From Roller Derby to Media to The Career Path to Private Equity, Three Good Early November Listens…

Our travels have brought us a tremendous amount of new listens to start November, from great origin stories to how to succeed in everything from research to roller derby, broadcast to investment. As always you can find all of our ten plus years of pods here. Liten, learn and share away.

Building Equity in and around the business: First up we caught up with Bobby Sharma, Founder and Managing Partner of Bluestone Equity Partners, to discuss the rapidly evolving landscape of private equity in sports, his remarkable career, and the opportunities and challenges facing investors across the industry. Sharma explains why sports have become an increasingly attractive industry to invest in for institutional capital, while highlighting the complexities of investing in professional franchises, emerging leagues, and international markets. He reflects on his experience helping build the NBA Development League, his work expanding professional sports properties internationally at IMG, and the lessons he learned working alongside industry leaders David Stern, Ted Forstmann, and Ari Emanuel. Sharma also breaks down Bluestone’s investment strategy, its $350 million fund, and its portfolio of businesses spanning sports technology, recreational sports, and entertainment, including Selkirk, Volo, and Poolhouse. He closes by sharing his perspective on the attention economy, the importance of continuous learning, and his advice for young professionals looking to build successful careers in sports. Listen in here.

Rolling Through A Research Career: We welcomes Ally Corbin, VP of Custom Research at Navigate and a 15-year veteran of the Chicago-based sports marketing and analytics agency, to discuss her career, her research, and her surprising second life as “Tornado Alley,” a retired competitive roller derby player. Corbin explains how a chance invitation to a bout in 2019 led her to the Arizona Derby Dames, where she raced bank-track derby and eventually won a national championship before stepping away from the sport. She then shifts to her work at Navigate, unpacking how the agency designs custom research for brands, leagues, and collegiate athletics, why quantitative methods have overtaken traditional focus groups, and the quality controls her team builds in to guard against bad data. Corbin also digs into Navigate’s “fan friction” research and its “utility is the new visibility” philosophy, and closes with her take on how Gen Z and Gen Alpha are redefining fandom, why ratings data deserves scrutiny, and her advice for job seekers trying to break into sports research. Give it a whirl here.

Legendary Leaders Put Stories To Paper: Lastly, Tom spent time with John Kosner and Ed Desser, two veteran sports media executives and co-authors of the new book “We’re Live!: Inside the BIG Business of Sports Media,” to discuss their decades-long careers and the book they wrote to pass that knowledge on. Kosner and Desser trace the project back to their shared admiration for Mark McCormick’s “What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School” and to David Stern, the subject of a chapter titled “Stern Training,” and share stories from their years at the NBA, ESPN, CBS Sports, and beyond. They then dig into how sports fandom itself has changed, unpacking why Gen Z and Gen Alpha fans are discovering sports through gaming, social media, and fragmented interfaces rather than traditional broadcasts, and how leagues are experimenting with rule changes, camera technology, and officiating tools like sensor-equipped basketballs to keep pace. Kosner and Desser also talk through the technology under building sports’ long partnership with innovation, the growing scrutiny around game integrity in a prediction-market era, and the book’s companion curriculum for educators. First, here is the link to the book, second listen in here.

More to come, suggestions welcomed!