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Good morning. It's Tuesday, January 13, and here are three ideas to consider as you read today's CRO.ticker:

➤ The Job of a Board Member: As athletic departments adopt corporate-style governance, success depends on keeping boards focused on strategic readiness rather than micromanagement.

➤ Frictionless Revenue & High-Speed Retail: Removing physical barriers to purchase isn't just about fan convenience; it's a proven lever for driving throughput and capturing merch and concessions revenue on game day.

➤ Moving Beyond "Shrink It and Pink It": Modern fans—particularly in women's sports—are rejecting generic merchandise in favor of items that reflect their specific style and identity. There is a significant commercial opportunity for departments that look beyond the "men’s model" of merchandising.

➤ Lots more!

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- Matt

As college athletics takes on more private money and corporate-style boards become reality, here’s a pretty interesting perspective from Netflix Co-Founder/Chairman Reed Hastings who explains that the job of a board member is not to add value or give advice. It is to replace the CEO: "If the company falls apart, I will be part of replacing the CEO. That's basically the entire job. To have the confidence to do that, you have to learn the business. Board members are not here to add value. They can hire consultants who know the industry and are not conflicted for advice. So I shouldn't spend my time trying to give advice. So then what am I doing? I'm here as a board member as an insurance layer. Don't measure yourself by did you give a suggestion? Measure yourself by did you get more prepared for the small chance that you will have to take big action." He adds: “You’re doing that board one day a quarter for the most part. And on one day a quarter it is super hard to add value, so what you see is a lot of directors who struggle to add value, and then management has to be super polite to them. Management can’t tell them, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about’ because they run the thing. So, you see this dysfunctional thing where board members ask hard questions and management ducks and weaves and it’s not very functional.” (link)

Disney is "damn close" to selling out ad inventory for the College Football Playoff national championship game, with SVP Jim Minnich confirming prices have seen "healthy growth year over year." Despite competition from the Winter Olympics and Super Bowl, Marketing Brew's Alyssa Meyers reports the CFP attracted 40 new advertisers this season—including OpenAI, Anthropic, Liberty Mutual, and Zoom—while more than half of returning partners like AT&T and Mercedes-Benz increased their spend. Minnich notes that quarterfinal viewership was up 14% year-over-year, averaging over 19M viewers, and Disney is already finalizing renewals for the 2027 cycle. Minich: “Brands are spending more because they’re seeing results. There’s a different opportunity with college football than there is [for] other football properties.” (link)

🎙️ The NACMA Timeout Podcast: Adam Schemm

Zach Dayton (Fairfield AVP/Deputy AD) is joined by Adam Schemm, Director of Athletics at Wisconsin-Parkside. As an alum leading his alma mater, Schemm discusses the unique challenges and opportunities of the Division II landscape, specifically focusing on how athletics serves as a primary driver for university enrollment. Inside the episode:

➤ D2 Revenue Buckets: Schemm categorizes revenue into two phases: Traditional Revenues (sponsorships, fundraising, and facility rentals) and Game Day Revenues (tickets, merchandise, concessions, and alcohol sales). Notably, facility rentals remain one of the largest traditional revenue drivers for the campus.

➤ The Learning Curve of an AD: Transitioning from a career in D1 external relations, Schemm noted that while he felt "dangerous" in marketing and digital media, he had to intentionally grow in the areas of student-athlete success, compliance, and philanthropic fundraising.

➤ Exploring AI for Small-School Efficiency: Schemm is actively investigating how AI-driven tools can help smaller departments "look and act bigger."

CLICK HERE for the full episode >> 

The Tennessee Titans' new Nissan Stadium will open in 2027 with a "completely checkout-free" concessions setup, featuring over 50 Amazon Just Walk Out stores, making it the largest single-venue deployment for Amazon to date. SBJ’s Bret McCormick notes the decision, made after a five-month bid process in which Amazon beat out AiFi and Zippin, positions Nissan Stadium as only the second sports venue (after Intuit Dome) to go 100% frictionless. Titans SVP Andrew McIntyre emphasized the move is about "speed and efficiency" to keep fans in their seats: “We believe this is really the next phase, next step in enhancing our fan experience. We want people in their seats, we want people to enjoy their time in our stadium, rooting on our team; we really don’t want them waiting in lines.” Amazon Just Walk Out Director/GM Anthony Leggett adds: “Customers no longer need to pilot. It’s proven, it adds value, cuts the lines down, and drives throughput and revenue.” (link)

The Buffalo News’ Michael Petro reports the Buffalo Bills achieved record retail sales in 2025, fueled by Josh Allen’s MVP candidacy, the launch of "whiteout" jerseys, and nostalgia surrounding the final year at Highmark Stadium. Since Legends Global took over operations, the team store has implemented RFID self-checkout technology to cut transaction times in half, driving the best sales month in franchise history in September. Allen-branded merchandise now accounts for over 17% of all team sales, with his limited-edition "whiteout" jersey finishing as the NFL’s top-selling product for the season. (link)

The Seattle Seahawks have issued warnings to season-ticket holders whose accounts appear to be used primarily for resale, cautioning that their 2026 renewal eligibility may be revoked if they do not de-list tickets for the upcoming Divisional Round playoff game. The crackdown follows a 2024 season where the team went 3-6 at home amid complaints of large opposing fan presences at Lumen Field. While teams like the Lions and Packers have implemented similar measures, secondary market activity remains robust. As of Friday, the Seattle Times’ Bob Condotta reports StubHub listed nearly 700 pairs of tickets for the playoff game, with prices starting at $450 apiece. StubHub also had 370 listings for two tickets for a possible NFC title game, the cheapest at $906. (link)

