SBJ I Factor

SBJ I Factor: Danielle Maged

Episode Summary

SBJ I Factor presented by Allied Sports features an interview with Fanaply Chief Commercial Officer Danielle Maged. Maged has had a wide range of experience in the sports industry, with stints at the NBA, Fox Sports, ESPN, Madison Square Garden and StubHub. Now at Fanaply, she is a leader in the NFT and digital collectibles space. Maged was an SBJ Game Changers honoree in 2012. During her interview with SBJ’s Abe Madkour, she talks about making the most of and learning from every opportunity, handling tough negotiations, and how an obsession with the NBA shaped her career journey. SBJ I Factor is a monthly podcast offering interviews with sports executives who have been recipients of one of the magazine’s awards, such as Forty Under 40, Game Changers and others.

Episode Transcription

Voice Over Announcer:

SBJ I Factor is presented by Allied Sports. A new agency model, built to lead modern marketers in the shift from sponsor to storyteller.

Abe Madkour:

Danielle Maged has always been a connector. Her network is broad, and she's always focused on business strategy and commercial growth from her stints at the NBA Fox Sports International, ESPN, there was Madison Square Garden, there was of course StubHub and now at Fanaply, where she's out front on the NFT and digital collectible space. Danielle was also an SBJ game changer in 2012. Danielle, welcome to SBJ's I Factor presented by Allied Sports.

Danielle Maged:

I'm really happy to be here. Thanks for having me, Abe.

Abe Madkour:

Well, it's great seeing you. Like we do on the I Factor, Danielle, I want to start at the beginning. Because from what I understand, you grew up on Manhattan's upper east side. You were a self-described tomboy who loved sports, so tell me about your youth and how that influenced you.

Danielle Maged:

You dug that up, huh?

Abe Madkour:

Yeah, I did.

Danielle Maged:

I grew up in the city. I grew up on the east side. I have two brothers. I have a twin brother and an older brother, and I have a dad who's an avid sports fan. We were going to Knicks games and Jets games my whole life. I also played three sports, and so I was really attracted to athletics, both spectator and participatory. For us when I was in high school, we literally used to jump the turnstile at MSG and we would go into the blue seats and go down to orange. That's really like what we did to spend our time growing up, so I've always just been a New York City true sports fan.

Abe Madkour:

Obviously did that influence as you were growing, what you thought you'd do as for a job, or for a career, for a living?

Danielle Maged:

I started thinking about it... My senior year I was really sort of obsessed with the NBA, and then I got into Columbia and I was at Columbia in school. I was able to get an internship with [Proser 00:02:08], which was the largest sports market... I started working at Proser of my freshman year and they had Patrick Ewing and Michael Jordan. I actually worked there for three years off and on, and decided then and there that I had to go work at the NBA, so that's what I was doing. I went through that, my whole college experience, knowing that I would do whatever I had to do to get a job at the NBA.

Abe Madkour:

But what I understood is you were a sports writer.

Danielle Maged:

Yeah, I did. I wrote for the Spectator. How do you... Did you actually,... Wow, I'm impressed, Abe.

Abe Madkour:

I do my research.

Danielle Maged:

Yes, you did. I was a writer for the Columbia Spectator as a sports writer. I covered football, basketball, pretty much anything I could for sports, and I did that for four years on top of working with Proser, so yeah, well done.

Abe Madkour:

But I want to go back as Proser at that time, Danielle, I think if I recall correctly David Falk and like you mentioned some of the marquee athletes that were there, I know you were only an intern which is how I started as well. But what viewpoint did you get on the business that really intrigued you? What role did you want to pursue on the business side of sports?

Danielle Maged:

Well, it's a great question. I mean, there's names like Ross Levinson and Steve Horowitz, who you probably know so that's who I worked for. They were running... Ross was running PR, and I think Steve... I'm not sure if he was actually in PR, I'm trying to remember what he was, but you can probably find that out. They were my influences really early on. At first because of Ross, I was really interested in public relations. Then I just got really intrigued by the business of sports. I was doing tons of research and I was seeing what David Stern was doing at the NBA with growing the league internationally, and I just became so attracted to figuring out how the NBA was evolving into this mass cultural force to be reckoned with., I was watching it really.

