Game Changers: How Sports Shape Seattle’s Future

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: I'm Vivian lapouch, executive director of the

Speaker A: center for Leadership Formation here at the

Speaker B: Albers School of Business and Economics. Welcome to our podcast, the Leadership Playbook,

Speaker A: where we illuminate the stories of impactful leaders from yesterday and today.

Speaker B: We invite you to listen in as we discuss how these individuals are.

Speaker A: Are making a profound difference for their organizations and the world around them.

Speaker C: Hey, good evening, everyone. Go ahead and get started. I'm Dan Turner. I'm the dean of the Albers School of Business and Economics. And I want to thank you for coming this afternoon, spending some time with us today tonight, learning a little bit about sports in Seattle and leadership of sport in Seattle. The, uh, Albert School has, uh, three fundamental beliefs about the world, and I guess they're all encapsulated in the idea that the world is a better world based on a collection of three industries or infrastructures in education, technology, and markets. But we like to have fun, too. We can add a fourth if you talk to my family. I, for example, spend way too much of my time, money, and mental energy on a certain club risking relegation in, uh, North London called Tottenham Hotspur. It's. Yeah, it's not so good, right, right now. Let's. Let's talk in a week or so. Hopefully, things will get better. We also believe that leadership is a contact sport. In our classrooms, we have experiences around leadership. People learn leadership theory.

Speaker D: They.

Speaker C: They practice in a controlled setting. They help themselves learn and grow in one another, learning that set of skills that'll elevate their impact on the world. That'll let them inspire and empower other people with ideas. But the real impact of that leadership lesson is out in the community making a difference. That's why we're so grateful that you're willing to spend some time with us tonight with three very experienced panelists and a moderator learning about the business of sport in Washington state and particularly here in Seattle. I'll let the, uh, panel do its own introductions in a minute, or let Karen do the introductions in just a second. But our moderator this afternoon, this evening is Karen Bryant, Sweet Consulting. 30 years of experience in leadership and sport here in Seattle. I hope you enjoy the conversation. There'll be time for questions at the end. Please welcome our panel.

Speaker B: Thank you so much, Daniel. Thank you to Daniel, Christy and Albers School for having me. Natalie Welch, who's representing the, uh, Masters in Sports program. I see some familiar faces, which is awesome. I actually spent two years of my higher education career on this campus. Two really memorable years playing for the women's basketball team here, but had a really great time in the classroom here on Seattle U campus and look back on my time here really fondly and currently doing some consulting with the athletic department. So just thrilled to be to be back on campus and glad to have you all here tonight. So let's talk about the panel. Lynette Buffington, chief of staff at Seattle Metro Chamber of Commerce. Lynette's to my left here where she leads strategic initiatives, operational execution to advance chamber priorities. She represents the CEO in the organization and cross sector collaborations with both external and internal stakeholders. Lynette plays a key role in the Chamber's efforts to ensure Seattle's business community is ready to host the 2026 FIFA World cup, which we're all bracing for. Seattle native with deep roots in Tacoma. Lynette brings more than 15 years of leadership experience in economic development, public policy and organizational strategy in the state of Washington.

Speaker A: Welcome Lynette.

Speaker B: Thank you. In the middle here we have Joy Hollingsworth, Seattle City Council member representing District 3. Let's hear it for District 3. She was elected in November 2023. In January of 2026, Joy was unanimously voted in as Council President by her colleagues, which is an incredible honor and very well deserved. She's a fourth generation Seattleite and is the product of lifelong educators, civil rights leaders and small business owners. After a stellar stellar high school basketball career at Seattle Prep, Go Panthers, she went on to play at the University of Arizona and then professionally in Greece. She has a Master's in Education from UW and also spent three years here on San Seattle U's campus as an assistant coach for the women's basketball team. Welcome Joy. Pamela Quadros is the Chief Operating Officer of the Seattle Sports Commission. More than 25 years of experience leading revenue growth, strategic partnerships and operational excellence across media, sports and community organizations. In her role with the commission, she oversees organizational strategy, day to day operations and and high impact partnerships that position the region as a premier global sports destination while driving meaningful economic and community impact. Pamela, who is Canadian, holds an MBA and has been recognized in Puget Sound business journals. 40 under 40. Welcome Pamela. I'm super excited about tonight's panel. I happen to know two of them just recently met Lynette in preparing for tonight but I think some really there'll be some common themes. No, no doubt. But also I think really different perspectives in how we look at and evaluate kind of our region's economic impact and readiness as it relates to major events and pro team. So super excited for the discussion tonight and as Daniel Said as we go through, we'll have plenty of time at the end for questions, so I hope you guys will get engaged as we get to the end of the program. So we have a slide here that just really kind of breaks down super high level. The U.S. sports economy, really in kind of three primary buckets. But as you can see here, it's an, uh, extremely large economy at a little over a trillion dollars annually in economic spending. We're going to focus today on that third bucket, the fan engagement bucket, which represents about a third at 327 billion annually, which is primarily around team activation and fan engagement and media rights. And so that's going to be really the focus today. We're to going, going to start by having each of the panelists just share a little bit more. I obviously alluded a little bit of this in the introduction, but share a little bit more about your organization's mission, priorities, and how the sports industry and sports economy shows up in your workplace, how you serve your stakeholders.

Speaker A: All right, so again, I'm Lynette. I'm with the, uh, Seattle Metro Chamber. And then I have this secret past that only one person in this room actually knows my past, and that is coach fueling, because I used to be a collegiate soccer coach. And so I was a collegiate athletic director and soccer coach, left athletics to move into this type of work. And so I'm thrilled to flex that memory and that muscle back again in the soccer world, at least. So the Seattle Metro Chamber represents 2,600 businesses in the Greater Seattle area, representing 750,000 employees across the region. 80% of our businesses are small businesses, and 20% are the biggest brands in the world that you've ever heard of. So it is an inclusive membership, but it has, uh, some polar opposites in there as well. And so our mission is for all businesses to thrive in an equitable and inclusive economy. And so when we look at priorities, that shows up in being able to create the environment for strong talent, attraction and create a quality of place. We want businesses to be ready and resilient for any economic changes, be it surges like we might see in the World cup or friction that we saw during the COVID epidemic. And we want inclusion across all the business sizes. Those are some of our biggest priorities in terms of how sports shows up. You want me to hit that, too? Yeah. We look at sports as economic infrastructure. They create predictable economic, economic activity. You have seasons and games and. And that. So there is that predictability. So it is an infrastructure. It really drives visitor Spending, uh, it grossly in a positive way impacts hospitality sector and then it creates a regional and global brand visibility. We, we've been blessed this year with a lot of great imagery of Seattle across the world, and so we know it helps our brand. And sports has a unique opportunity to bring the three Ps together. Public, private and philanthropic partnerships. We probably all could refere great partnerships across all our pro sports teams with the community, with the philanthropic community and within the local government. So they're in a unique place to create some really strong partnerships. In terms of how sports impact the economy. We recognize it's not always positive and it's not always equitable. You know, public investment may crowd out other priorities and frontline workers may feel some of the friction and small businesses can feel strain if the planning isn't intentional. So the financial ROI of sports, if you're a direct line from the sporting team or the facility to the, uh, economy, that straight line, it's hard to prove the roi, but if you're really broad in your thinking and inclusive, uh, the ROI on the economy is quite strong across many different levels of the economy. So as a whole, from the business standpoint, sports is not a silver bullet, nor is it a luxury for the economy. It's a tool. And so the outcome depends on how intentionally we use it, who holds the risk, and whether success is determined narrowly or broadly.

