The Sports Advisors is a biweekly roundtable featuring experienced operators —across media, sponsorship, monetization, and technology— analyzing the properties and topics that matter, and the lessons they provide to the broader industry. 

In the latest episode, four JohnWallStreet Advisory Advisors discuss how rights owners, including the Milwaukee Brewers and Golden State Valkyries, can go about maximizing the value of a championship. 

The cast for the thirteenth episode in a row includes:

As always, you can connect with any one of the JohnWallStreet Advisory advisors by sending a note to [email protected]. In fact, we encourage it!

Key insights and takeaways from the 50-minute conversation:

Play the Long Game

Newly crowned champions must resist the temptation to immediately cash in on their success.

“This is not a [short-term] revenue opportunity. This is a customer acquisition opportunity. This is a longevity opportunity…. This is about [celebrating and honoring] your long-standing [employees], partners and fans,” Brody said. Sports teams should be using a championship “as an opportunity to [enhance] connectivity [to fans], your [stadium] situation, [and make] your partnerships stronger…. If you go to [a partner] and say, ‘we won the World Series this year, you [now have] to pay 20% more’, they will say ‘we were there for you when you went five years without a postseason appearance. Be [a] friend and [a] partner. Don't try to ring the cash register.”

Convert Championship Success into Enduring Fandom

Building broad support that outlasts the winning roster is how enterprise value is created.

“There's the immediate financial gain [associated with winning a championship and] that comes from how you manage [the surge in demand] which, as John explained, is more art form than practical. There's the medium-term commercial value [created] where [a team] brings in new business and the [television] viewing goes up some and people come to the stadium more. But the real financial prize is in enterprise value [realized] a decade later. So, how [the C-suite] uses the championship to increase the intrinsic value of [the] long-term asset,” Crakes said. “The question is [will] folks [ultimately increasingly] attach themselves in an experiential economy to your team, your stadium, the community in a way that when you're rebuilding, they're [still] there. And when you're winning, they participate as part of it. That’s the only real way to monetize [winning] in the modern era, given the economics of owning tier one franchises.”

Teams Have 90 Days to Turn Increased Attention into Lasting Relationships

Championship runs attract local audiences who rarely watch or engage with the team. Turning that attention into a pipeline of future customers requires identifying who those individuals are while their interest remains high.

It starts with collecting contact information from “as many people at that parade [as possible]. Email the schedule. Make the first regular season stream free. Try to maximize that funnel [to increase] enterprise value. [The Brewers and Valkyries] really have a ninety-day window right now,” Shah said. But “the real question is [do those organizations have the] infrastructure [needed] to go capture it? Do [they] have the data warehouse personas, the automated triggers, even QR codes [for] the parades [because] that's the opportunity. After ninety days, [these newly engaged fans are] anonymous again.”

Championships Do Not Fundamentally Increase Sponsorship Value

A championship provides brand partners with a powerful marketing moment, but it doesn’t guarantee stronger business results or fundamentally alter a partnership’s value.

“When I was at Anheuser-Busch, we had a big national campaign for Bud Light and it was Dilly Dilly. And then the Philadelphia [Eagles] made a run [and] won the Super Bowl. They had a Philly Philly play. [So], we created a statue of [it], created special packaging [for] championship bottles, gave out 20,000 beers, [and] still lost market share. That was kind of a humbling experience for both the NFL and [the team]. We pulled every lever possible within our NFL partnership and our Eagles partnership to maximize the passion [and] the momentum, and because Philly is such a big market, it still didn't make an impact. It was kind of humbling [for] us as well,” Kelly said. “From a marketing standpoint, we did do everything possible [to lean] into the cultural relevance, but it [still] didn't actually move the needle [in a city that hadn’t won a championship in forever]. Everybody just assumes that because the team won every single corporate partner [is] now able to capitalize on it and that's not the case…. It's really hard to capitalize as a sponsor off of the win outside of employee engagement and things like that.”

📺 Watch the full episode on JohnWallStreet’s YouTube page.
🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Catch previous episodes of The Sports Advisors on JohnWallStreet’s YouTube channel, including discussions on the Saudi Public Investment Fund’s decision to stop funding LIV Golf, Vancouver Whitecaps FC potentially relocating to Las Vegas, the 2026 World Cup serving as a stress test for the modern sports business model, a sports betting reality check, challenger leagues as investments, premium sponsorship inventory, local sports media, making MLS Major League, the USTA and U.S. Open, LSU vs SEC, what comes next for WNBA, and TV bundle economics and the future of national rights.

Don’t forget to like and subscribe!

The next episode will be released on Thursday, November 19.

On the latest episode of JohnWallStreet Presents: Big Business on Campus, a college sports podcast powered by Playfly Sports, JohnWallStreet Founder Corey Leff and Playfly Sports Chairman Michael Schreiber sit down with Syracuse University Director of Athletics Bryan Blair.

The trio discussed treating fundraising as a math equation, Central New York’s renaissance creating a premium growth opportunity for SU, youth sports being a revenue stream, NIL vehicle and fan pipeline, and much more.

📺 Watch the full video on JohnWallStreet’s YouTube Page. 
🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Don’t forget to like and subscribe!