Hi, and welcome to How to Sport, the show that highlights the unique experiences and journeys of professionals in sports biz.

I'm your host, Megan Robertson, and I have the privilege to be here today with Chief Marketing and Commercial Officer of the Bay Area Host Committee, Patti Hubbard.

Welcome, Patti, Hi, nice to be here.

We're super excited to have you on the show today.

So we'll kind of start from the beginning and then we'll work our way to where you are now, at this incredible in this incredible role that you're in.

So you graduated from Providence College with you with your Bachelor of Science and Marketing.

You are a Division one field hockey player and two time Big East champion, and we'll get to that field hockey and how that's still relative in your life today.

But you have an extensive background with a multitude of experience across marketing and leading teams, which is super important.

So we'll start at the beginning.

You started in the ticketing world at the Providence Ruins and Sports Lab and then transitioned into a senior account executive with contemporary marketing.

What would you say you learned in the early stages of your career that has been beneficial to where you are now.

Yeah, thanks so much.

It's always fun to talk about the career journey that you've had and take a minute a busy day, So thanks for this, you know.

I think buying sports in college for me really was my launching pad into my career.

By playing at that high level of sport, I was able to meet some early contacts and early relationships that really allowed me to start a career in sport, specifically at the Providence Bruins.

And I think because of those contacts and those relationships and the confidence that I had playing at that high level of sport enabled me to really start my internship at the Providence Bruins and really hit the ground running and really be able to look at this first year team.

So the team Providence Bruns had moved from Maine to Rhode Island and so it was their first year in a market like Providence, and so being able to see something from the beginning and building something from the ground up even though I was an intern really became a theme throughout my career and starting something from the ground up, building it, building a team, being part of an organization to be able to be a part of a lot of different functions.

You know, it really has been really setting the stage for my roles past the Providence runs, including you know you mentioned Contemporary Marketing again, that was a small agency that grew through many acquisitions to be ultimately part of Live Nation.

So you can see kind of how things start small and they end up big.

Has really been a theme in all of my career roles.

And that startup mentality is so crucial, especially for the athlete.

I think that competitiveness and wanting to see something to feed is so huge.

The other thing I want to highlight is this business is so much about who you know, not what you know, and what you know is important.

But you bring that up to I think two fantastic points.

So following those two roles, you worked at Live Nation and Onboard and Entertainment as an account director and president respectfully, and you were leading national partnerships like Coca Cola, Levi's, and Visa.

So as a young professional, how did you navigate working with brands of that stature and any advice you can share?

Yeah, you know a couple of things there.

One is, you know, I was working primarily in Rhode Island.

I was working in New York.

Always thought I'd sort of live as a New England girl back there, and I was given this opportunity to move to Atlanta as this Live Nation.

At the time, it was SFX Entertainment, then it was Clear Channel Entertainment, and then which is now today Live Nation.

And with that growth, there was opportunity, right, opportunity to be at the forefront of, Hey, we're building a team here, We're evolving the organization, we're scaling the organization, you know.

And I was in my mid twenties and just kind of looking for what was next.

And I raised my hand.

I said, I'll move to Atlanta as part of this role up of all these concert promoters, and I'll work with Coke and I'll work in the building.

I'll be in the hallways.

I'll be sort of at the forefront of it.

And again I was really young, raised my hand.

I didn't have a family at the time.

I was willing to move and you'll see a theme in that as well.

But so I moved to Atlanta, started working in the co Cola building and then they said to me, you know, we're going to need a bigger team on this business.

This is a huge business.

And at the time I said, okay, and they said you're going to need a team.

I'm probably going to need about twenty thirty people, and I just did it.

So I think part of that competitive mentality of like you just figure it out.

I opened an office I think I was twenty seven at the time in Atlanta, built a huge team around the coke card business at the time, tied into music events, and I just I just put my head down and did the work.

And part of that success really came with like finding great people to work with and teammates to work with to be able to execute which at the time was one of the largest promotions ever done at coc Cola.

So a year and a half down in Atlanta, you know you're in the hallways, you're building those relationships, and you mentioned it, those relationships live with you through your career, right, So I was able to bring that Coke relationship through everything I did, and even starting an office out on the West Coast.