Speaker D: That was excellent. So on the city council, city council president, I'm thinking about it in a couple ways. So our first model we like to talk about on the council is doing city basics better. And from an infrastructure point, the five ways you interact with government are your park system, your, uh, street system, your public safety could be public spaces as well. And it's also, I had to write them down because I always forget. And utilities. So your water, sewer, garbage, electricity. And so in these pieces, from a, uh, constituent point of view, how sports interacts with those pieces. Are our parks clean? Can we make sure that we have sustainable fields with lights so you can use them year round? Those create three to four times more revenue for our city. When you have a sustainable field and they have lights, making sure that our parks are clean and accessible, you think about it on an affordability piece for sports. Because if I can make sure that your parks and your trails are operating functionally, you don't have to pay that $50 membership fee at the gyms. From an economic point, and Lynette touched on it as well, as if your pro sports teams are here in Seattle and your college teams, how does that impact the city with civic pride, economic uh, stimulation from the different pieces, the domino effects that that might have from people riding the buses. So they're paying uh, funding, making sure that they're also visiting those restaurants or small businesses on game nights or they're paying for parking. Those are the ways that we're thinking about it on a, on a specific city level. So thinking about it as a constituent, making sure those public spaces and parks and interactive, uh, spaces are clean, accessible. And last but not least, making sure the programs that we're funding at a city level could be youth soccer, it could be the recreational sports at your center. Those pieces that those are funded as well from a city perspective.

Speaker E: So the Seattle Sports Commission and Foundation are actually two different nonprofits, um, under one umbrella. So the Seattle Sports Commission is a 501C6 and it's a membership based organization similar to a Chamber of Commerce where we have a lot of stakeholders in the community, about 200 members that typically represent what I would call market presidents, policymakers, philanthropic leaders that can actually evoke change, possibly in Olympia for funding opportunities or local government for funding opportunities. They're part of the main components of who our uh members represent. As well as of course hospitality, tourism, not a ton of small business, mostly midsize to larger, because those are the folks that are really engaged in seeing the economic and workforce development the sports can brings to the community and through the m major events that we bid on nationally and internationally and then win and then facilitate. So that's the economic and workforce development component of what we do. The 501C3 is the foundation component of what we do and that focuses on providing access to sport and play for underserved youth and women in sports. Sports should not be a privilege. It should be accessible to everyone because the journey has been shown that children that have that experience have a different trajectory in life than those that do not. It's really about that accessibility, opportunity. And we really focus in on the foundation component of working with folks already in the community like King County Play Equity Coalition who have boots on the ground, or organizations like Rise above who are already doing clinics and helping to support them and upflip them in their uh, mission and their endeavors. And a lot of that comes out of the major sporting events. So the two go hand in hand. When MLB All Star game came, there was a legacy component as part of that. And now we're deploying those funds. Whether it's resurfacing softball fields or baseball fields, or it's helping to Bring the HBUC funding series here and having clinics for them or its exposure with predominantly softball and baseball because it was a MLB event. But each one of those brings its own opportunity for legacy, which I'll talk about a little bit later on. But that's a huge part of our foundation. It's not a member based organization and we definitely are, um, seeking, you know, funding opportunities to keep it going and to grow it and to continue the mission beyond what we're currently doing. We're very new in the sense of, um, our own independent organization. We just celebrated five years not being a part of this yet. Seattle, which I know we'll talk about a little bit later on too. But we're still in ramp up mode. So we're teeny, we have a staff of six people and we're just little engine that could. And we're the ones that brought you FIFA.

Speaker A: So here we go.

Speaker B: No kidding. Absolutely. The little engine could. We're going to talk about, start off the conversation as we go into kind of some deeper topics. And start with pro sports. I think we have almost over 25 different semi pro and pro teams and universities, including obviously Seattle U, which is, is now Division 1 University joining the University of Washington. Those organizations represent close to 500 events a year. So when we talk about economic impact and again, that third sort of pillar of the US sports economy that involves fan engagement and how the economic power of fans, when you think about these teams, those are really the vehicles that are really generating all that fan engagement and economic activity. Joy. And obviously all these teams represent multiple venues as well. We're going to spend a lot of time today. Venues are a hot topic when you talk about economic impact and the economy of sports. So we'll spend a fair amount of time today talking about venues. But Joy, let's start with you in terms of why is a diverse and vibrant sports team so important to the city of Seattle and how does the city maybe give us some examples of how the city directly benefits from a diverse and vibrant sports scene?

Speaker D: Yeah. So when you look up here at the wonderful logos that we have, and correct me if I'm wrong, and you all know this, that if we get our Sonics back, we'll be the only city most diverse in the country. Right. With women, men's and both men's and women's, how does that impact us? Uh, the first one is civic engagement. So that is civic pride with folks, they see Seattle on the chest. That's why I love Seattle U. Because you all are always Promoting the city of Seattle. I always call it Seattle U is the city of Seattle's team. So Seattle. So those are the impressions that are being made when those teams are being played on tv. Whether that is, you know, out in the community, maybe they're doing community events. It's that civic pride. The second piece of having a diverse, different types of is we're able to engage with different types of population. So some people might be into uh, soccer. Right. Some others might be into football more than basketball. Some people are like, hey, I'm all team hockey. Or maybe it's bringing access here to Seattle where people didn't, you know, first time I experienced watching a women's hockey team was here in Seattle. So it brings a lot of access to our community. And then the other piece too as well is having a diverse, different types of sports. Is that is sports year round. So it's not like, hey, we're a football town. Think about, you know, like a different city that might only have a basketball team. And so that is only from what, November through March. And when you have a diverse group of different teams, that is year round sport. So that is constant simulation with events, that's constant engagement, that's constant impressions going on on the intern or teams traveling across the country being able to promote Seattle as well. And so those are the things that I think are some of the benefits on a civic level of having a diverse group of teams.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think when you talk about the diversity and just the breadth of teams that we have, I think it gets back, Lynette, to your point about that predictable, um, that seasonality of that economic impact and revenue that you can count on over the course of a calendar year. Lynette, talk about from a chamber perspective, some of the direct impacts that benefit your members and maybe also elaborate a little bit on how small business versus big businesses engages and benefits from sports activity.

