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CEO of Brooklyn Nets parent company Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment says sports franchises must think in generations, not quarters. <\/p>\n
Sam Zussman, CEO of Brooklyn Nets parent company Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment, believes the business of sports differs fundamentally from almost every other industry. Unlike software executives, he says, sports owners and operators cannot fully control their product, only the experience built around it.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou control every line of code\u201d in a software company, Zussman said in an interview. \u201cI can\u2019t control my product. I can\u2019t control what happens on the court, can\u2019t control what happens on any given night.\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead, he argues, sports executives operate in what he calls \u201chuman unscripted drama,\u201d where the focus is on ensuring fans leave with a memorable experience regardless of whether the team wins or loses.<\/p>\n
The challenge is amplified by the emotional relationship fans have with teams. \u201cFans have a very different relationship with your product,\u201d he said. \u201cThey feel like they\u2019re sort of a minority owner. They feel invested.\u201d<\/p>\n
That dynamic shapes everything from ticket pricing to long-term strategy. \u201cWhen you raise prices, you have to think about how fans would respond and what happens to loyalty,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
For Zussman, one of the key lessons from sports is that companies outside the industry may be thinking about customers too narrowly. \u201cI realized it\u2019s probably the healthier view for them to view their customers as fans,\u201d he said, \u201cas opposed to us thinking about our customers any differently.\u201d<\/p>\n
The long-term thinking extends well beyond quarterly financial targets. Zussman said words such as \u201crevenue\u201d or \u201cEBITDA\u201d do not even appear in the company\u2019s business plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not because I don\u2019t like money,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s because I believe that you don\u2019t have levers that increase revenue in the long run. You have operating levers, you have product levers that you have to pull.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of those levers is grassroots basketball. Zussman noted that the Nets moved to Brooklyn only 14 years ago and lack the generational fan base of older franchises.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t have this generational fandom,\u201d he said. \u201cYou became a fan of a team somewhere between the age of six and 10.\u201d<\/p>\n
That realization led to the creation of \u201cBrooklyn Basketball,\u201d an initiative that provides clinics for roughly 40,000 children a year in public schools and community facilities. While the program costs millions of dollars annually, Zussman frames it as a decades-long investment in loyalty.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe revenue is a stream of season ticket holders that could be season ticket holders for 50 or 60 years starting 10 or 15 years from now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Like many executives, Zussman is also grappling with the impact of artificial intelligence. But unlike many industries rushing to place AI directly in front of customers, he said sports organizations must be careful not to undermine the live experience itself.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou already have a superior technological solution,\u201d he said, referring to watching games at home on large screens with replay controls and greater comfort. \u201cYet people get in a car, subway, whatever, they spend a lot of money on a ticket … just to physically be there.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no substitute for the passion, the energy, the experience, the memory of being there,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
As a result, the company is using AI primarily behind the scenes. Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment has hired a vice-president of AI and is using the technology to improve operations, create efficiencies and encourage internal experimentation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re firm believers in AI literacy,\u201d Zussman said. Employees are being incentivized financially to build what he described as \u201cdigital employees\u201d and internal AI-driven capabilities.<\/p>\n
Zussman also addressed the recent drafting of Israeli players Ben Saraf and Danny Wolf by the Nets, stressing that decisions were based strictly on merit. \u201cThey were the two best players that our GM and our front office picked at those positions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But he also spoke at length about his connection to Israel and his involvement with Irgun Nechei Zahal in the United States.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing an Israeli, being born and raised in Israel and serving in the IDF, that\u2019s a really important thing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He described bringing wounded Israeli soldiers to New York following the October 7 attacks, including visits to Nets practices, games and the United Nations.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou could see that they felt the warm embrace of the Jewish community,\u201d he said. \u201cYou could see that they felt like there\u2019s life after.\u201d<\/p>\n
Watch the full interview in the video above.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CEO of Brooklyn Nets parent company Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment says sports franchises must think in generations, not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227798,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-227797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}