Aileen McManamon of 5T Sports Group talks about sensible, profitable and common-sense approaches to fan economics.
“As the sports industry became more professional, they lost touch with the common person and we need to find ways to stay better connected, more accessible.”
On this episode of Fired Up, Aileen McManamon, Founder & Managing Partner of 5T Sports Group provides approaches to sensible and profitable sustainability and common-sense approaches to economics for the fan.
McManamon started 5T Sports Group in 2008 exactly when the Olympics were hosted by Vancouver – her hometown. She gets fired up by sports – many sports. She also gets fired up by what the future holds. Always looking forward.
Chris McAdoo:
Hey y’all. Welcome to Fired Up: A Podcast from Ignite Fan Insights that is powered by NASCAR. There’s a lot of great stuff that we’ve learned this week and a lot of great people that we have talked to, including Aileen McManamon who is the founder and managing partner of 5T Sports Group. I’m going to hand it over to Chris Wise. Chris, you ready to ask the right questions?
Chris Wise:
We’ll start out real easy. Tell us about yourself, your career, what really ignites you, fires you up?
Aileen McManamon:
Oh man, what fires me up? Well, hey, we’re here at the Sports Forum. Sports totally fires me up. I am definitely a multi-sport type of gal.
Yeah, what fires me up? Right now, I think the future always fires me up. That’s been definitely a theme throughout my career. I’ve always been that person in a role who’s looking forward in marketing going, “What’s next? What’s the next thing?” I’ve worked in technology for a number of years. What’s happening there? What are the new tools? How are people going to interact with this?
When I founded 5T, I came from a background in the car industry. I worked in sports marketing for Fiat and Alfa Romeo in Europe for a number of years. Then I went on to the technology industry just as they were inventing the Internet. That’ll give you an idea of how old I am.
I did one of those wake up one day, “You’re going to work like a dog at whatever you do,” because I really love working, “What do you want to do?” I thought, “I got to get back to sports.” I thought, “What is the future of this industry? What does it need to survive? What does it need to keep going? What is it going to look like in the 21st century?”
I came on to two things, actually three. Technology, they weren’t using enough of it. They were going to need to tighten their belts and waste less, be more sustainable, because that was certainly becoming an issue. The third was community. As the industry had become more professional, they were losing touch with every man. The prices were going up, the venues were getting sexier, and the TV rights deals were getting bigger. Somewhere, Joe fan, Jill fan was getting lost in all that. I felt that’s where I wanted to make a difference. That’s how I founded the company.
Chris Wise:
Tell us the progression then of the company. What’s it meaning? What did it mean? What does it mean today? Where’s it going? How’s it just evolving?
Aileen McManamon:
Yeah, that’s a great question, because I founded the company in 2008. If you remember your financial timeline, that was not a great time to start a company.
Fortunately, I was starting it in Vancouver, Canada, right as the Olympics were coming on, so I had some very early good business with that. But what I was doing initially was really just sponsorship brokering and traditional sports marketing. I felt like I wasn’t pushing the envelope enough.
The beauty of that financial crisis was that, all of a sudden, every team needed to figure out how to tighten their belts. They could not raise prices. They could not put more bums in seats. They certainly had to ratchet down those costs and find a way. That was great, because they were starting to go, “Okay, we do have to find our way back to Joe and Jill fan.”
But I saw that as a really great opportunity to introduce them to a lot of technologies that they needed to be deploying, like mobile tickets, mobile payments. Some things were just too a little too far ahead for them. But also stadium savings technologies. LED lighting, which was fairly new to the scene then, a little bit of a Wild West out there in terms of how many producers were out there. People were not sure about doing that. Water savings.
That’s where we started to go, going, “Okay, things are going to get tough.” What do we all do when things get tough at home, budget-wise? Start putting on a sweater, turning down the thermostat.
Chris McAdoo:
Ratchet it down, yeah.
Aileen McManamon:
I’m like, “That’s where we need to go.”
Chris Wise:
A lot of what I think you bring to the table is the philosophy behind the triple bottom line, which allows both for that tightening of the belt, but it also allows for very specific growth opportunities if you look at it the right way. Can you talk a little bit about what that, quote unquote, that triple bottom line means?