Speaker A: So I would just double click on the council members comments about the year roundness because I probably can name a city that's like one sport town and that creates a surge in one time only business. But we essentially have a cadence that is year round in uh, a diverse audience which is a great sandbox for businesses to play in. So we have diversity in our sports teams and that means we have diversity in the culture of the fan base. The practice sites and the competition sites aren't always the same, so they're spread out and we have these really great youth development pipelines in many of our teams as well. So we're creating a really Broad ecosystem of sports in the community, therefore creating a predictable and reliable infrastructure for business to build around our regional brand. We couldn't be happier to see iconic imagery of Seattle in brand marks played across the globe and things like that. We're elevating who we are, where we are. That's talent attraction, that's business attraction. Those things really matter right now. And so making sure we show up well in those global audiences is high value to the business community. I talked about it earlier. The sports community is a convener and a connector. Everybody loves to be a fan. They truly do. It is amazing what common fandom will do, even in a dispute. So if you are both, I'm a zag. If you're both zags, you've broken down a barrier and you're ready to connect on maybe a more stressful topic. So we talk about some of the business impact as well. What we're seeing is our pro sports teams be really deliberate with their small business initiatives. We know the Seahawks have one. I think the Kraken does as well. So it's really fun to see my friends that own small businesses experiencing the perks of what our, uh, large sponsors have access to. And they are the biggest fans and they're making their clients the biggest fans and they're creating great opportunities. So I've watched our pro teams be really deliberate with small business engagement and minority business engagement. And then you look at how the Kraken has engaged on Seattle Center. That is a, you know, a multi generational impact on our community. And, and that is a great, uh, partnership in the economy. So in terms of large businesses, it's brands, it's sponsorships, it's talent attraction, client engagement for small. I talked about game day spikes, exposure. There's volatility there. There's, you know, I always talk about things in surge and friction, but it is a great opportunity. It's a great structure or skeleton for our small business community to build around because it's predictable, reliable, and repeatable. Okay.

Speaker B: We can't talk about sports without talking about how much we all love to win.

Speaker E: Right?

Speaker B: And we are very fortunate in this town that, uh, in the past year we had deep playoff run by the Mariners and then obviously the Seahawks making it back to, um, a world championship was incredible. I know, Pamela, your organization, the little engine that could enjoy the city. You guys worked very closely together to plan and execute a championship parade, which, by data that I've seen, and there's a slide up here. I'll have you start and elaborate A little bit. But 600,000 people participating in the championship parade and a $16 million economic impact for that event, and just incredible. So talk a little bit about the value of winning. I think when you win, to me, I think it really puts that economic, civic and social impact on full display. And obviously those don't happen every year. But I do think when things come together like that in sports, I think it's really illustrative of the magnitude of the impact that pro sports have, particularly when they're winning.

Speaker E: So, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker E: So for us, I think I'm not going to speak for Joy, but indeed, Seattle is also unique. It's a unique sports environment where you actually do have other sports franchises supporting each other. And during the pandemic, as, uh, connectors and conveners, we had monthly calls with all the C suite of all the sports teams on Covid plans, sharing tool books going back. And the city was involved in those. Deputy mayors were involved in those meetings every month, year after year, until we all got out of it. And then that led to the amazing relationships that you have with the city, whether it's a new administration, which Ms. Mayor Wilson has dubbed herself the sports mayor because she's been off to quite the start with that. So it's really great to be able to build on those relationships. And then when you have a project like this, it does involve all the things like Joy was mentioning earlier, uh, from her perspective on the economic impacts of sports, it's about the security, it's about jersey barriers, it's about the police, it's about the bathrooms, it's about the lights, it's about all the things. And that's a huge execution and involves so many departments, whether it's countywide, you know, sound transit's involved, everyone is involved on some level. And you've got to have one uniting group that's going to coordinate all that and strategize all that and then execute all that. And we certainly couldn't do it without a great relationship with administration or a great relationship with SPS or a great relationship with any of the sports teams. I don't know if anyone in this room went to the parade. Anyone. Did you watch it? I mean, your sports team people. Okay, well, that's fine. It was successful. And what it really showed is that the World cup can also be just as seamless, just as easy, just as collaborative and successful. And it was really a great trial run for the World Cup. And as the economic development impact shows up here, if you, if you can't quite see it. We also did some data on the NFC championship game and the semifinals game and what other economic development these winning teams and these winning m opportunities and hosting playoff games in your city can provide as an economic development and an activation of downtown Seattle, which is super important. Our goal is to really provide events and opportunity in collaboration with our partners to activate downtown and make it a vibrant and safe and an enjoyable city for everyone to be locals. Not always about tourism too. And I think we will touch a little bit on the fact that this is your city and this is part of your journey. And yeah, the economy of scales here was just insane when we looked at 16 million and the largest ridership soundtrack has ever had was on the NFC championship game. So Joy.

Speaker D: Yes. No, we were. You said everything. I'll add a couple points. From a city's perspective, it was a success because it was safe. There was no major injury. There wasn't a shooting. Like those are things that you think about. The second thing is that Seattle Department of Transportation help set up, you know, the barriers. They swept 10,000 pounds of trash from the, uh, parade and then they were able to get 4th Avenue back online, you know, right before traffic came out, so people could get downtown or out of downtown into, you know, wherever they were going. How people were moving down there, did they use their car, did they use the bus? We have the G line with Madison. They, uh, use sound transit, you know, all these different things, how people are moving down there. There weren't a lot of ton of complaints where people were talking about, oh, it was a traffic jam because they. We had such great public transit options for people to get down downtown along the route on fourth Avenue for folks. And so those were the things from like the city perspective that we were looking at. And then also the activation, which was a great trial run for our public safety efforts with our police, fire, emt, our office of economic management, our care team. And then you have other groups that help with the safety as well for them to get training on running big events in our city and figuring out how all those come together with the coordination. I knew that the parade was happening because I saw the permit that was pulled. So I knew the day and time. And then on the flip side, I had to cancel some committee meetings that day because of the traffic. So we moved. We canceled some and then we moved some that were virtual online because on the second and third floor, as being the council president, 120 people that I'm responsible for for coming downtown. And so there's different departments that the mayor has, there's different department that the council president has. And so those 120plus people, it was thinking about their logistics too as well on that day.

Speaker B: Joy, let's stay with you. Raise your hand if you're excited about the prospect of the NBA coming back to town. All right, great. Almost unanimous. I had the great pleasure of working for the Sonics for eight years before their departure in conjunction with my role with the Storm. But I grew up in Seattle and was at the parade in 79 and just be incredible to have them back in green and gold. But Joy, let's start with you on that topic. What's the city's involvement in the return, the effort to get the NBA back? How important is it for the city to get the NBA back? And. And why?