You mentioned Levi's and Visa No Live Nation said to me, we need someone how to run the Levi's business.

So I moved out to San Francisco and started over again personally, but I used that as the next opportunity to advance my career, and I wasn't I didn't say no to those things.

I said yes, knowing that everything would work out if I put in the.

Work, willing to take a risk, and relationships such a huge part of not only this business, but so many businesses.

So tell me about your next role.

You moved to the West Coast and became a founding partner.

Let's talk about it.

Yeah, yeah, so I again, I was like, I'll go to San Francisco the Bay Area for two years, so you know, I'll put some time out there.

A great opportunity.

I'm still here twenty five years later, so U.

And part of that was, you know, moving to the market.

They needed someone on Levi's.

I walked in the door at Levi's again similar to Coke.

They said, this agreement, there's not a lot in this agreement.

We're not happy with this relationship.

It's a three year deal.

Again, I had to just dive in and figure it out.

And part of that success with a client like that is really spending the time right so being in the hallways wanting them one as a client to succeed, right, So they are also in their own jobs having to do well.

And I always took that mentality of like, I'm going to be here with you.

I'll be an extension of your team.

I will help you figure it out, i will build a relationship with you, and I'm going to go to bat for you in a huge organization.

Right.

And so I'm still working on the Levi's business today, So twenty five years later, they still end up a client, and I can't stress enough how important those relationships are.

So I took that Levi's relationship, I started working on some Nike business.

I took the Coke relationship and that was really for me the foundation of being the West Coast president for MKTG because I was able to build around a couple key clients.

And that's how businesses start, right.

You bring a relationship like that where you're invaluable and you can build a business around it.

And that's again been a theme through all the next roles that I had coming out of.

That great segue.

So then you co founded Brand Forward Sports, a company focused on helping current and former pro athletes.

So what encouraged you to do this?

You've talked about relationships.

You've talked about loving what you do, and then on top of that, then went to work for you rue again helping athletes.

So let's talk about those two roles as well.

Yeah, I think to my experience, the MKTG experience was part of eleven year journey where we were acquired by Dentsu Sports, and so part of that journey was I've kind of I've done this, I've done this.

I was like, what's next?

And then I you know, being a former athlete, I kept getting referred to by bike clients said hey, we have this athlete.

You do a lot of work in the marketing and branding space.

And you have to remember, like eight years ago, the nil was the thing.

Yet there were a lot of athletes who were looking at Steph Curry and Lebron and like the top percentage of athletes saying, well, they started a company, they're you know, they are doing philanthropic work, they're out there, why can't I write?

And so really sort of in parallel social media, like you saw a lot more athletes showing up in social media SOT a lot of influencer work, and so we started brand Forward Sports right at that time pretty early on, and we just had tons of athletes coming to us.

We had tons of referrals, you know, whether it was someone who worked on a deal with Coca Cola at one point, like we just had my business partner, former business partner, Stephanie Martin, and I looked at it and said, there's no one filling this gap of what is my brand as an athlete.

And because of our brand building work with all these nice, you know, corporate brands, we were able to take that process to these athletes and really helped them show up outside you know, off the court, you know, off the field in a way that was really powerful to them.

And knowing who they are, what they stood for was an important part of the process of how they would make money, right, And the agent didn't do that for them.

They needed a brand specialist and a marketing specialist and really sometimes a therapist right about like what are you doing out there?

What are you doing in the in the world, the country, back to the world besides being an athlete, so very much.

A trailblazer in that space.

I mean, it's crazy to see how much progress has been made in that field, and I can only imagine what the next ten years will look like in that.

Space, all right, we were really passionate about those underrepresented you know, represented athletes, the female athlete, the Tier two NFL athlete, the olympian.

They had no support, right and so that was really one of the inspirations for us to create Brand Forward.

And they also didn't know what they were going to do next after sport, so that really kind of the pandemic hit ran Forward pretty hard.

You know, We're still were working with athletes, but a lot of our event strategy and workshops went away.

So right around that time I went over to Urous Sports as an advisor and ended up the full time with them because I thought that that next stage for the athlete was for replacement, so like all those attributes and skills they have they've learned through sport are going to really work work well for them and help them as they go into careers.

And so that was still an advisor for a year.

