Leaders in Sports and Media Talk Fan Engagement, Capturing a Gen Z Audience and Streaming Docuseries at Variety and Sportico Sports and Entertainment Summit

In a marketplace dominated by social media, streaming and celebrities, sports and entertainment have never been more aligned. Streamers across the board are clamoring for live sports to pair with their original content, and athletes of all disciplines and genders can rocket to international fame with a single post.

To examine the growing nexus of sports, media and entertainment, Variety & Sportico held the Sports & Entertainment Summit, presented by City National Bank, on July 12 at the Beverly Hilton. The summit brought together agents, executives, and athletes to discuss fan engagement, the rise of women’s sports, the state of the art in presenting live games, and much more.

Watch highlights from the summit below.

Keynote Conversation with Jay Williams

Jay Williams, Chairman and Co-Founder, Improbable Media and ESPN Analyst

In January, ESPN anchor Jay Williams and NBA Champion Giannis Antetokounmpo founded Improbable Media with the mission to reinvent storytelling in the world of sports. Rather than focus on the circumstances around athletes, Williams and Antetokounmpo want to uplift stories about the athletes themselves.

Williams sat down with SVP and head of sports and family office banking at City National Bank Todd Burach to discuss how Improbable Media is changing the narrative around athletes.

In February, Improbable Media released one of their first major projects with Amazon, “Giannis: The Marvelous Journey,” a documentary around Antetokounmpo’s journey to the NBA. Features like “The Marvelous Journey” are only the beginning for Williams, and he hopes to extend more opportunities to tell their stories to athletes across the globe.

“I can only imagine [Giannis’] mom and dad being from Nigeria, and being born and raised in Greece as an illegal immigrant and growing up that way for 16-17 years. Then, all of a sudden, becoming really good a basketball, and the next day, he and his family, who have been hiding for so long, take a picture with the Prime Minister of Greece. And he’s the face of Greece basketball,” Williams said. “He just qualified for the Olympics the other day. He’s going to be the flag bearer for Greece…so we are excited for him and expanding that to other athletes is one of our goals. “

Breakthrough Sports Storytelling Across Platforms

Therese Andrews, Head of Production, Omaha Productions
Angela Ellis, VP of Original Content & Entertainment, NFL Media
Marc Gilbar, President of Imagine Brands, Imagine Entertainment
Dave Easton, Head of Sports, Comedy, Topical and Alternative Programming, Wondery
Angel McCoughtry, WNBA star and 2-time Olympic Gold Medalist
Jim Rome, Sports Commentator & Host, “The Jim Rome Show”
Michelle Beadle (Moderator), Host of “Beadle & Decker” on SiriusXM’s Mad Dog Sports Radio channel

Engaging stories are the center of success for any media or entertainment company, whether in film or sports.  

Head of production at Omaha Productions Therese Andrews, VP of original content and entertainment at NFL Media Angela Ellis, host of “The Jim Rome Show” Jim Rome, head of sports, comedy, topical and alternative programming at Wondery Dave Easton, WNBA athlete Angel McCoughtry and president of Imagine Brands at Imagine Entertainment Marc Gilbar sat down with host of “Beadle & Decker” on SiriusXM’s Mad Dog Sports Radio channel Michelle Beadle to discuss the intersection of storytelling and sports.

For Rome, the biggest challenge for “The Jim Rome Show” is to find content that appeals to a global market. The answer to this problem is to find universal voices and stories that can connect to all audiences regardless of where they come from.

“How do you appeal to everyone with one single show? The answer was to find transcendent figures, find transcendent stories, and find things that are entertaining and smart,” Rome said. “What do I want to talk about? I want to find a way to entertain as many people as possible while, at the same time, creating value for the people I work for and our brand partners.”

Conversation with John Dahl & Ryan Blaney

John Dahl, SVP Content, NASCAR
Ryan Blaney, 2023 NASCAR Cup Series Champion, Driver of the No. 12 Ford for Team Penske

Sports and documentaries have been tightly intertwined for decades. The film medium has been used to cover stories of underdogs and superstars in flicks like “Hoop Dreams,” “Icarus” and “Free Solo.” In recent years, Netflix has transformed the genre for the age of streaming, creating captivating series from an age-old formula with shows like “F1: Drive to Survive” and “Cheer.”

