Why Advance Sports Now?

Over the course of our careers we all have those moments when we have a boss, co-worker, mentor, etc say something that just sticks with us. It’s something we hear that withstands the test of time, and often still evokes a smile, a cringe or both whenever we’re reminded of it . One of those moments that I’ll never forget came from my boss at the Philadelphia Flyers, nearly 20 years ago and with far different leadership than the team has today. 

It was “raise time” and we were going through the annual process of updating our payroll system with everyone’s salaries for the new fiscal year. So there I was reviewing the “PAF” (Personnel Action Form, for all the real old school HR types out there) for a member of our accounting department - specifically a Flyers Staff Accountant. I checked the form for this person’s current salary, which read $32,000. My eyes then moved over to the other side of the PAF to find what I should be entering into our payroll system for this person’s new salary. There it was, clearly written out … $32,250.

That’s right. A $250 annual raise. Some in the HR field would call it a cost-of-living adjustment (though you don’t have to be an economist to know that a .78% salary increase doesn’t often keep up with inflation). I also knew this person was a pretty high performer, who generally did the job well. So I figured there could very well be a mistake. Maybe it was supposed to be a $2,500 increase and the extra zero being left off was simply a typo.

So I asked my boss if it was, indeed, a mistake. She paused. Actually, this was a full term pregnant pause. The condescending look she gave me as she took off her glasses should’ve been all I needed to see but for some reason I stuck around anyway to hear her response: 

“Peter. We are the Philadelphia Flyers. It is a privilege to work here. We go by the philosophy that if you don’t want to work here for the money we’re paying you, we’ll find 200 people by tomorrow who will.” 

Talk about a recruitment strategy.

Sadly, this epitomizes the belief system many professional sports organizations have had for a long, long time. If you wanted to find a meaningful job in sports, you almost certainly had to start at the bottom. Internships and entry-level positions were often the only doorways you could get your foot into. And even if you were successful - getting your resume in the right hands, making yourself standout over countless other candidates in a long, drawn out interview process and then receiving an offer - chances are, you were underwhelmed by the money you were offered and overwhelmed by the amount of hours you’d putting into this “lifestyle” career. Now that might be ok if you were a rich kid or a longtime season-ticket holder’s nephew, but for the majority of pro sports candidates that weren’t born on third base, you might soon come to realize this wasn’t the glamorous job you signed up for. 

You’ve heard the expression “work smarter, not harder”? Well, back in the early 2000s, the only way to get ahead in a pro sports career was indeed to simply work harder. You were judged by the amount of outbound calls you made, the deals you closed, the number of events you worked and how many happy hours you rubbed elbows with the boss just enough to get him/her to notice you.

Now you can say all of this is pretty common in most sales and marketing centric industries, and you’d probably be right. But the difference is that in sports, the compensation does not reflect the hours worked, the nepotism is not just relegated to the owner’s family, and eventually many talented, hard working people realize at some point that spending 40-50 home games a year on nights, weekends and holidays away from home is simply not conducive to raising a family. Simply put, for most people, their time working in sports has an expiration date. And once they leave, the company will most likely ‘promote from within’ and backfill with someone who is seemingly motivated to get ahead, albeit a few years younger, and the vicious talent cycle will begin all over again.  

And so here we are, all these years later. Sports are still one of the most sought after job industries out there. But now, as the great Bob Dylan once said, Times, They Are A-Changin'. Make no mistake, we are living through a sports revolution, marked not just by inevitable advances in technology, but by analytics driven decision making, private equity investment, increased emphasis on fan engagement and non-traditional media/streaming deals that have all contributed to the demolition of traditional revenue models.

We also have more “sports-adjacent” companies and industries than ever before. Gone are the days when your options for working in sports were limited to working for actual teams. Today, there are plenty of companies that own and operate sports venues, broker sponsorship deals, sell team merchandise, etc that will give you a very comparable experience of what it means to “work in sports”. Not to mention, the eruption of the sports betting world and all of the companies who are still in the early innings of creating value this industry has never seen before. 

And of course, with this shift, the very real and present need to attract and develop the most talented, high quality people it will take to lead this sports revolution, not from a place of privilege, as my boss once said, but rather from a place of humility, efficiency, equitable compensation and good ol’ fashioned smart work. 

This is why we’re starting Advance Sports.