It's an important part of the puzzle for athletes is like what's next and helping them show up to employers when they see their LinkedIn doesn't have the experience of some of their peers, but they have so much to offer to these great companies, and so I'm really passionate about that, like getting athletes into these roles because we know they do well.

Ninety percent of C suite women are former athletes.

We don't know the story of how they got there, and I think that's why this podcast is great on what you're doing, but also it's about how these athletes have so much to offer that's not on paper.

It's so true.

And you started off with us talking about field hockey.

I was also a Division one soccer player goalkeeper, so very similar.

But I completely agree that the mentality of athletes is different.

But it's sometimes hard when you haven't been able to work a job in the summer because you're training for the season, or in the spring you can't get an internship, or you can't go study abroad.

All of those factors are so huge.

So brain forward and you are what valuable work that is, and again you see it paying off in specifically like c suite femails, so super super important work.

All right.

So, chief Marketing and Commercial Officer for the Bay Area Host Committee.

Wow, so less than a year into the role, tell me about the biggest surprises, excitements, challenges.

Let's just start there and then we'll kind of dive in a little bit further.

Yeah, I think some of the biggest one of the biggest surprises, and why even joined the Barrier Host Committee.

Originally I was doing some kinds of thing.

I was enjoying the athlete work.

My good friend z Aileen was starting the Barrier Host Committee.

The fact that it didn't exist was my biggest surprise.

So what would happen is after Super Bowl fifty, the sports Commission or the host committee would go away, right, and then there would be you know, college football playoff woul happen, and they'd put together a team around that.

And we know how hard it is to start a business and even harder to maybe close the business.

So the fact that this in the Bay Arier didn't exist was a miss, right.

So the fact that the Bayriry didn't have that representation as a sports commission was one of the main drivers.

I just felt like that was there was a reason the Bayry, like the Bay Area was number eighteen on the best place to host global sporting events, right, Like, we were missing out on opportunities by not having that thread and not having that leadership.

And so the major sports team's presidents came together and really got behind it, which in itself is amazing to really help stand up the barrier host committee and put a team in place to make sure that we are not only in place for these upcoming events, but also long term so that the data is not being a loss, the knowledge is not being a loss, that we become a premier place moving forward for global sporting events.

That's awesome and on your team's play currently twenty twenty five, NBA All Star Game, Super Bowl sixty, and the FEPA World Cup in twenty twenty six.

So you mentioned that you had to get buy in from these different professional sports teams.

How is working with all of those groups been knowing that kind of the agendas are different for each of them.

So what have you learned through that experience?

Yeah, I think it's been an amazing opportunity When you walk in a room and it's all of those leaders of teams and they've all been so gracious and willing to mentor and support us.

Other markets aren't structured the same way we are.

We are very unique from that perspective.

The fact that we've our board is made up of not only the presidence of sports teams.

But it's also we have all this amazing advisor group, which is Pence, Steve Young, Brandy Chess Dance.

We have amazing athletes advising us.

We have the head of BART Transportation here in the Bay Area.

We have representation from Salesforce, so we we have the best of the best guiding in advising us.

And that in itself is really unique and an amazing opportunity and a big draw for me to have those minds supporting us, just a ladder back.

And I want to point out that you know, super Bowl and Woke Up are in the same year.

That may likely never happen again.

So the fact that we have super Bowl and Woke Up within six months in the same market in the same year, a lot would have to happen to have that ever be repeated.

So here we are if we signed up for crazy and this is what we're doing.

And I think we need the backing of all those teams and all of those people I mentioned in order to be able to pull this off at the level we know we can.

And the economic impact of those events is only going to benefit all of those teams, right.

So yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it's interesting you know, they all do have very much their own agendas.

The fact that they're coming together to back that really is special because they are somewhat competitive with each other.

You may think just because this is happening, they're naturally competitive from a sponsorship perspective, from a ticket sales, from a fan perspective.

And I think it speaks volumes to know they've come up and know that how important these events are to the region.

The Bay Area has been down, it's now back up.

And part of that narrative that we're hearing makes us all really competitive, right because we love the bear, we love we live.

It's really special and emi and that passion is what unites everyone on this board and everyone who's putting this together, because we want to make sure that that narrative, that negative narrative, is not the narrative moving forward.

Super important.