As part of Variety and Sportico’s Sports and Entertainment Summit, John Dahl, SVP of content at NASCAR and Ryan Blaney, driver of the No.12 Ford for Team Penske and 2023 NASCAR Cup Series Champion, sat down with Sportico deputy editor Eben Novy-Williams to discuss the success of the Netflix docuseries, “NASCAR: Full Speed.”

The five-episode docuseries chronicles the seasons of NASCAR’s 15 teams and their pursuit of the Cup Series Championship. Dahl, an 11-time Emmy winner and executive producer of “The Last Dance,” says one of the biggest successes of “Full Speed” was its ability to “cut through” and reach viewers beyond NASCAR’s dedicated fan base.

“It reaches outside the normal NASCAR world, where the fanbase is so strong and so dedicated to their favorite drivers,” Dahl said. “Netflix helps you reach a new audience. That’s why NASCAR brought me aboard, to help grow the sport through storytelling and content to reach new audiences that I believe we can reach.”

Scoring All-Important Gen Z Sports Fans

Heidi Browning Pearson, SVP and Chief Marketing Officer of the NH
Paul Heyman, WWE Hall of Famer
Anmol Malhotra, Head of Sports and Media Partnerships at Snap Inc.
Camille Maratchi, VP of Unscripted and Documentaries at SpringHill Entertainment
Nick Kelly, VP of Partnerships at Verizon

With the NHL airing games featuring Warner Brothers characters and Nickelodeon streaming a SpongeBob-centric Superbowl broadcast, it is clear that sports marketers and media companies are monitoring the younger generation.

As part of Variety and Sportico’s Sports and Entertainment Summit, SVP and chief marketing officer of the NHL Heidi Browning Pearson, WWE Hall of Famer Paul Heyman, head of sports and media partnerships at Snap Inc. Anmol Malhotra, VP of unscripted and documentaries at SpringHill Entertainment Camille Maratchi and VP of partnerships at Verizon Nick Kelly sat down with Sportico deputy editor Eben Novy-Williams to discuss how they are reaching an emerging Gen Z audience.

The NHL youth advisory board, aka the NHL Power Players, was inspired by an 11-year-old girl who wrote a letter to Pearson promising she could help “market to the next generation” of fans. After inviting her into the office and listening to her thoughts, Pearson realized the NHL needed to start reaching young fans “in the right spaces and places.”
 
“[NHL Power Players] is a group of 25 13 to 17-year-olds. We refresh every season and we have around 1,500 applications a season,” Pearson said. “We meet with them twice a month and we talk about everything. It’s not just hockey, it’s about sports, media, content, culture, music and social justice. What I learned is that all the research studies we have… are fantastic, but the nuance really comes from meeting with these kids.”  

Keynote Conversation

Paige Bueckers, UConn Huskies
Lindsay Kagawa Colas, EVP, Talent + The Collective

Paige Bueckers has skyrocketed to the limelight in the past few years, becoming one of the biggest stars of the UConn Huskies. As for her success, she says having a strong team behind her has helped motivate her.

“We all celebrate each other’s successes as our own,” Bueckers said in a keynote conversation with Variety co-editor-in-chief Cynthia Littleton. “And so with whatever I get, I love to share with my teammates.”

Lindsay Kagawa Colas, who reps Bueckers, said the athlete was initially hesitant to call her brand and NIL a business. Kagawa Colas said the college basketball player has always had values of purpose and impact when it comes to profiting off her name, image and likeness.

“This is a person who shows up in this way every single day,” Kagawa Colas said. “She sets the table. We’re the ones who elevate and connect…but it’s all genuine. It’s real, and that’s a real privilege to cultivate.”

Bueckers said she takes pride in being a role model for young athletes, pointing to other WNBA athletes who inspired her as a kid. She said her journey started when she was five years old and picked up basketball but calls it a “testament” to everyone who came before her.

“I wouldn’t be who I was without my favorite Minnesota Lynx team growing up, I wouldn’t have had shoes that I wanted to be in, I wouldn’t have the WNBA to aspire to be in and I wouldn’t have had UConn, my dream school that I wanted to go to,” Bueckers said. “For everybody that played before me and paved the way I give so much credit to them because I wouldn’t be who I am without them.”

Conversation with the Rams 2023 Rookie Class: Puka Nacua, Kobie Turner and Steve Avila

Los Angeles Rams defensive tackle Kobie Turner, wide receiver Puka Nacua, and offensive lineman Steve Avila sat down with Sportico Deputy Editor Eben Novy-Williams to discuss their rookie year as a part of one of the youngest rosters in the NFL.