Speaker D: Yeah, well, on a personal level, my uncle played for the Sonics, so he played with Slick Watts. He left right before the championship, so he didn't have a ring, unfortunately. But he grew up in the Calio projects, went to Xavier University, moved here in the 70s, and typical NBA story, pulled my mom out of the projects, right. And brought her up here to Seattle. And that's how she met my dad. And then, of course, I was born. Their greatest gift. But sorry. And so I'm really grateful because my uncle changed the trajectory of our family and the Sonic. So that to me is like, you know, on a personal note. But the second piece is how the city is looking at it. Number one, we passed a resolution this year, Councilmember Sacca with Mayor Wilson. We passed a joint resolution saying, hey, the city is ready. So they needed to know from elected officials, we're ready for the Sonics. We're here. Uh, the second thing is that we have a great climate pledge arena that I know people have seen and the investment that we have there, I know we'll do a deeper dive and you know what? But another question that we have that we'll talk about that. But the most important piece was that for. For the NBA team, the prospective ownership group, to know that the city officials are ready. We'll do whatever it takes to make sure that we have a team that we can roll out the red carpet to add to the Sonics returning home. I know we talk about it as being an expansion. It's not an expansion. It's a homecoming. Right. That's making that switch on that. And then last but not least, that they know that there is a great civic engagement and fan base that is here. And so all. All we have done at council is pass a resolution. There was a roundtable with some folks in one of the committees to talk about what we've done at the Seattle center and then also at Climate Pledge arena to welcome a professional men's sports, because we already have a women's sport. So it's a professional men's NBA team.

Speaker B: Yeah. I alluded to the topic of venues. Venues are always. You talk about kind of economic impact of sports. The venue discussion can always be one that can be sort of hotly debated and sometimes is polarizing. Is Erin Vernon here? Did she make it? Hi, Erin. Erin's, uh, an econ professor with Albers. She and I had a great conversation around some of the research that economists have done about debating the value of city and state subsidies going into venues for billionaire sports owners. And a lot of those studies from traditional economists argue that some of that economic impact that we're showing on slides today with respect to sports is just displacing it from other kind of economic tracks into sports and not necessarily incremental to the region's economy. I think this panel here would, uh, probably disagree with how conservative I think those estimates are. They tend to focus a lot on direct impact and don't measure. I think as much as some of the panelists today would argue around some of the other sort of intangible or indirect impacts, things like civic pride and some of the things Lynette talked about in terms of marketing exposure for large employers in Seattle and the brand visibility for the city and what that means. Nonetheless, there's obviously a lot of conversation that always stems around venues. Any given year, you have multiple cities. Kansas City actually has the Royals, and the Chiefs are currently in arena conversations. And interestingly enough, the Royals are building a new $1 billion stadium in the suburbs. They're moving, actually out of downtown Kansas City. That was partly funded by tech streams and so on and so forth. So I guess I'd love to open it up to just the panel. Whoever wants to take that one first. Um, you all come at this from different perspectives, different stakeholder groups. Talk a little bit and just share a little bit about your view about how you think about the sort of global, broad ROI that comes back to a city and a region. With respect to venues, I think we can talk about. I can't remember, actually, I should have looked this up. Can't remember how Lumen Field was financed, but no question we wouldn't have. We're going to talk about the World cup before we end tonight. Over a $350 million impact from those three weeks of six matches of World cup games here. We don't get the World cup without Lumen Field. So to look at a venue in isolation for pro teams is not. Is not the global view that needs to be required in. Pamela, I'll have you talk a little bit about Memorial Stadium and whatnot. But Lynette, you take that one just

Speaker A: in general, like from. We know this is a controversial topic, right? The funding of stadiums. So we approach it as a little bit more practical. Professional sports venues are long term civic and economics tools and investments. So not unlike an airport or a convention center. That's how we look at these things. And they drive competitiveness. Again, we can attract. And it's not just sporting events. Big venues allow you to attract a lot of things. And so I know we're talking about sports today, but there's other things on other entities list about attraction here. And then, you know, the loss of the Sonics, probably, I don't want to say it was a good lesson to learn because I'm bitter, but it informed how modern we're thinking today about partnerships. You have private investment, public investment, and some type of hybrid. And what's made us successful in Seattle is partnerships in these venue developments. And I think we'll take those lessons and move them forward. I committed to my friends for a certain birthday, we'd be in a box for the Sonics. So TikTok, you got three years. Okay, there you go. All right. And I'll pass it on.

Speaker E: So just to add on to Karen's comments about Lumen, I can actually share a little bit about the history. It was 1980. That is when this journey began. And in 1980 was when the first time the US was exploring the opportunity to host FIFA in the World Cup. And it was determined at the time. The kingdom obviously wasn't necessarily Lumen, and the two main characteristics was it was a closed venue, so not in the outdoors and it didn't have grass. So we were automatically eliminated from the conversation. Seattle as a city. Fast forward to the 90s and the conversation came back up again because the Seahawks were for sale. They were. We were threatening to lose them just like we lost the Sonics. There was a big ordeal about it, and partly it was because the kingdom was deteriorating and we needed to have a better facility to hold on to the NFL. At the time, though, they had the wisdom to involve soccer conversations. And Fred Mendoza, who is actually the dad of Maya Mendoza, uh, who runs the Sounders and Rain FC as a business Chief chief business officer. Her dad was started those conversations about making sure the field is a regulation soccer field. The field is outside. There is an opportunity for it to be grass. So even though it didn't start with grass, the infrastructure that was built in Lumen Field was going to allow for future grass. Should we ever get the opportunity to have a World Cup. It did require a referendum. The referendum 48 was passed to help fund that and it was just after funding T Mobile Park. So the stomach if the taxpayers and voters were a little queasy. But again, fast forward now to where we are today and we're hosting the World cup because of the efforts of something in the 90s and the 80s and the foresight to think through all that. And there's quite a few facilities in the community like that where people are coming and saying how do we make this a multi sport or multi opportunity venue? Memorial Stadium is a a great example of that. Where it did come with P3 partnerships, private partnership, public partnership, philanthropy to get that going and to have it be multi focused. So that is a great success story. But then there's other ones. So that list of teams that we saw on there, the Beasts and weren't listed, but I don't think the Beasts were on there. But Brooks has a running a running club and then they're professional track people that actually compete in the Olympics and they can't practice here. There is one official Olympic track in the state of Washington in this area and it's uws and UW is kind of protective of their property and I don't blame them. So there's not always the opportunity for them to practice. So they practice out of state and Brooks themselves have an invitational that they want to do every year and they can't do it here because we don't have the facility for it. It doesn't exist. So these are economic opportunities that we're missing from our own sports teams. Professional otherwise the Orcas, our cricket team don't practice here, they don't play here, we don't have a cricket pitch. So West Seattle Stadium is a little pet project of mine because I live in West Seattle and I drive past it and I watch my kids have to go half an hour to their soccer field because it was built five feet too short on either side for a regulation soccer field. Short sighted. A little bit multi sport. Yes, we can fix it. We're going to start doing the efforts to get that through any public funding, but also private funding and partnership funding. And Brooks of course is like Wait now. So can we get that track to be an Olympic size track? Yes, yes we can. So you know there's future opportunities when you start to talk and have the collaboration, have the conversations and then the dream. And I'm hoping my dream is not going to take how many years, 1980 to now. I'm hoping it's going to be a lot faster for West Seattle Stadium. But it's an example of where we have the potential and we just need to create the opportunity and the facilities. And right now we don't have a 20. Not that West Seattle Stam is going to be this, but we don't have a 20 to 25,000 audience stadium to compete across the country for. Rugby, for example, is a big one that needs that kind of a facility on a regular basis. USL2 soccer, USL Premium League, none of them have the, the venues here that would facilitate the ideal location for them. We lost asu, ausl softball, UM team to Portland because we didn't have a facility and that was a woman's team. So we're going to hopefully get it back at some point. But at any rate, facilities are definitely important for us to be able to what we do, which is attracting events but also attracting pro teams and finding homes for the ones that are existing here and be your allies and advocates and trying to help them out. Because I would love to have the Brooks Invitational here and not in Oregon.