Aileen McManamon:
The triple bottom line, people talk about it a couple different ways. The simplest way is they say, “People, planet and profits.” If you’re looking after the wellbeing of people … Let’s take it in the context of a sports team.
As you heard Arthur Blank speak about yesterday, everything has to start with their culture, with their employees. We all know if you’re taking care of your employees, your employees are then taking care of your customers. So it’s important that a company isn’t so fixated on just the financial numbers that they’re losing sight of that longer term bigger picture, that they’re looking at that social wellbeing. That’s the people component.
On the planet side, and really that also comes down to economics, that’s just not being wasteful. That’s going, “You know what? Do we need to keep the tap running here?” As you heard Scott Jenkins from Mercedes-Benz Stadium mention, “Why are we flushing a toilet with a gallon of water when a pint will do?” Or sometimes it’s waterless, in the case of some urinals. So planet … That’s just being really fricking practical in the way our grandparents were, right?
Being responsible and being a bit mindful of how you’re using things.
Then of course the profit side, that’s important. You can’t do either of those first two things if you don’t have a solid business model, if you aren’t looking at the economics.
I think that’s where Mr. Blank was very wise as well. He’s like, “You know what? The economics of me selling you a hot dog are, I buy a hot dog for probably 25 cents, and I sell it to you for $2. I’m good. You’re good. I don’t need to sell it to you for seven or $8.” It’s respectable economics. It’s longer term thinking.
Chris Wise:
What’s a day look like for you? As you’re unpacking this, and you’re out talking with people, A, how are you getting to talk to people? To be crass, how does that monetize for you?
Aileen McManamon:
That’s a great question to ask me here, because the National Sports Forum is definitely a place … I’m very fortunate. They’ve invited me back to speak a few times and give these examples. I’ve also done that at Baseball Winter Meetings and several other places.
What’s a day look like for me? I might get very unprompted phone call from either an NFL team or a league office saying, “Hey, Aileen. We’re trying to figure out,” X. “Who do you know who’s figured that out?” Or, “What do you think about that?” I really can’t, these days, put my finger on what a typical day looks like, because it’s like there’s some kind of climate emergency going on.
The first six years of my business were not easy. They were lean. Now, they are in many businesses, but again, being a futurist, I’m always a little ahead of the market on that. But now it’s very busy. People are looking for ways to solve for these things. They realize they’re important.
Their people culture is very important. We’re getting into a dearth of talent, workforce talent. So that’s very critical for all businesses. They also see there’s a very discerning workforce that are like, “Well, I want to work for a company that has good values, that has purpose, that has meaning.” They need to compete for that talent.
The younger audience, and frankly, even older folks want to work for a company that has good values and has good purpose. Nobody’s really immune to that. That’s, I think, a basic human thing.
But a typical day might be that unprompted phone call. We’re also working very deeply now on fan engagement campaigns. That is really something special. You heard it from Budweiser, how seriously they’re taking sustainability. They have a very aggressive plan that they announced just a little over a year ago. Yet, here they are saying, “Bring us ideas that help us get that message out.”
That is going to be really a mantra you’re going to hear from every consumer brand company. You’ll hear it from B2B companies. If you’re familiar with BlackRock and Larry Fink writing a letter to say, “If your company isn’t looking at this, then we’re not investing in you.”
You’re going to hear it from new companies and old dog companies like utility companies, boring, old utility companies. Water and energy, especially. They need to get a lot of messaging out, and they need to be way more effective at it.
Sports is a great place to do that. Everybody loves sports. Sports are apolitical and they’re agnostic. They cross genders. They cross age barriers.
Chris Wise:
Exactly. But I think it’s such a cool wave to put that into everyone’s language. As a foundational element of diversity of viewpoints, diversity of fan base, and the things that people are looking for are different than the things they were looking for five years ago, 10 years ago.
Over the last decade or so, what are some of the changes that you have seen in that fan engagement? How are some of the ways that you feel you have been able to assist, and or people have been able to do the right things to move in the right way?
Aileen McManamon:
Well, just gender issue. I’m surprised this didn’t come up in some of the conversations, but the NFL’s female fan base has grown 17% or so, the last time I checked that stat. It’s a little older. Where they’re having these declining attendance in the venues, they are actually having a rise in the female audience watching the product.
