About 100 students at Jacksonville University learned Thursday that if they pursue a career in the sports industry, they shouldn’t expect it to be all fun and games.
Ken Babby, owner and CEO of the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp, and Jacksonville Sports Council Executive Director Alan Verlander spent about an hour with undergraduates, graduate students, faculty and administrators at Jacksonville University’s Davis College of Business sharing their insight about the business of sports.
Presented by the Davis Leadership Forum, the discussion was more about nuts and bolts and less about balls and strikes.
Verlander, who played college baseball, said he entered the business side somewhat unintentionally. He’d been working in the development office at the University of North Florida for about two weeks when he was called to the president’s office.
“I thought I was in trouble,” he said, but as it turned out, Verlander was appointed to replace the athletic director.
He later became director of athletics at Jacksonville University, the city’s director of sports and entertainment, and in 2014 joined the sports council.
For him, success in sports came through networking.
“Meet as many people as you can,” Verlander said. “Your network will get you where you want to go.”
But Jumbo Shrimp owner Babby disagreed about the value of building a contact list.
“It didn’t help me a bit,” he said, even though he grew up around professional sports.
His father was the general counsel for the Major League Baseball Baltimore Orioles and Babby would accompany him to the ballpark.
“At 10 or 11 I followed my father around Camden Yards carrying a yellow legal pad – trying to be like my dad,” he said.
When he graduated from college, Babby thought his family connections would help him get a job in the business, but that was too optimistic.
“I called every team in Major League Baseball and the NBA. No luck,” he said.
So he went to work at the Washington Post and stayed there for 14 years, eventually becoming the newspaper’s chief revenue officer.
When the Post was sold in 2012, Babby decided to “go all in” and purchased Akron, Ohio’s minor league baseball team and renamed it the Rubber Ducks.
Babby bought the Jacksonville Suns in 2015 and has renamed the team the Jumbo Shrimp starting this season.
On the subject of leadership, the executives agreed.
“Hire good people and empower them to make decisions,” said Verlander. “Make sure you make them part of the organization.”
Babby runs his two operations with the same philosophy.
“Get the right people on the bus, make sure they are in the right seats and then stay out of the way,” he said.
Running a sports business has some of the same challenges as other business owners and managers face, they said.
For Verlander, his biggest challenge comes when it’s time to cut someone from the business team.
“The hardest thing for me is when I have to let someone know they are no longer part of the organization. It’s a hard decision,” he said.
Having the best-laid plan strike out is the toughest for Babby, who recalled the first time his organization ran a game at The Baseball Grounds of Jacksonville – the 2016 University of Florida vs. Florida State University game.
“We thought it was just collegiate baseball,” he said, so the staff wasn’t prepared for a packed ballpark.
“We had 54-minute lines for a hot dog because we weren’t properly staffed. Quite frankly, we were embarrassed,” Babby said.
But part of any business is bouncing back, he added.
Since then, the team has a new $200,000 point-of-sale system and when the Gators and Seminoles returned to Jacksonville this week, the Jumbo Shrimp were warmed up and on deck.
“Tuesday night was spectacular,” said Babby. “We had 9,000 people in the ballpark and the longest line was 4 minutes and 30 seconds.”
Babby and Verlander also agreed that like many businesses, social media has changed the playing field.
Verlander said the sports council has enlisted a group of social media “influencers” that help deliver the organization’s messages to up to 10 million followers – and immediately.
“It also has opened up jobs because every team has a social media staff now,” he said.
“Social media is fascinating,” said Babby. “It gives you a direct pipeline to your customer 24/7/365.”
The event on Thursday was the final installment for the 2016-17 academic year, said Barbara Commander, associate director of business programs at the Davis College of Business.
While the forum was designed for students – and a class requirement for students seeking a sports business degree – she said changes are being considered for the 2017-18 series.
“We hope next year to make the community more aware of the series.” she said.
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