s team” for Rogers Media Incorporated. From 2005-2014, Smith served as the colour commentator on radio and then was propelled into the role of play-by-play. Eric Smith posing with the Larry O'Brien...

Background Sport has been used as a politic weapon for decades. How do you rouse a nation to back a sport, team, or athlete? You simply bring politics into the sporting equation. From Adolf Hitler and the Olympics to chess during the Cold War, politicians and sports have long gone...

It was the late summer of 2015. Ontario had just hosted a major multinational sport event. Yes indeed, the Para Am Games took over the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) from July 10 to 26, 2015. Toronto needed a break from the whirlwind of events. Some citizens spent their past 16+...

Music in sport at all levels is common. Whether it’s pre, post or during the game; music is omnipresent. Likewise, music plays a large role in our daily activities. We listen to music in the car. It’s played on the bus and in elevators. Also, it simmers in the background...

Taylor Dean started her education with a desire to one day work for Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment (MLSE). Dean’s interest in working for the Toronto Maple Leafs drove her into studies as she aimed to make it in the sport of hockey. While many young Ontario-natives dream of playing...

Post-game celebrations in sport. What would sport be without them? Like most major sports, celebrating a win is something normally done in traditional fashion. Players will congratulate each other and try not to go out of their way to show their opponent up. In hockey, players typically go so far...

Managing a crisis in sport is important. Car trouble on your way to class is a crisis. It's unpredictable. But you may be judged for just showing up late. Managing this crisis is important. You must manage your reputation. At least send an e-mail to your professor. Devising a plan...

Athletes covering their faces. We’ve all seen it. The camera catches an athlete on the bench or during play. They are seen covering their face with a towel, their shirt or even with their hand while speaking. They do this when speaking to another player or coach. This seems like...

Student vs. Sport Spectator Ever been to a class that bored you and made you wonder, "How can I stay in this for a semester? You go to Google for a how-to on surviving a boring class. Perhaps you take to RateMyProfessors.com hoping others share similar experiences. Photo courtesy of...

Anticipating the return of John Tavares to the Island as a Toronto Maple Leaf, Channel 12 News, Long Island television station, had a mission. Their mission: to create a video portraying the feelings of six Islander fans willing to share their feelings. So looking into the camera, participants were asked...

Courtesy of the Miami-Dade Police Department Miami, Miami, Miami We looked for a place eat when we landed in Miami. We found the Fontainebleau Miami Beach Hotel. This hotel saved us from our hunger, just like the nearby Timmies does when you are staving in class. Fast forward to today...