So as of March, there were four women in the C suite of the Bay Area Host Committee.

So tell me how empowering that's been for you and typically a male dominated industry.

Yeah, you know, over the course of my career, you know, I've had male and female bosses throughout that.

I mean, I've had a wonderful experience in sports have been really lucky.

I've had huge allies to give me these opportunities to move markets, to like find the next opportunity.

I can't I can't stress that enough.

I do think, you know, r C Suite is purposely set up the way that it is, and part of that is that we're we've been given an opportunity that maybe we haven't had it to this point in our career, you know, and I think that we're doing we're passing it along to the people that we're also bringing to the table.

Maybe they've been overlooked, maybe this is an opportunity they weren't given before.

And part of what we're doing is really stretching people.

Right, So I didn't necessarily sign up to do commercial.

I am doing marketing and commercial now, and that's intentional because part of that is it's stretching me, but also looking at how putting all the puzzle pieces together in my past parts of my career, it really has brought me to this point.

And I think Zalen is the one who recognized, like your best position to do these things and to build a team around this, and you know, it's really special to find somebody who says I know you can do it, and I'm going to allow you to do it and give you the ownership to do it.

That is very unique in the sports industry.

That's really incredible and looking at like the stepping stones.

That's what I like to call is like the stepping stones of the career that has ultimately led you to this place.

Is it's cool to see all the puzzle pieces coming together.

All right, So on top of all of your professional duties, you also take time to coach high school and club field hockey.

That's really cool to see, even though you are super busy, how you're giving back to the game.

And your daughter is a big field hockey player too, is that correct?

Yeah, yeah, she was in high school.

She's at Boston College now she's playing intramural sports.

But being her coach in high school was something I knew that I would never get back, or an opportunity to get back, so I made the time to do it.

It wasn't always easy, but it was a real special experience to part of it is really understanding, certainly as a marketer, understanding.

I'm really curious about fans and audience and consumers.

I was a psych major originally in college and I switched to marketing.

So being around high school students every day for three months, it is almost like a big focus group, right, Like you're coaching them and you're learning so much and you're also understanding them a bit better.

So I really I feel like that type of time was invaluable to really dig in and understand that generation on some level.

And it's fascinating.

They're just at a different level than when we were even at that age of like what they're balancing and what they care about, and they're so purposeful and what they're passionate about, Like I didn't.

I was not like that in high school, So it's really fascinating to see, you know, how they are as students but people and also as athletes, and.

Even ways to market to them, right, because the ways they interpret and get content now is completely different than even I get content snapchat TikTok, Like that's not a primary method of how I get my news, But what you're seeing is with younger generations, that's how they're getting and believing the content they're seeing.

So it's it's truly fascinating.

A focus group was a really funny way to put it, but it is super super smart on all right, Patty, Well, this has been so valuable and I think we could sit here and talk for an hour, but I like to end my podcast with one final question.

So, if you were to provide one word that describes the culmination of your career up up until now, what would that word be.

I would use the word fate.

Yeah, I can give some I give some context to that.

I think you know, I wouldn't call it luck because I do think I worked hard and built the relationships and all those things, but I've never had to go through a formal interview process.

That is amazing, and so part of that, to me, that's fate, right, Like you are putting yourself out there at the right time when you feel, like me, maybe you're ready for a change.

You know, you rely on your network, you talk to your friends, and I feel like things have presented themselves to me in a way that I'm like, I knew was right, and I knew it was like the right timing.

I knew it was the right people to work with, and I feel like those things have sort of just I go had a couple of moments where I'm like, what's next?

I'm a little bit nervous, like what's happening.

And I think if you allow yourself to have a little bit of patience and be intentional and really take a step back from things, things will present themselves.

If you've done everything you can until that point, right like treated people well, have given people opportunities, have been kind to people when they reach out about a question or if they want a network.

I've never been that person, maybe to a fault where I've always I've never been someone who's blown somebody off or ghosted or I've always tried to be how I've wanted to be treated throughout my career or have been treated, and so I try to give that back and hope that the karma comes back to me.

And so that's why I use the word faith, because I really do believe if you're a good person and you do hart good work and you've done those things, that opportunities will present themselves.

What a great way to end this podcast.

Thank you so much for joining me today on the How To Sport Podcast.