Turner, who was drafted in the third round of the 2023 NFL draft, said he thought it would be more difficult to connect with people on the team once he joined.

“[Puka and Steve] have been people with whom I can share my life, and we’re tighter off the field than even on it,” Turner said. “And so there has been a lot of challenges, for sure. But it’s been so many blessings of just being able to find guys who do things the right way on and off the field and people you can share your life with.”

Nacua said going out to restaurants or places in L.A. and being recognized has brought him joy, especially being able to talk to fans on the street.

“It happened obviously to all of us in college, but to have it multiplied by 1000 it’s definitely different,” Nacua said. “But, it’s a blessing because everyone just has such a big smile on their face that makes me feel like ‘Oh, they know me and I know them.’ Definitely having a joyful conversation is what I enjoy.”

The Future of Watching Live Sports

Craig Barry, Exec VP and Chief Content Officer, TNT Sports
Stacey Rosenson, Head of U.S. Sports Marketing, Prime Video
Burke Magnus, President, Content, ESPN
Lori Conkling, Global Head of TV, Film and Sports Partnerships, YouTube
Shannon Willett, CMO, Peacock
David Eilenberg, Head of Content, Roku Media

In a lively conversation, top sports platform programming and marketing executives discussed the state of the art in presenting live game coverage. The conversation quickly evolved into a discussion of balancing the art of appealing to “the avids” – the rabid fans that never miss a game – and “the casuals.” As Burke Magnus, ESPN’s president of content, explained, the casuals are where the action is at for leagues and their TV partners.

Causal is how you win,” Magnus told the crowd.  “The avids are going to be there. It’s obviously a balance in your presentation in terms of how you appeal to both of those groups. But the business runs on the casual fan – that’s all the upside, right?”

Magnus and others pointed to the momentum in women’s sports that has benefitted established leagues, none more so than the WNBA.

“What’s happening in the WNBA, where we have new superstars coming into the league, and we’ve experienced their rise in women’s college basketball, it’s sort of a seamless transition,” Magnus said. “Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese were in the Final Four and literally three weeks later, they’re playing in the WNBA. There was almost no gap. And so that was a huge opportunity. And they’ve obviously lifted the audience.”

Shannon Willett, chief marketing officer for NBCUniversal streamer Peacock, detailed the enormous scope and unprecedented volume of content to be pushed out through NBCUniversal’s Summer Olympics telecasts coming later this month from Paris. Every single event during the July 26-Aug. 11 competition will stream live on Peacock, forcing the company to develop sharp and intuitive event navigation tools for sports lovers.

Willett said the goal was to allow fans to carefully curate their viewing options. The NBCUniversal team started by asking the question, “How do we allow people to control their journey? How do you navigate that much content over 17 days?”

One cutting-edge solution that they came up with was an AI Al Michaels – taking a cue from Spotify and its virtual AI announcer available to users of its premium service.

“Al Michaels, the legendary sports announcer, lent his voice to this. We trained some AI models to work with his voice so you can go into Peacock, put in your name, and tell us which sports you’re most interested in and what kind of moments you’re most interested in. Is it the viral moments? Is it a gold medal? Is it the behind-the-scenes stuff? Each morning, you will get a 10-minute recap of what happened the day prior, with Al Michaels narrating it for you. You’ll see those highlights, you’ll be able to click through and watch the full coverage of that [event] if you want to, or skip through to the next thing,” Willetts said.

NBCUniversal is eager to see how viewers respond to the opportunity to have such a granular level of customization for an event the size of the Olympics.

“Technology [has] that way of letting people not just watch their sports but actually engage with it, control it and get into their fandom a little bit more. That’s really exciting for us,” she said.

Women’s Sports Rising Roundtable

Constance Schwartz-Morini, Co-Founder and CEO, SMAC Entertainment
Diana Flores, QB, Women’s Flag Football, Mexico and Sports Analyst
Michelle Haines, VP of Marketing, National Women’s Soccer League
Ashlyn Watkins, NCAA Women’s Champion, South Carolina GamecockShannon Willett, CMO, Peacock
Nastia Liukin, 5-Time Olympic Medalist, Entrepreneur, Motivational Speaker

It’s momentum, not a moment. That was one of the conclusions among panelists who analyzed the breakthrough moments for women’s sports in recent years.

“Storytelling is certainly at the heart of this,” said Michelle Haines, VP of marketing for the National Women’s Soccer League.