Speaker B: Yeah, no question. As I said, I was at the Sonics for eight years and I happened to be there during the stretch where we lost the team to Oklahoma City. I worked very closely with Howard Schultz and Wally Walker. At the time I was the SVP of communications and strategy and so I was in a, a key role for that and then end up also working for Clay Bennett when we were sort of putting the effort together to potentially build an arena in the Renton area. But you know, we now have Climate Pledge, which is why we're in the conversation again and hopefully going to return the NBA back. But there's no question that Pamela mentioned coming off the heels of the financing public private financing packages for T Mobile and Lumen, we were third in line. And so at the Sonics organization we used to always talk about there was just taxpayer fatigue after financing those two venues and then we just happened to be third in line and just the audience and the appetite and the political capital wasn't there to get that through at the time. But lo and behold, hopefully we'll be welcoming them back soon. Joy, I'd be remiss if on this topic we didn't have you talk a little bit about what is the right price, what is the math, how does a city think about the trade offs and those negotiations with respect to public private, how do you guys measure that return? Specifically when it comes to venue subsidies and using A lot of times what happens is pro teams will use the city's bonding capacity to get better interest rates on financing packages. And then obviously a big, very popular funding stream is the tourism tax. And the argument there is that we're having tourism vis a vis hotel rooms and rental car taxes so that, that residents aren't actually paying the bulk of that subsidy, but it's actually coming from tourists. So yeah, let's give you the floor for a minute on that.

Speaker D: Let's take Climate Pledge as our example. So climate pledge 100% renewable energy. That ownership group took on all the construction costs, the risk, the operations, that whole piece. The third piece is they also started the One Roof foundation which is going to renovate Memorial Stadium. Memorial Stadium is at the Seattle Center. It's where all of our Seattle public school kids play their sports. Whether it's the lacrosse games, the soccer games, they have foot flag football, they have football games, they have a whole bunch of different games. And so they're going to renovate that entire stadium which is going to be key for that connection with. And even though that's not the city has a piece in that, it was also a relationship with Seattle Public Schools as well and One Roof Foundation. And they also, and they reminded me the ownership group because they called me because I'm always like, hey, do you all need anything? And whatnot. They had told me about the money that they put for the lights being synchronized on. I believe it's second or third, whichever one is coming north. And they were talking about the secret, you know, synchronizing the, the lights that they had paid for. And they're like, hey, that hasn't been done yet. And I said what was that? I had no clue. And so connecting with S dot, making sure that those, some of those investments we can follow through on because those are like some of the impacts that they've made for the community. They're also great in the group, are great in the community where they constantly are giving out like funding and money. You think of the Iceplex up north that they owned as well in District 5, the Iceplex, where there is a public benefit, there's always a public benefit to these contracts. And so whether it's money, whether it's open spaces for the public in time, where, you know, community groups can get access to those spaces. Maybe it's at a discount as well. Sometimes, like we have a partnership with, with some of the city property is like the aquarium and the zoo. They give out free tickets to different schools. You know, there's different types of public benefits and opportunities. And I'm in the position where I'm like, look, if we can get the same outcomes and we can get it better, I actually don't care sometimes if it goes through government or private. Can we just get the outcomes we want? Because oftentimes, most of the time, through private and philanthropy, you can get stuff done a lot quicker than you can with the city. Just look at the waterfront, the north part, the, the, uh, extended path that is north of the aquarium that connects to Myrtle Edwards, and that is all private funding right from the aquarium. And then the pathway to where people, you can walk seamlessly from the stadium, downtown, Lumen Field, all the way to Expedia. Uh, uh, the north part of. I call it Myrtle Edwards. I don't know what they call it now.

Speaker A: Elliot Bay extension, whatever.

Speaker D: It's Myrtle Edwards. We used to do Jers. Okay, y' all remember. Y' all don't remember that. Some of y' all remember Jers. Y', all, y' all remember. You remember kb Jers was on the front anyways, so, you know, that's what I'm a proponent for. Always is like, okay, what are the intended outcomes? And can we get there? Uh, can we. How can we get there a little bit quicker? And oftentimes that's through philanthropy, uh, dollars and private funding.

Speaker B: Okay, we're gonna shift and talk a little bit now about major events. We talked a little bit about the Sports Commission mission. This is their sort of reason for being. At one point in time, the Sports Commission was actually called the Sports and Events Council, and it was part of Visit Seattle. And so the idea here is leveraging the power of major large scale events. We'll get to the World cup here in a minute. But this is just, uh, an example of what Pamela and her team are working on in terms of bringing large scale events. And this is obviously sports tourism. And it's the idea when Sports Commission was part of Visit Seattle and I was actually on the board at the time, you literally measured the impact and ROI of these events, uh, called heads and beds. Literally how many hotel room nights were booked? I venture to guess we don't have somebody here from the convention or hotel industry, but I think that goes hand in Hand the development that has gone into the number of hotel rooms. And that's a big part of large scale events. I remember for many years we weren't in the running for a lot of large scale events because we simply did not have enough hotel rooms. And you look at the boom in development downtown and the number of hotel room nights that are available in our Seattle, Tacoma, greater King county area and has everything to do, along with venues, of why we can present a list like this in terms of some of the large scale events that we're going after. So we're going to skip over a few things just running late and we want to be able to get to questions. But. But I'd be remiss if we didn't talk about the World Cup. The World cup issued a report in December that Talked about a $929 million impact, economic impact for King County. They actually revised it just recently, just within the last month, and downgraded the impact a little bit just after the teams were named and they realized who was going to play here and the dates and some of the information and specifics were finalized, they downgraded it to 846 million. But still, nonetheless, a massive, massive economic impact for our region over the course of what amounts to be less than three weeks and six matches. But obviously bringing people from all over the world, for those of you who might be homeowners, M. I'm actually contemplating putting my home on Airbnb. I can rent my house for that three week period for close to $12,000. And that's just one little micro example in my little world of economic impact of what this event means for our community. And Visit Seattle had a third party actually do the economic impact study. It wasn't an internal study. It was done by some of Aaron's economist friends. Maybe. But this is an example of how they look at both direct and indirect to get at the total impact and how they get at that $849 million number. Lynette, let's come back to you first. I know you and I had a conversation around some of the work, work that the Chamber is doing. You shared for me the perspective that comes sometimes from, um, small business owners, that sometimes the increase in foot traffic and visitors to the city doesn't always translate to people coming through your door and actually spending with your business. Talk a little bit about some of the things the Chamber is doing to help small businesses drive that traffic and those visitors to actual cash receipts.