Danielle Maged:

I moved away. I mean, look, I was 18, 19, 20 at the time and I actually consider myself really fortunate, because I knew that I wanted to work in the business of sports. I mean, this was literally 1988, '89, '90 so early, and there's kids that struggle to really find something that interests them and nor should they know. It's very rare, I think for someone that young to really be attracted to a field so early on. But I just knew I wanted to get involved on the business side. The irony is I ended up after interviewing 26 times at the NBA-

Abe Madkour:

Wow.

Danielle Maged:

Yes, I had interview with the properties division first, thinking the business side. Whether it was sponsorship or any of the other departments there, but I finally wore down Don Sperling over at NBA Entertainment to hire me as a production assistant. I ended up starting off, not on the business side, but on the production side for a show called NBA Inside Stuff. Which was a dream job for me to just get into the NBA after fantasizing about it for so long. And to be able to work on sort of the visual aspect of all those players that were so huge in the early '90s working on the TV shows that were helping build that brand.

Abe Madkour:

As you started doing that, Danielle, what were some of the lessons that you learned early on in terms of the role that you may want to eventually play within that career choice or within that business of sports career?

Danielle Maged:

That's a really great question. Although I started on production, Don and Gregg, you gave me so much opportunity to learn the business. I figured out early on that I was in charge of the programming relationships that the NBA had at the time and still do today, it's just the networks have changed, but at the time it was NBC and Comedy Central and MTV. They actually gave me incredible opportunity to run those relationships, and so I figured out really early that the partnership side of the business was something that I could really excel at. And that I had the ability to sort of think through strategically how to grow the NBA's business with those partners. It ended up F providing a footprint for me for the rest of my career, that partnerships was going to be my sweet spot, so it was a really formative time for me.

Abe Madkour:

Then you figure out those partnerships that you want to be in, and so some key decisions that got you to the next steps. What were some of either the mentors or the key decisions early on in the career?

Danielle Maged:

Well, at the NBA, my mentors were for sure Don Sperling, Gregg Winik, and then I figured... Then I was being given a lot of responsibility in a short amount of time and I found myself. I sort of recognized my shortcomings. I found myself a little bit... I was there for almost six years, I found myself negotiating and doing a lot of on the business side PNLs and analysis on a programming basis. I found myself really needing more skills on the business side, and so I made a crucial decision to leave the NBA, even though it was what I call ground zero for my career. There's just so many people that were at the lead back then, obviously Andrew David, which was just incredible experience. But I decided to leave to go get those skills and to get more negotiating and financial skills, and to have more of sort of the straight core background at finance. I applied to business school, not knowing if I was going to get in anywhere, and I ended up getting in somewhere. I left the NBA on a path really to increase my skillset and get a more formal grounding on the business side, so I went full time for two years.

Abe Madkour:

You're being your normal humble self, you went to Columbia Business School and you-

Danielle Maged:

I did. I traveled far again.

Abe Madkour:

Right, so what skill sets and disciplines did you learn there, Danielle, which had you better positioned for the next step of your career, which was like we talked about Fox Sports, MSG, StubHub and others?

Danielle Maged:

When I was at Columbia Business School, I knew I wanted to major in strategy and I international was really interesting and attractive to me. Seeing what we had done at the NBA internationally, I just saw there was a whole world of growth for whether it was leagues or just brands. I focused on strategy international and negotiation, so I ended up being a teacher's assistant. I took negotiation in my first year with the most amazing teacher. I ended up becoming a teacher's assistant for the second year. Little did I know that negotiations class, it sort of changed my life, because it put me into the role of postgraduate where especially in StubHub years where negotiation became really the foundation of my job. We were doing very, very large deals, so those skills were really strategy, negotiation, international deal making. The two years I spent, there were very formative for me.

Abe Madkour:

That you see [inaudible 00:09:15], Danielle. I mean, because you use those strategy roles throughout your career really.

Danielle Maged:

Yeah. My sweet spot has been looking at companies and understanding how they should grow. I think that getting the more macro view that I was able to get, even it was sort of an academic environment, but you work on case studies and I had interned when I was at school also for Viacom and Nickelodeon, I just was able to get a much more sort of macro view, versus micro.

Abe Madkour:

I mentioned some of the stops and the growth of your career. What was the biggest career risk you've taken in your mind? Why do you consider such a risk?