“The biggest milestone that we’ve seen immediate impact from is our broadcast deal over the past year. It was a landmark deal — four years, $240 million. But I think what was significant about it was how we approached it…We are collectively working together to help build awareness and that’s significant in terms of how quickly we’re growing. The audience’s there. We need them to understand how they can access it. Previously, we had many fans out there who were very digitally savvy, very nimble and very fluid in how they found our games. So having an opportunity to bring it to this greater platform with our partners – CBS, Amazon Prime, Ion — we are really helping to expand where our audience can find our games and where we can find new audiences.”

The impact of the recent name-image-likeness (NIL) rule changes for college athletes was another hot topic for the panel. Nastia Liukin, a five-time Olympic medalist in gymnastics, explains the tough career choice that she had to make at the age of 12 regarding whether to formally declare herself a professional athlete when she was approached to be in a TV commercial.

“I had to choose to go professional when I was 12 years old. So with the NIL now, like, it’s incredible, because you’re able to have the best of both worlds,” Liukin said. NIL-related opportunities at younger ages are important in sports like gymnastics that don’t have many pro options. In gymnastics, “you used to peak when you are 16,” she said. “I was 18 when I won the Olympics, and I was quote-unquote, over the hill. You don’t even know who you are at that age.”

Ultimate Co-Lab: The Athlete and Fan

Chris Koras, Head of Baseball for Klutch Sports Group
Samantha Tan, Championship Driver and Team Owner of Samantha Tan Racing
Austin Ekeler, Running Back for the Washington Commanders
Ezra Frech, 2024 Paralympian, Co-Founder of Angel City Sports
Chase Griffin, Quarterback for UCLA

Chris Koras, head of baseball for Klutch Sports Group, has been privy to the ins and outs of some of the most lucrative contracts and deals in professional sports. (His REP 1 Baseball company, which merged with Klutch in 2023, negotiated more than $2 billion in contracts for MLB players.) But before Koras was a top sports agent, he was an aspiring athlete — an experience that has helped inform his work in helping sports stars broaden their influence beyond the field of play.

“Being able to define, for you, what success means is probably the most powerful and impactful component of this new wave of athlete success,” Koras said in conversation with a quartet of top-tier athletes — NFL veteran and Washington Commanders running back Austin Ekeler, track and field athlete and Paralympian Ezra Frech, UCLA quarterback and two-time NIL athlete of the year Chase Giffin and champion race car driver and team owner Samantha Tan — who are making an impact outside their sport.

“Traditionally, it was a lot of follow the leader. There was a myopic viewpoint on what you could achieve outside the lines or what you should achieve, and it was based on trends,” Koras explained. Now, I think athletes realize that you can achieve success and find fulfillment and purpose outside the lines in whatever it is you want.”

That’s why Frech’s goals are bigger than winning a gold medal at the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris.

“Every once in a generation or so, you see an athlete who transcends the movement or community in which they began,” he said, noting Michael Phelps (in swimming), Usain Bolt and Michael Johnson (in track and field) and Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan (in basketball) as prime examples. “There hasn’t been that person yet for the Paralympic movement and it’s my dream, it’s my vision to be that person.”

Tan has traveled a similar path as one of the few women in motorsport. When she began racing as a 16-year-old, “only three out of every 1,000 drivers were female,” Tan said. “Very quickly, I learned that I had to become the role model I never had, so it was all about pushing myself to reach my potential. And as I progressed through the sport, I found strength in my female peers that were joining me.”

Over the course of his college career, Griffin has become the athlete voice of the NIL conversation, which now allows student-athletes to profit from the use of their name, image, and likeness.

“Athletes — especially once you get to the collegiate and professional space —know exactly what it’s like to create value for others and brands because of your playing ability,” Griffin said.

“When you recognize the amount of time and discipline that it takes to sharpen your iron and become excellent something, you [realize], credibility in one thing becomes credibility in everything. And as college athletics legitimizes itself, and college athletes and even high school athletes get more experience in fields outside of themselves [via NIL deals], whether they go pro in sports or pro in life, they’re able to take advantage of opportunities.”

Ekeler explained how an athlete’s mentality gives them a unique advantage to be successful in other endeavors.

“There’s a lot of opportunities to practice the skills that it takes to be successful: being able to be adaptable, to be coached, to strain through the wins and the losses. As entrepreneurs, there are ups and downs, and it feels like you’re getting beat up one day and you might have some success another. And in sports, there’s so many opportunities to practice that,” Ekeler said.