Speaker A: Yeah, in. I don't know, m mid 2024. After I'd started at the Chamber, I recognized that there was, there really wasn't any entity stepping up for the business community in terms of readiness. And if you've been around a while, you recognize that. We've had some business communities that felt left out of, like the MLB All Star Game. I was down in Pierce county when the US Open happened and those businesses didn't get the benefit that they were promised as well. So, uh, those of us that work in that kind of space remember those missteps and look to correct on future opportunities. So, so we started to set up a business readiness and resiliency response ranging from a direct contract with the host committee to create a playbook for small businesses. That isn't theory, it's actual practice of how to ready your business for this increased foot traffic. Just because the foot traffic is in front of your business, it is on you to bring them across the threshold. And we've provided, uh, feedback on how to do that and how to be nimble. If games are at noon every day and you don't have TVs in your establishment, you may. You won't get people at lunch, but if you decide to open for breakfast, guess what? You're going to capture that audience. So you have to be nimble, creative. You got to get ahead of the game. You need to be in people's Instagram and algorithms now to draw that in. So that's what the Playbook did. And Since June of 25, we've been running at least one webinar a month for business readiness. Either a briefing on the latest and greatest, because there's a lot of opinions and skeptics and just rumor makers in this space, but then also business training. So we're really proud of the work we've done on this space. We've also had some great investment from King county to invest in supporting minority businesses and communities on activations to celebrate the games and again, lift up the business community. I've talked about the missteps and everything that's been in the past. It's really important that we recognize those missteps and try to address them. We've really, truly emphasized this readiness and resiliency. We also know that our scalability is. We can't just keep doing trainings in every business. So we've created a kit that businesses can get as well. If you want to do a readiness training at your business site, download this kit. Here are all the experts to call, and here's how to put it together. And then the intent Too. Here was. Once the World cup is, is done and it's in the rear view and we're all patting ourselves on the back, we can remove any reference of the World cup in this readiness kit and it could be skinned for anything. It can be skinned for a draft, it could be skinned for another disruption like, I don't know, a mass transit construction project. Um, but we want businesses to have the tools. That's what we care deeply about. The World cup is a great opportunity. We want people to be celebratory about it. We want to build the readiness and resilience muscle and then when another disruption, good, bad or otherwise comes along, they have the tools and the muscle and they're able to respond accordingly and of course use us as a partner. Um, we're really proud of it.

Speaker B: Here's a QR code if you guys are interested. This is a QR code that takes you to the small business playbook. Really awesome, awesome. Uh, resource. And the panel was talking before we started about the World cup has really fostered a tremendous amount of obviously collaboration but innovation and Seattle is really starting to position itself as a really not only vibrant and diverse, diverse, but super innovative sports market. So really proud of our city and our leaders have come together to really be a model for other cities hosting large scale events like the World Cup. Joy, let's go and we're going to get to questions here in a minute. Joy, talk a little bit about, you know, it's not all rosy, a uh, big, large scale event like this, but talk about some of the potential negative impacts in the city's efforts to try to mitigate some of those. When we welcome all these visitors to

Speaker D: our, our community, first thing on everyone's mind, how do we move? Right, there's going to be a lot of people and a lot of spaces and a lot of area. How do we handle that massive influx of people in the city? The bus rides, the sound transit, the one big thing that I often, that we uh, we often have to remind ourselves the micro mobility in our city, the scooters. We did 10 million scooter and bike rides last year. That's up 60% from the year before. People love their scooters. We have the number one scooter culture in the country. Think about that. This is Lime's biggest market.

Speaker A: We're the most ill behaved in the country.

Speaker D: We are. There's a lot of people riding on sidewalks and all these things. So that's why you see a lot of investment obviously in bike lanes and infrastructure. But Some of those, you know, nagging things. Hey Joy, People are dropping scooters off right in the front of my apartment. I'm um, in a wheelchair. I can't get around the corrals that we need to be painting literally right now. Which you see those more so we can park those really well. I get so many emails with people complaining about that. The second piece, and a lot of people don't think about this is that when there are games downtown, so when there are games in Sodo, we have the sixth largest port in the country. So we have deep water, you know, berths where the big ships can come. We have a through port. 30% of the products stay here in the city, 70% go to the Midwest. And what happens is when people are coming from Yakima to deliver that fresh produce to go to the port, they think about how much traffic, what time am I coming into Seattle, where am I going? The only place in the country where you can hit i5 and go straight to Mexico or you can go to i90 and go straight to Boston is right here in seattle. It's a three way from, uh, south if you're going south on i5 and then east on i90, major arterial. And so, you know, traffic is going to be one of the biggest things. We think about it as people moving, but I'm thinking about also cargo and freight and how we're moving. And as we are getting to be a bigger city with more people, we also have to think about our freight. When we want to put in an extra bike lane or, you know, widen the sidewalk, the first thing I hear from folks are, hey, have you thought about can trucks get down there? Can they turn, you know, is it wide enough lanes? Those are things that you have to think about across the spectrum. So I'm thinking about traffic. The second thing that's probably the most important thing is safety. You know, we are making sure that, you know, we have, obviously everyone knows that we're getting our officer numbers back up. But at one point in time, you know, oftentimes in District 3, sometimes when we have four to six officers on third watch, which is one of the biggest watches, which is your night watch in Seattle, how are we getting more officers to respond to if there's a threat? Are we using cameras? How are we responding to those? So those are things that, you know, whether whatever political side you're on, that we want to make sure that people feel safe in Seattle and that we can respond very quick to any type of threat or public safety thing. That's going on in our city.

Speaker B: Awesome. Uh, all right, we're going to go to questions. I'll get to the audience in a minute, but I got a couple questions in advance. Pamela, I'm going to go to you for this one. One, where does Washington compare to other states as it relates to recognition and investment in sports tourism as a true economic pillar?

