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Sports business insider Joe Pompliano always knew he wanted to do something in sports. Growing up with four brothers, sports was just about all they ever did. “We played everything you could imagine from basketball, football, baseball, to ping pong, air hockey, pool, literally everything,” he said.
Pompliano interned at Octagon Sports Agency when he was in college. He quickly realized that becoming a sports agent is really difficult. So, he accepted a job in finance out of school, and landed at JP Morgan in NYC a few years after that. “I was on the fixed income desk, trading and researching bonds,” he said. “Quite a different world from the world of sports.”
The job made him realize he wanted to get back to his passion for sports. He realized he was finding more and more interest in the business side of sports. “I looked at the landscape, and I was reading and researching a ton, making lots of friends in the industry. And I realized that there was no one really doing it well from a personality standpoint. So, I started tweeting and writing, and six months later I ended up leaving my job. And this is what I’ve been doing full time now for the last five years.”
His ‘Huddle Up’ newsletter is now sent out to over 100,000 people. Grown mostly through social media it is a perfect example of how in today’s world, if you put out consistent quality content, it will be found and shared.
When asked about his newsletter audience, he points to not only the number of people who receive the content, but also who makes up that group. Investors, billionaires, team owners, executives, athletes and the casual sports fan are all part of it.
Pompliano’s latest project is a new partnership with Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Sports on a weekly podcast, The Yahoo Finance Sports Report with Joe Pompliano which dropped its first episode Thursday Oct. 24. He sees the partnership as a win-win-win where he gets to grow his brand to the massive Yahoo audience, Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Sports get more of a leg up on the competition in the sports business space, and the audience gets unique insights into the world of sports business.
“Yahoo is a blue-chip brand,” Pompliano said. “I grew up reading a lot of stuff on Yahoo. I’ve used the fantasy platform for a very long time. They have a massive audience, not only in sports, but in finance, which was super important to me because I think this is actually the first partnership where the finance and the sports team have worked together to create a new show, which is fantastic to be a part of.
“I want [the podcast] to be for the average fan. My goal with this show is to educate the average sports fan on things that they wouldn’t typically think about. So, we’re not talking about player stats or things like that. I want to educate the audience on media rights, why certain leagues are growing faster than others, why these athletes in this sport are making more money from endorsements than another sport…things that the average fan doesn’t think about in their daily life. And I want to be there to help educate them in the simplest, easiest terms possible so the total addressable market of the show is the largest it could possibly be.”
Pompliano said he plans to talk with movers and shakers in the industry, people who are making a difference at the team, league and sponsorship levels. “My goal is always to educate people as quickly and as efficiently as possible,” he said. “So, I want to align myself with guests who are able to do that as well. I want talk to the people that are making these decisions and thinking about the future. I want to talk to executives at the media companies and presidents of the biggest sports media organizations.”
He said he also want to target people who fans don’t always hear from in the sports industry, people who don’t do a lot of interviews, like the league commissioners, presidents of certain teams and of course, some of the athletes themselves.
“On an athlete level, I want to talk to people that I grew up rooting for like Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, LeBron James, certainly guys today like Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani, guys like that, I think are the North Star for us. And as we continue to build out the show, my guess is we’ll be able to get them eventually.”
As for some of the topics Pompliano has his eyes and ears on and things that he anticipates talking about on the podcast, the NFL is always king. “The NFL has a new media rights deal that they can opt out of in the next coming years,” he said. “It’s going to align with their ability to move the schedule, add an additional game. So, I think they’ll probably end up doing that. They’ll go out, they’re going to see what the NBA just got on their media rights deal and try to get something even larger.”
Another major topic he will be watching and covering is the WNBA CBA which the players just opted out of recently and watching how that plays out after next season. He also mentions soccer, both watching whether or not the MLS will continue to grow and also the World Cup coming to the United States along with Mexico and Canada.
One of the keys to what Pompliano does is that the number of topics that could come up on the podcast or any of his platforms are in no shortage. “There’s something every single day, every single week, every single month happening in sports business, whether it’s at the professional level, the youth level, the athlete level, there’s always something going on,” Pompliano said.
Something else Pompliano watches closely are the athletes themselves and which of them truly take advantage of their celebrity, their relationships and their access to grow out their own platforms. When asked for someone who has impressed him in this regard, he mentions four-time NBA Champion and NBA Finals MVP Andre Iguodala.
“He sort of falls under the radar for a lot of people, given some of his superstar teammates over the years getting a little bit more shine than he does…he had a tremendous career in the NBA, and he has built out this venture capital firm, which is investing in a ton of different startups every single year and raising a ton of money to deploy into these startups, and he certainly used his reputation and his access in the NBA to develop relationships that are going to serve him long after retirement, and I think that is one of the smartest things that athletes can do today.”
Pompliano points to the finite amount of time athletes have where they can use the platform their leagues and teams give them and “they’re basically stealing that audience and bringing it over to something that they own.” He mentions Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray and golfer Bryson DeChambeau as ones who have followed this strategy. He said these athletes build up their portfolios by growing their overall audience.
“I think it’s valuable regardless of what you want to do when you retire,” Pompliano points out. “If you want to go be Andre Iguodala and raise a venture fund, fantastic, an audience is going to be really helpful. If you want to go create a clothing company, an audience is going to be helpful. If you want to go do more charity work, an audience is going to be helpful. Quite literally anything that you do, if you’re an athlete that is now retired with an audience, it’s going to be easier to do than if you didn’t do that while you were playing.”
Insights like that are what you can expect to hear each week on the new show. As Pompliano describes it, “It’s going to be 30 minutes of your time and you’re going to learn a ton about sports business. It’s going to be things that are not only going to make you smarter as a sports fan, but they’re going make you enjoy sports more. You’re going to have a better time with your friends because you’re going be able to discuss cooler, more interesting facts about sports business that a lot of them don’t know about.”
The Yahoo Finance Sports Report with Joe Pompliano is available on Yahoo Finance and all major podcast platforms.
Dave Greene is the Chief Media Officer for Barrett Media. His background includes over 25 years in media and content creation. A former sports talk host and play-by-play broadcaster, Dave transitioned to station and sales management, co-founded and created a monthly sports publication and led an ownership group as the operating partner. He has managed stations and sales teams for Townsquare Media, Cumulus Media and Audacy. Upon leaving broadcast media he co-founded Podcast Heat, a sports and entertainment podcasting network specializing in pro wrestling nostalgia. To interact, find him on Twitter @mr_podcasting. You can also reach him by email at Dave@BarrettMedia.com.