That doesn’t surprise me and it does surprise me a little bit. Maybe because I come from a pretty old school football market in Cleveland, so there’s plenty of women who can be calling the plays on the field there.
Again, on that front, I think they were wise to recognize it. They got away from the merchandising tactic, the pink it and shrink it. The reason we buy jerseys is because we want to feel that affinity with the teams. That’s why we’re logoing ourselves up. If I’m a fan of my team … None of my teams have pink as a color. The last time I checked, there really aren’t any teams that have pink as their primary color, unless maybe T-Mobile is their kit sponsor and they’re in soccer. So I was glad to see that come away from it, and I think that their merchandise sales have gone through the roof since they’ve done that.
That’s been an interesting development on that side of sports, tuning into our audience is different. I think you’re seeing a lot more Hispanic marketing focused outside of the traditional Hispanic market. Places like Chicago or Houston have always done a fair bit of that. LA of course. Now you’re seeing it in really every market. They’re being responsive to that.
Chris Wise:
What you’re talking about there, going beyond the pink it and shrink it … Which is a hilarious way to say that, by the way. But responding to a new audience in a new way, not just an afterthought. Learning to pay attention to those signs.
As you look to the future. What’s next? How are people going to win? How are people going to do the right things coming up in the next year or two?
Aileen McManamon:
The right things. One of the biggest right things that almost every team could do right now is really start encouraging people to not drive to the game. That will have a massive impact. One of the biggest … If we’re talking about climate, which is a little bit of my favorite piece … I like the people piece, but I like the planet piece quite a bit.
Just by taking public transit, riding a bike, if that’s possible in season … You’re not going to ride a bike to a Steelers game in December. But roughly 70% of the carbon emissions associated with sports are the fan travel. One, that’s what I want to see happen, but I do think we’ll see it happen. There’s a lot of great reasons for it to happen.
I think you’re going to get a nicer fan experience when they get that piece pulled together. They’re doing a much better job of figuring out the ingress and the egress for the ride share. We’re seeing a lot more bike valets pop up. With the MLS, in a summertime product, that’s great.
You’re seeing most every venue, any new venue that’s being built, or even if it’s being renovated, it’s being put in the downtown core. That would be a great future development. I think we’ll see more of that, because they’re also trying to build these entertainment districts everywhere. There’s quite a few that are successful.
That means people are going to be around longer. They’re probably going to be imbibing a little bit more. I think we’re going to see more congestion as well, so people are going to find that that door to door experience is really going to become unpleasant.
You’ve heard multiple times, everyone’s struggling with attendance numbers. That’s why I also think the teams will start to really solve for it. Not because it’s a planet thing, but because it’s a bottom line economic thing. People aren’t going to come if it’s a big hassle. So I think they’ll want to solve for it.
Chris Wise:
Where do you get pushback and how do you … When you approach people or talk to people, what’s the pushback point, if any? Then how do you deal with it?
Aileen McManamon:
Generally earlier on, in the time of 5T, and as you’ll experience from your own daily life, when you’re talking to people about climate change, they’re like, “Don’t believe in it.”
We’ve passed that point. Most polls will show you that upwards of 80% of people, even though they might not know what climate change is, they have concerns. They see the extreme weather events. They see things are not business as usual, and obviously, not business as usual when you have millions of kids in the streets every Friday. That’s changed quite a bit.
I really don’t see a lot of pushback now. I think what I see is some hesitation. People are trying to wrap their head around, “How do I talk about this? What can I do about it?” It’s trying to get your head wrapped around, “Well, that’s a huge problem that affects the entire planet. I’m one person. What can I do?” Or, “I’m one team. What can I do?”
I think that the challenge over the next couple of years will be breaking that down for people into bite size pieces, and also helping people understand that there’s a lot of things you need to do to solve. Governments need to do things, but businesses need to do things, and individuals need to do things.
But breaking it down for people so that it’s at a human scale. One of the things that I love about what I’m doing right now is, in sports, we can show them, at a human scale, we can show them collective action. We can say, “You just made a stadium’s worth of change today by doing whatever we asked you to do.”