Speaker E: M. That's a loaded question. I'll just tell you that our operating budget is just over 2 million. That's it. And when you are competing for an NFL draft or a World cup or even the super bowl, you're competing against organizations that have the support of their state, where they will write a check for $20 million. And it's just, here you go. And we just don't have that access or those resources. So we are actually at a strong competitive disadvantage when it comes to funding. Our sports commission's separate from, uh, a destination marketing group. So it's a little bit of a different makeup, too. Other ones might be included, but we also compete on the fact of geography and Costa hotels, airfare to here, how you get to Seattle. And it's not as appealing as, oh, let's just go to Kansas, and we can just all go around in a circle and attend all the things, because it's central. So there's a lot of things that we face, but the funding one is a significant one. We came in second for the Invictus Games, which was a huge letdown, but we were. We learned a lot, and we hope to go after the next one. But we lost to Vancouver, our good friends to the north, and they had $30 million from their government to support those games and to have them help them win those games. And again, we just don't have that. So we have a lot of work to do and a lot of storytelling to share to change the narrative or to look at it differently so that folks can understand not only the economic and workforce development, but also that civic pride that Joy references, but also the impact on the youth. I mean, there needs to be that funnel and that growth and that opportunity, and sports really facilitates that opportunity for kids across the entire state. So. So I would say that we have a lot of work to do still.

Speaker B: All right, questions from the audience. Yes. With regards to World cup and the fact that Vancouver and Seattle are in such close proximity to each other, what does that look like from the stance of the social, political climate that we're in, but also the fact that there's currency differences in terms of the US Dollar versus the Canadian dollar. And how does that work, work economically for a city like Seattle trying to compete with another city that's also hosting World cup games?

Speaker A: Well, we know that we'll have a strong fan commute up and down the i5 corridor into California. And now that it's public, Gonzaga is hosting Egypt as a base camp. So we will have fans. If they don't have tickets to the games, they get to see their teams at their training sites, which is really fun. We'll have that east west traffic as well. People will stay here in Seattle and then day trip up to Vancouver and vice versa. We capture the dollars that we capture. There's other things that play too is the friction and the border crossing and the challenges in educating the fans about how it's different to cross our border. But in general, I mean our projections, the projections that visit Seattle had done are for the Seattle area. We might get a little bit more, we might get a little bit less. But the greater Cascadia region, well, is going to benefit significantly.

Speaker E: And just to add on to that, for historical purposes and situational awareness, the two countries, especially Washington state and British Columbia, we do have a Cascadia group and they focus a lot on how do we make cross border crossing easier and how do we educate. And we both, both areas have learned a lot from Taylor Swift. A lot. A lot, a lot. Right. And so whatever that journey was has definitely led a, um, lessons learned and how do we fix this before the World Cup? Because it was actually a lot Americans who were uneducated on how to cross the border and why they weren't allowed in with a dui. So there's like, there was a lot so, so when we talked about some of it was with TSA and the port and like, you know, international travel. One of the conversations was how do we make sure that who is ever coming. It's in their language, it is told so they understand if they are going to have Seattle as a base. How did you get to Canada? And here's how. And they've created dashboards on that. So there's been a lot of work that has gone the cross border situation long before the situation we're in right now. Canadians might not want to be coming, but there's international travelers that need to understand that journey. And so there's been a lot of infrastructure put into place for that support.

Speaker A: There's a great resource that Washington state tourism, um, board put out called everybody's doing no before you go by the way. So you can't just type in no, before you go anymore. But the state tourism board has done a great border crossing overview for visitors.

Speaker B: One of the things that I think is great about tonight, a theme is that, you know, when you think about the whole sports and entertainment industry, all the cumulative lessons and learnings that go in as we continue to just sort of expand our purview, our capacity, our infrastructure and continuing to build on past insights and momentum to continue to be a global leader in large scale events. Which is awesome. It makes me proud of our city. There was another question somewhere. Kelly, thank you. First of all, we've got four amazing

Speaker E: women up here tonight and I want to just acknowledge that and having grown up in Seattle, uh, shout out to the Sonics. I was at the 79 parade as well, on my dad's shoulders.

Speaker B: You know, it occurs to me like

Speaker E: with the Seattle ecosystem of our community in sports, with the four women up

Speaker B: here, I'm curious if any of you

Speaker E: know or anyone here, the rate at

Speaker B: which girls are dropping out of sports,

Speaker E: hovering around 13 in most things that I've read. Is that maybe higher in Seattle? Are we leading? Does anyone have any point, uh, of reference to that? So one of the Seattle Sports Commission Foundation's mission is girls women in sports. And I think Seattle does a really good job of front office leadership and certainly ownership as we all are aware of who owns our team. So to your point, there is a good solid leadership there. Women in leadership is one of breakfast is one of our initiatives. It's a PSA event that we hold every year and we have women panels and we talk about how do you get more women in these leadership roles. But the shift for our foundation is focused on youth sports. And to your point it's 1 in 4 athletic directors are women and the age you are accurate. It's around the 12 to 14 where girls are stopping. And a lot of that is contributing to the fact that only 24% are coaches that are women. So they're, they're lacking that leadership role of seeing myself on the pitch and on the court. So one of our. We have a women in coaching and officiating coalition we actually just met last night. An organization of very strong leaders of folks uh, that are doing the work as well as the professional sports teams and King County Play Equity Coalition and you uh, U dubs Collegiate Athletic Department training. They've been doing this research for 30 years. We have, have so much data around it and we're trying to fix it, but it's a mammoth. It is ginormous. It's Going to take all of us working together, which is why the sports Commission is convening and connecting all these people together so that we can uplift each other and amplify all the work that's already happening, but then also maybe make it larger and more impactful. But it is a thing and it does exist and we want. And socially, it affects other things. So we have a. I'll be really fast. We have this organization that we work with that, that surveyed how Hillary lost. They surveyed all the women that voted for Trump and wanted to understand their thoughts and their processes behind that. And a lot of it was defaulting to. They didn't feel confident in their political knowledge and background. And they. And it was Central America, for the most part, and they defaulted to their husband. And when they described their ideal leader, they would start with he. And so Seattle's a very unique market. I think if you were to ask anyone in this room describe your ideal leader, they would probably not use that pronoun. So that we kind of knew that Camilla had a big, big hill to climb. And it was probably not likely that it was going to happen because you're taught at a very young age, in your most developmental journey of which is sports, who's on the field, who's officiating, who's calling the game, who's telling you the plays. And it doesn't always represent the appropriate gender necessarily for it to be. Be equal and have the equity and inclusion and all the things that actually do affect a culture broadly.

