Monday, November 15, 2010

New York (Giants) Trek

I took a trip to NY this weekend for a sports trek organized by the Entertainment, Media and Sports (EMS) Club. We went to see the NY Giants, the NFL and the NBA.

A few of the highlights of each:

New York Football Giants- Easily the best part of the trip (full disclosure: I'm a Giants fan). We got a full behind-the-scenes look of the new Meadowlands Stadium, hosted by Mike Stevens, an SVP and Chief Marketing Officer of the Giants, and Mary Musca, Project Executive for the new stadium. They first gave us a comprehensive - and surprisingly honest - overview about the business of sports and the thought process behind building the new stadium. I had figured that building a $1.6 billion stadium was a complex project, but there are a lot of factors that needed to be managed that I hadn't really thought about: the partnership with the Jets, who co-own the stadium, the relationship with existing season ticket holders, who weren't thrilled about the move, the new season ticket structure, advertisers, etc.

After that, we went on a tour of the stadium and got to see all of the different options customers have to enjoy the game experience. The evolution of sports stadiums over the past 20 years in incredible- it used to be about just watching the game, but given how much the at-home experience has improved, stadiums now have to be now full blown entertainment venues in order to continue to get people off their couches. There are HD video screens everywhere, including 4 massive displays inside the "bowl" (which collectively have greater surface area than the huge screens in the new Cowboys stadium... take that Jerry Jones), bars, restaurants and even some super high-end suites and lounges for the real ballers. In addition to the amenities, we also saw how applications of more traditional operations strategy went into designing the stadium - the corridors are almost twice as wide as the old stadium, there are 40% more bathrooms, and how the parking lot is designed to get people in and out faster.


on the field at the new Meadowlands Stadium

The coolest part, though, was when we got to walk from the locker room on to the field - the same route the Giants take before every home game.

in the end zone

NFL- We met with three people - one works on sponsorship and advertising, one on special events (i.e., the Super Bowl) and one who works with officiating. It was cool to hear about their different roles and perspectives on what it's like to work in the NFL. It seems like the NFL is fairly lean organization, and so people get a lot of responsibility pretty early on in their careers if they are capable of handling it. I also thought it was interesting how different their backgrounds were. I had the impression that since so many people would presumably love to work for the NFL, it must be that everyone who works there always wanted to be there, but that wasn't true at all.

NBA- Again, we met with three people, all pretty recent MBA grads. They work in a variety of roles at the NBA, such as developing the league's expansion strategy internationally to helping teams with business analytics. The business analytics discussion was the most interesting to me. Teams are increasingly using analytical tools to manage their stadium operations, but it's still pretty new and under-used throughout the league.

For me, the trip was more an excuse to go back to New York and visit the Giants than for recruiting reasons. The leagues are also dealing with some complicated collective bargaining negotiations right now, so it's tough to say how much they'll be hiring in the near-term, but it was cool to hear about the different types of jobs that are out there.