Thirty-four years ago Mariah Burton Nelson, a former Stanford basketball player, wrote a book called Are We Winning Yet? How Women are Changing Sports and Sports are Changing Women. My response to her question was included in a column I wrote for the Oakland Tribune called “A Victory on Ice.” Like Nelson, I explored the ongoing inequities in women’s sports focusing on the stereotypes...
Walk into the Intuit Dome and the first thing you notice is what you don’t notice. No lines. No waiting. Concessions bill you automatically, so you can grab nachos and head straight to your seat. The friction of old stadiums disappears before the game even begins.
Then you look up. A sea of Clippers fans fills The Wall, a vertical section of 4,700 people roaring in unison. Above it...
Few things bring the world together in real time like sports. But events like the Super Bowl, the Olympic and Paralympic Games, and the FIFA World Cup are also high-stakes marketing battlegrounds where brands compete for relevance and trust. Sponsors investing at this level face an unforgiving playing field: record rights fees, a fragmented media landscape, fan expectations for in-person...
In just a few years, sports fandom will be almost unrecognizable. Fans won’t just watch — they’ll direct the action, remix the highlights and share their own angles in real time. The Olympics will unfold in living rooms, on city streets and in augmented reality headsets, while the ‘main event’ plays out as much on social feeds as it does in the stadium.
For PR pros, this isn’t a...
LeBron is my GOAT. Most points in NBA history. Four rings across three franchises. A one-man game plan who guarded all five positions and dragged the 2007 Cavaliers to the Finals with a supporting cast that wouldn’t start for most high school varsities.
I’m done defending it. Done with the circular arguments about Jordan's “killer instinct” or his 6-0 Finals record, as if losing in the...
The business of sports and athlete endorsement deals is now more intertwined than ever before. Despite major increases in professional sports franchise valuations, collegiate sports branding rights, and players’ earnings, athletes remain the most cost-effective brand spokespeople when compared to contemporaries in film, TV and music. The numbers back this up: Consumers are 66% more likely to...
The media industry is at an inflection point. Across both legacy and digital platforms, economic pressure has led to layoffs, shrinking budgets, and a wide- spread retreat from original reporting.But one sector is bucking this trend: coverage of women’s sports.
Once relegated to the sidelines, women's sports are now commanding record-breaking audiences, with NWSL viewership growing...
The revolution wasn’t supposed to sound like this — two World Cup champions giggling over coffee, their mics catching the clink of ceramic mugs and the occasional, unscripted confession. Yet here are Christen Press and Tobin Heath, cross-legged on what looks like a living-room couch, dismantling the sports-media industrial complex one candid conversation at a time. Their weapon of choice? A...