Danielle Maged:

The most rewarding chapter is also was the riskiest, which was my 14 year spent at StubHub. I'm a big fan of... And I talk a lot about this. The pursuing the sort of non-linear path. I think you've probably interviewed other people who've talked about it. I think traditionally, the business of sports, it used to be that you started as an assistant, you got promoted to a coordinator. Then you got a manager, and you stay maybe with the same company for a really long time. I definitely have not pursued what I call a linear path, and so when I graduated from business school, I actually was at ESPN for a little while and then I ended up at the most incredible job at Madison Square Garden on the marketing side.

Danielle Maged:

Not linear at all from my previous sort of vertical expertise, but I met Pam Harris who was highly influential in my career. She was the head of marketing at MSG, overseeing everything. When I was at the garden, I met one of the founders of StubHub. He came into my office, Eric Baker and I was really intrigued. Then when I was moving for personal reasons after running marketing at the garden... Well, corporate marketing really, I was moving to San Francisco for personal reasons and I was sort of, "Oh, I'll interview with the Giants and all the different teams and the traditional sort of players in the space." I met some agencies. I moved out there in the year 2000. It was a really... It was a long time ago, after a great two years of the garden, but I had to go. My now husband was there and so I had made that choice.

Danielle Maged:

I had this idea of StubHub was really unformed and it was sort of wasn't quite the ticket marketplace that it became. It was a private label and so I met with the founders and I just saw so much opportunity and it was such a not complete non-linear path. I started as an advisor, which I'm a big fan of. I'm a huge fan of advising companies. Most people who know me know that I take that opportunity in between full-time jobs to always keep the pulse on what's going on and changing. I started advising StubHub, it was really early days and so when you asked me the question of what was the biggest risk, it was pretty risky.

Danielle Maged:

No one knew what it was. I had a lot of people in sports and music that I knew, really close friends who they thought it was just broker. They didn't really understand it. What are you doing? Why are you... Advising was one thing, but when I made the decision to go full time, I had a lot of people question my decision. It was again nothing like it is today. I had to fight to get people's attention. We did the baseball deal in 2008, so this was early days. This is before eBay bought us, this was pre-eBay acquisition so it was pretty risky. I was tasked with really explaining the company and the space, and getting people to buy into it and it was a really... The first four or five years in StubHub were really, really tough.

Abe Madkour:

Yeah, I can imagine. Because like you said, you helped define an industry segment, certainly defined the brand of StubHub. Over 14 years, you saw how that industry really matured and changed and was perceived so differently.

Danielle Maged:

I mean, look at them today. Now there's multiple players in this space, but we also really... I think it was so disruptive, because it disrupted that value chain, and you know, you've done a lot of work. We disrupted the value chain between the rights holder and the consumer, so we put ourselves right in the middle, so there were a lot of really off people questioning what our role was. Why did we have any skin in the game? That we were taking over their consumer, and so I had to toggle the fine line of working with these rights holders, both music, sports, entertainment across all verticals and get them to want to work with us. It was really gratifying, but definitely the first couple years were tough, really tough. I mean, eBay buying us, I think helped a lot. It added legitimacy, and I stayed on after the eBay acquisition and that was really critical. I mean their owning us was critical in our doing the major league baseball advanced media deal in 2008, and that really changed perception. I think that was like the moment we arrived. We did the baseball deal. I worked with Noah Garden and Bob Bowman and all those guys over there, and it was like StubHub has arrived.

Abe Madkour:

You talked about your relationship with the properties and the rights holders in terms of working that fine line, because you were a disruptor. One thing I've always acknowledged and observed about you is your relationships, and how strong they are, and how they run across the sports industry like I said, at the top of the show. I want to get into a little bit of your personal styles, management styles and what you look for in people. You've managed big teams and you've managed disparategroups. What is your leadership style and management style? What are the kind of signs and systems you subscribe to?

Danielle Maged:

I really love this question. What I'll start off with, I'll start off with an Oscar Wilde quote. I just wrote it down because I want to make sure I get it exactly right. I don't know if you've ever heard of it, but it's, "Be yourself, everyone else is already taken." I came across that quote years ago, it's just the greatest. I would say that my personal style management, whether professional or personal, it is really ascribes to that. Especially now we live in a world where the lines between fake and real have blurred and it's super surreal. I'm most attracted to what I would call the authentic leaders. Leaders who actually are approachable, who are very transparent. When I was coming up in the early '90s, I felt there were not a lot of women especially in the sports world, not a lot of executives.