Bloomberg's Feargus O'Sullivan analyzes the design of Birmingham City FC's proposed 62K-seat "Powerhouse Stadium," describing the Thomas Heatherwick-designed venue as a reflection of the "American takeover" of English football. Backed by U.S. financier Tom Wagner and Knighthead Capital (with Tom Brady as a minority owner), the £1.2B ($1.6B) stadium is part of a broader £3B sports quarter investment designed to generate revenue 365 days a year—a sharp pivot from the utilitarian, matchday-only model traditional to UK grounds. The project, overseen functionally by the firm behind the Las Vegas Raiders' Allegiant Stadium, aims to anchor an entertainment district projected to generate £750M in annual revenue by 2035, supported by £2.4B in public transit upgrades including a new tram line. (link)

SBJ’s Ethan Joyce profiles Ticketmaster's new Global President Saumil Mehta, who was hired in October after his guest post in Lenny’s Newsletter caught the company's eye despite Mehta being on a planned sabbatical from Square. In moving Ticketmaster forward, Mehta says” “It’s great that we have amazing foundational models. It’s great that we have new startups around AI every month. But the whole thing only works if large, at-scale global organizations like Ticketmaster implement AI, soup to nuts, and transform themselves and the way they vend experiences and products to their clients and to their consumers with AI.” Despite the tech push, Mehta argues the rise of AI only increases the premium on live events: "The thing that remains very scarce and precious is in-person connection, human connection, being together, seeing the best artists, seeing the best sports team, seeing your favorite sports team. And to me, I was like, live events are going to become more — not less — valuable in an age of AI.” (link)

Vanderbilt is advancing plans for a new graduate campus in West Palm Beach, Fla., focused on finance, engineering, and technology, after hitting its initial $300M fundraising goal—thanks in part to a $50M gift from Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross. Bloomberg’s Janet Lorin and Anna J. Kaiser report that the university, which aims to raise another $250M for the project, expects to complete construction by fall 2029 on land donated by the city and county, and projects a $7B economic impact over 25 years. This expansion, alongside a new New York campus and potential San Francisco site, aligns with Ross’s broader vision to transform West Palm Beach into a "Wall Street South" hub for finance talent. (link)

The Athletic's Rebecca Tauber explores the burgeoning intersection of fiber arts and sports fandom, where creators like Rysa Ruth—a fashion designer who began selling knitting patterns for WNBA jerseys online—have tapped into a rapidly growing market. Ruth, whose patterns sell for $12 and have garnered hundreds of orders, argues that traditional merchandise often misses the mark by simply applying a "shrink it and pink it" approach to women's sports apparel: “We want something that just is more stylish and cool, and it’s not taking the men’s model, it’s looking at it through a totally different lens and looking at what the actual consumer wants to wear." Ruth adds: “A lot of women’s sports fans are very queer, and that is a different demographic with a different sense of style. … We wanna wear what we think looks good, and it’s just important that that’s recognized in the designing.” This DIY movement has fostered community both online and in-person; the New York Mets saw attendance for their "Stitch 'n Pitch" event explode to a capped 400 participants this year, while monthly knit clubs at women's sports bars like Wilka's in Manhattan are creating new social spaces for fans who seek connection beyond the traditional sports bar environment. (link)

The Athletic’s Jason Jones explores how EA Sports College Football 26 is evolving from entertainment into a legitimate educational tool for young athletes, with former Georgia star David Pollack (now a high school coach) using the game to teach complex concepts like Cover 2 and Cover 4 to players as young as eight. The game features over 2,800 new plays and updated formations, allowing users to mimic real-life scheme changes—such as new wrinkles from USC's Lincoln Riley—almost in real-time. EA Sports VP of Brand and Marketing Evan Dexter notes that education via video game isn’t limited to ball knowing, explaining that “data shows football games make a strong connection with young fans who don’t have allegiance to a particular team. If you were to pull the analytics of (College Football) 25 and 26, I’m sure Colorado is being used far more than what you might think, based on the population of alumni or people geographically around the school. It’s certainly true that younger sports fans will abandon allegiance in favor of some form of hero worship, some form of individual superstar. As the sport becomes a little more superstar driven, the Travis Hunters move through it, and the Arch Mannings and those narratives start to transcend the old-school rivalries.” (link)

Legalized sports gambling has led to various software solutions to monitor wager anomalies that could be indicative of rogue behavior, but what about similar tools for prediction markets? Bloomberg’s Emily Nicolle profiles Tre Upshaw, the 29-year-old founder of Polysights, whose "Insider Finder" tool leverages blockchain data to flag suspicious transactions on Polymarket and has successfully identified likely insider trading in 85% of flagged cases. While traditional markets prohibit insider trading, Upshaw views these anomalous bets as "information oracles" that accelerate truth discovery, citing the Venezuela/Maduro ouster and a lucrative bet on OpenAI's browser launch as examples. As legislative scrutiny ramps up—with U.S. Congressman Ritchie Torres (D-NY) proposing a ban on federal officials betting on policy outcomes—Polymarket remains in a legal gray zone, operating internationally without identity checks while preparing a U.S.-regulated beta. Upshaw, whose platform has 24K users and is closing a $2M funding round, argues: "All you can do is just try to identify it and then if people see it, help them trade with it." (link)