Speaker D: And I'll say this, too, it's also infrastructure investments at youth sports. So last two years ago, Garfield, uh, softball team came to us to tell us about the inequities of sustainable fields versus dirt fields. And they. And there was a big article in the paper about how softball. If you played softball in the city of Seattle, you get rained out 30% more than the boys. Always baseball team. And that's because there's more, uh, sustainable. I'm supposed to call it sustainable fields. I call it turf. And they're like. That's a trigger word for people. Like, whatever. They're sustainable. They use cork now. It's not tires anymore. And so I made it my mission. The first year, we got four fields turfed in the city of Seattle for, uh, softball, which is usually like 1.5 to $2 million for just the infield. That's like the big thing now where you do the infield. And when we had the MLB All Star Game, part of their civic project was the Rainier Valley where they did the infield. I think they did three, two or three infields in Rainier Valley. That was part of their give back to the city. So we did four. We did Lower Woodland because that's two to three high school teams that use that. We did Garfield because they're doing the Garfield super block. And then we had one in West Seattle this year we did Rogers Playfield, or I got Rogers Playfield last year. I'm making it my m mission to turf everything in Seattle. And then this year we're going to do during budget season, I'm going to find one or two fields. We also got money from the state for that as well. So they gave us money for us to do. But it's also that piece like what are we telling girls in infrastructure investing? And you're talking about that 13, 14 age. And they're looking at the baseball team getting all these different things and their confidence, making sure that they had the same. I saw those inequities when I was playing at University of Arizona and you know, the men's basketball team getting more than the girls often. And we would take the shoes from the boys and you know, whatever. But you know, you saw those if you, if you played, uh, seeing that. And so, uh, just really big on youth sports and the infrastructure and making sure that we have equitable access but also equitable, uh, infrastructure.

Speaker B: Awesome. Uh, I want to take one more because somebody in the back had their hand up for a while. Yeah. And then we'll be brief in our answers.

Speaker E: Yeah.

Speaker B: Well, thank you guys so much. Um, I love all the Seattle talk. It's paradise on earth.

Speaker A: So.

Speaker B: So I would be reminiscent if we were talking about sports and economic impact and didn't bring up the whole name, image and likeness. I've been blessed to be able to do a lot of work in NIL at the University of Washington. And what I've realized is Seattle and specifically the University of Washington is one of the only major historical programs that is also within a, uh, metropolitan market. But you'll see that University of Washington is drastically behind in NIL spending. They're being beat out by Baton Rouge and Norman, Oklahoma and Tuscaloosa, Alabama. But when it inevitably does catch up and these small businesses are clamoring at the chance to be involved with these athletes and contribute financially to the university to be involved and have a return on that investment with these athletes. Athletes, I would love to hear you guys opinion on how that economically could help small, uh, businesses across the state. And if you have any other Thoughts on that? Thank you.

Speaker A: Nil is hard. So I will say this. Small businesses have an enormous amount of strain on them and investing in a sponsorship or something of the like for a player is like multiple tiers down on their priority list. They have to be able to stay open every day, deal with public safety concerns, uh, attract customers and things like that. So it would be an add on I think if we're talking about small business and micro enterprises, like five employees or less is a definition of a micro enterprise. If we start to get larger and the 75 employees up to 5,000 employees, that's a whole different conversation. And I don't know Nil well enough to speak on it. But if there is an expectation for businesses below 100 on a headcount to invest in this model, I think it's an unrealistic assumption because of all the other strains that small businesses are dealing with environmentally, regulatory wise and things like that.

Speaker D: I don't know all, uh, they didn't have an Nil. Uh, but, but I saw how much some girls are getting paid and I was like yo, I would have been balling. But I will say this. I think there's an opportunity on a small business level. And, and what Lynette said is, is absolutely spot on that you know, all these different, different. They can't compete with uh, a lot of the money that's being poured in. But I will tell you this. There was this influencer and I can't remember their name but they ate a sandwich over at North Roanoke, like area, Portage Bay area. They just did something on social media. That place is sold out of sandwiches. Ah, like all the time. And so I think there might be opportunity for a small business to maybe say hey, we can you know, give you free whatever. I don't know what the contract thing is set up up to just influence a little bit of a jumpstart to some of the small businesses. I've never seen anything like uh, the sandwich place that's sold out where people lined up just because some influencer ate there and posted it on social media and TikTok and Instagram.

Speaker B: So.

Speaker E: And the only thing I have to say is I also not an um, nil expert by any means, but there's sponsorship fatigue already in the market, right? So that slide that Karen had made with just a handful representing the sports teams that we have here, semi pro, pro, etc. Etc. Amateur youth. I mean there's a youth club soccer team that hasn't had a jersey sponsor for two years and they focus so much on underserved youth, and there's just sponsorship fatigue. So, yeah, I don't know how Seattle as a 15 DMA market with the income on marketing and spending, because it's marketing dollars. Right. It's a big umbrella how that's all going to work out either. So it's. There's a lot of layers to that, but I think the influencer idea is a great idea. And I just. The Mariners did that ferry boat thing and they put it on social media. They ordered, like, 20,000 ferry boats for, like, their first six, uh, months of the season. They sold out the ferry boats in the first two games. People are now just going to the Mariners game to get the ferry boat, and they're having to deal with the concourse of people not in their seats watching the game, but focusing on getting in line to get the ferry boat. So there's interesting things out there that you could create, but I'm concerned about managing expectations and what the true ROI will be when it all comes to this market.

Speaker B: How much does the overall sponsorship economy change or does it get just redistributed? And NIL is still so immature in its sophistication, athletes don't yet quite understand how to go after it. Universities are trying to figure out how to grow NIL without hurting their general funding. The sponsors are trying to figure out how to leverage athlete power. So it's all still so immature. And as you stated, I mean, so many universities are ahead of where we are. But I have a lot of confidence and pride in my alma mater down the road here that we're going to figure that out. But, yeah, and I think once we get our Big Ten full revenue share, that's going to be a significant amount of money and how that gets reallocated to athletes. So the fact of the matter is it's still very sophomoric sort of piece of the industry. And some organizations have figured it out sooner and have single big donors that are funding single programs that are all of a sudden buying national championships. So it's changing the landscape significantly, and I think it's going to take people time to really adjust and figure out how to stay competitive. Um, all right, we ran a little bit long, but thank you all so much for being here. I want to thank the panelists for their time. Thank you again to Daniel, Christine, Natalie, the Albers for having us here tonight, and thanks for being here. Have a great night.

Speaker C: Thanks, everyone. Just a quick comment or two.

Speaker D: I think I can speak for the

Speaker C: room when I say that we're all waiting for that nil bank to arrive at business school. Dean sponsorships. Yeah, Think NASCAR right here. That'd be very exciting. I expected a deep dive into the economics of sport. We definitely got one. That was super fun. My favorite criminally underfunded nonprofit, uh, the Turner household, has a new revenue stream, potentially in renting our house during the World Cup. I'm so excited about that. To bring that idea back, we got that deep dive into the economics of sport. But the pieces that I didn't anticipate that I just wanted to express gratitude for. Sport is a convener of community. Sport as an, uh, opportunity to afford your social connection, and most important for me, sport as an engine for equity and opportunity. That was just amazing. Thank you so much for coming. Hope to see you again next fall when the series reconvenes. Appreciate your attendance. One more round of. Of applause for Pamela, Joy, Lynette, uh, and Karen. Thanks. Thank you.

Speaker A: This has been a production of the center for Leadership Formation at the Albers School of Business and Economics podcast production by Alvarez Audio. I'm Vivian Lapuch.

Speaker B: Thanks for listening.