Danielle Maged:

I felt that some of the senior women at came across felt they just had to be super buttoned up, and they felt like they just had to be maybe not really give to who they really were. I think they tried to... They were just very buttoned up, and I used to look at some of them and say, "Oh my God, I don't know if I can ever be like that." Most people who know me know I'm very direct. I have a filter for sure now, and even growing up to the industry, I have. But I'm just, what you see is what you get. I am very close and personal with my teams. I keep in touch with all of them. My management style has been again I said, this is what you get really authentic, really inclusive.

Danielle Maged:

I'm not perfect, I don't try and be. I think this goes to sort of what the role of a leader is. a leader is only as successful as the teams and individuals who make up the organization. Anyone who knows me, knows I'm all about the people on my teams, and also my partners externally. My team's become my family, I keep in touch with them. When people ask me what has led to my success, I say whether it was at Fox Networks Group, or at StubHub, or the jobs where I've actually managed people, it's getting everyone rowing together. To me, I had seen early on in my career, there's functional growth and then there's sort of dysfunctional growth. There are some leaders who like to pit people against each other, because it drives performance and that's what I would say... There's nothing wrong with that. I would say that's what's probably called more like dysfunctional growth. I have been as a leader really focused on functional growth and it's getting teams aligned across the organization, even if they're not reporting to me, and getting everyone driving towards the same goals and the same vision in alignment. That's the role of a leader to me. That was what I always felt was sort of my major responsibility.

Abe Madkour:

What are you better at now as a leader?

Danielle Maged:

Probably listening. I think that oftentimes people listen to the voice in their own head. It happens throughout, no matter how old you are, what stage of your career. I think a lot of it is the breadth of the organizations that I've worked with. I've been at tech companies, at startups, as you know I have a pretty broad spectrum of experience, teams and leagues and I think I've met so many different kinds of people. What I've realized is I may not know, I may not have the right answer. You sort of learn what you don't know. I think that I when you're young, you are insecure, you have confidence issues and you try and overcome that.

Danielle Maged:

I think I really, the more experience I have, I realize that I don't know everything. I think becoming a better listener has become a much more important part of my... Especially since I've entered new spaces where some of the things I'm doing are completely new for me. I should probably bring up one of the... People ask me about major pivots I've done in my career. Starting at Fox Networks Group in ad sales was a major pivot for me and that's where listening as I bring up listening here. Because I had never worked in ad sales, and I came in at a very senior level to run an ad sales group and I ended up taking over National Geographic as well and I had to listen. I had to act fairly quickly to generate revenue, but I had to listen and learn an entirely new business, which is the ad sales business. Which did not it's not something that came naturally for me, and so that was a pretty pivotal time realizing the value of just what watching, observing and listening.

Abe Madkour:

In terms of the P... You've had to hire people throughout your career, throughout your stops. What do you look for in a new hire?

Danielle Maged:

I'm sort of famous among the people who know me, for making these hiring decisions in 10 to 12 minutes. I look for interpersonal... First off, I for really nice people that can be team players, so I should start with that. I look for being gifted with emotional IQ and interpersonal talent. I can see that fairly quickly, and it's not just some people are shy so it's not just about looking someone in the eye, especially on Zoom where I've had to hire a lot of people over the last... Especially with my new job, but I've had to hire a lot of people with Zoom, which has been really interesting. I usually try and get a vibe in-person. I don't look at where they go to school, or what their grades were. I really am less interested in that. I look at, are they intellectually curious? Are they nice people that can play in a sandbox with others? Are they great listeners? Also, I don't really like to hire if I get a sense that someone thinks that they know everything, I sense that pretty quickly, so I to hire people that don't come across that way.

Abe Madkour:

A red flag for you in an interview would be?

Danielle Maged:

Someone who says they know everything about everything. Or I ask a question and didn't really listen to the question and answers something else. Sometimes people do that on purpose, because they want to redirect, but that's a flag for me.

Abe Madkour:

Before we get into our quick hitters which I have a bunch of, and those are going to be fun. I do want to ask, because of strategy and because of negotiations which you've been in a lot of international, domestic, different vertical businesses. How do you handle tough negotiations? As a follow up then Danielle, how do you handle when negotiations are going south or going poorly?