Chris Wise:
That’s a great lead to my next question was then how do you take the reality of the change that’s necessary to the economic impact of the change so they go, “Aha,” to help connect that dot?
Aileen McManamon:
I was just having an interesting conversation with someone last night. I’m very big about that, make it personal. I’m not coming up with a great example for you right now, but the conversation we were having last night was about connecting certain things to human health factors.
When you’re saying, again, coming back to the transportation issue, by reducing those urban emissions, you can point to actual numbers of what the air pollution reduction is, and that number is translatable to very real human health numbers that are known, asthma incidents, other people with breathing difficulties or with other health situations. You can tie that to things like work absenteeism, healthcare costs.
That’s a little bit more abstract. I like to try to pull things right down to the individual wherever we can and say, “This is how it’s going to make a difference for you.”
Chris Wise:
What’s your future look like?
Aileen McManamon:
That’s like asking a doctor to heal himself or a cobbler to make himself some shoes. I love the serendipity of what my future is. Did you ask me, “Did I know I was going to be on a podcast?” No. What does my future look like? I think that I won’t be a specialist in the future. What I’m doing will be really mainstream and pretty much standard operating procedure.
We’re already seeing that, as I showed in my session. This isn’t just a Patagonia and a Ben & Jerry’s and all those do good company thing anymore. This is the Microsofts, the Toyotas, the Heinekens, the AB InBevs, the Coca-Colas, the wireless carriers. This is part of everybody’s mission going forward. But they’re all still early days and trying to find those communications tools. But that’s the future for me, Chris. I won’t be necessary.
Chris Wise:
Is that a good thing?
Aileen McManamon:
I think we all have our natural arc.
Chris Wise:
I agree.
Aileen McManamon:
Hopefully, my natural arc takes me to a ski slope that I hope will still exist in the future, or a beach. Then I pass the torch and the baton to the next generation.
Chris Wise:
Well, talk about that passing of the torch. What are the steps that you take to bring that next generation of folks up?
Aileen McManamon:
I love that question.
Chris McAdoo:
That’s why we ask them.
Aileen McManamon:
You’re just brilliant. For the past four years, and that again started right here at the NSF, because they have the Case Cup Competition and they bring in all of these university students, a number of the students and the professors came to the first talk that I gave it at the NSF, and immediately reached out and said, “Will you come guest lecture in our sports management program so that we can understand how sustainability fits into sports management in general?”
Aileen McManamon:
I’ve been doing that for the last four years now. I think I’m up to 12 programs that I guest lecture. My business is international. I’m headed to the UK next month, where I’ll be speaking, but I’m also doing some work with the Premier League right now and a few of the Premier League teams. But immediately I reached out and said, “All right, what universities are doing sports management?” So we’ll reach out to our first UK university.
But that’s how I’m passing the baton is making sure that that guest lecture, again, won’t be a specialty, it will eventually be woven right through the program. So whatever you’re talking about, if you’re talking about ticketing, or the financial part of the game, or the player management, you’re thinking about people, planet, profits, not just profits.
Chris Wise:
The fabric of our lives, right?
Chris McAdoo:
There you go.
Chris Wise:
Aileen, thank you so much for joining us. Where can people learn more about 5T and the things that you’re out there doing?
Aileen McManamon:
Yep, very simply at 5, T as in Tom. 5Tsports.com.
Chris McAdoo:
Okay, awesome. I would encourage everybody out there, do your own research, understand what that triple bottom line really means. People, planet, profits. They can exist together in a very sustainable way, tongue in cheek or otherwise, but eventually they have to if we’re all going to keep doing this. Then if that’s something that you value, put steps in place to make sure that you’re bringing that next generation up as well, like Aileen has done. Thank you so much for joining us.
Aileen McManamon:
Thank you so much.
Chris McAdoo:
This has been Fired Up Live from the National Sports Forum.
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Chris McAdoo:
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Chris McAdoo:
Fired up is hosted by Chris Wise and myself, Chris McAdoo. Thanks again for listening. Tune in next time. As always, y’all stay fired up.
Chris Wise is General Manager of Designsensory Intelligence and Ignite Fan Insights. Brad Carpenter is the producer and Influencer Specialist at Designsensory.
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