Danielle Maged:

Yeah. I have negotiated with some really tough people, and what I've learned in practice now over the last 20 plus years. The number one thing is to actually listen. Don't listen to sort of the voice in your head, ignore the noise and I like to say, listen for the music, so there's the listening. Then it's become. Oftentimes I'm with highly emotional and borderline irrational people on the other side of the table, and I have found that not being icy, but just being calm no matter how others act, stay in control and be calm. I think being... Again, this just goes with my personal style. I think being human, trying to disarm people is really, really important. Acknowledge the other person's point of view and just really just be human, don't be a robot. Those strategies, how I've gotten me pretty far with some really strong minded, difficult people.

Abe Madkour:

Then if you feel they're going south or going in the wrong direction, are those tenets still the ones you follow, or do you take any different tact?

Danielle Maged:

Honestly, I try and focus on what we agree on and start.

Abe Madkour:

Again, we just go back to what we agree on. That is going to have to be it, and decide at what point am I going to give? Like, where's the compromise. It's collectively trying and redirect towards what we've agreed on. Then I have to decide. Sometimes it's not going to happen in the same day, there's going to have to be a give and take, and there's going to have to be compromise. I've done as some very, very, very big deals in involving hundreds of millions of dollars and there's going to have to be a give and take. Each party is not going to get exactly what they want, and when it's those kinds of levels, there's going to have to be something that is given up. I mean, I just decided what is that going to be? I mean, that's basically how it worked.

Abe Madkour:

I got to ask you this, because you were a trailblazing pioneer. You were named a Wise Woman of the Year. You hinted on it earlier, the challenges and the difficulties of being a woman in a largely male sports business during your career has been what?

Danielle Maged:

That's a really interesting question. I'm lucky I've been given a lot of opportunity. I think one of the main challenges is sort of the tribalism that's been inherent in our industry. I think people, and yes in the early '90s, it was really challenging. We all had to start out... I had to take a typing test for my first job. We all had to start, and males didn't have to do that. The women that started.... There's been a number of women before us who are trailblazers, but it was pretty challenging. I think the tribal aspect of the industry of people wanting to hire people around them that either look like them or think like them, and that's definitely been changing. But I think that was really hard for women of my generation coming up, because there weren't really a lot of senior level women, and I think that, so they weren't going to surround themselves by people who looked and like them. That's changing. I mean, I think that's changing. The other thing I'd say is, there were so few women in the sales ranks. I think to me, the industry needed to and is doing a better job of training women and getting them into the sales side of things which is really where the revenue is, as opposed to the more traditional roles, and setting them up for success to be like chief commercial officers, to actually run sales groups.

Danielle Maged:

When I was in the industry coming up, I never saw senior sales leaders that were women, and so I see it now and I had... Also in eSports which I think I have someone Lagen Nash who worked with me at Fox Networks Group, who started as a VP for me and now she's a chief commercial officer of Misfits Gaming. I love seeing success stories like that. I think I see more and more women running sales organizations, and I think that's really the revenue. I think that's a huge opportunity for women, and I think the industry is doing a better job of setting women up for success.

Abe Madkour:

A young woman asked me recently when she was talking about her career. She was saying, "Abe was I given this opportunity, or do you think I really earned it?" I was emphatic that she earned it, and you throughout your career felt you earned every position you got.

Danielle Maged:

Yeah. I do, I actually do. I felt like I had to fight for it. I was thinking going back to business school would give me more credibility, that was one thing I didn't touch on. I do think there's a confidence problem with young people in general. But with women in particular, even very successful women, they'll be offered an opportunity. I'm going to not lie. I'm going to say there's been opportunities that have been offered to me that are a little bit beyond the scope of what I'm used to potentially, and I have my doubts. I'm like, "Well, can I really do that? Is that really right for me?" Whereas I think a lot of men probably would never question it, and this is conversation that I have with a lot of senior women execs. I think especially young women have confidence issues, and so I just think there's tons of potential there to build confidence, both in young people and also even in more senior executives to be honest.

Abe Madkour:

Now we get into some more quick questions, quick hitters about you. As we start any regrets?

Danielle Maged:

I look at the decisions I've made, they have not been linear. There's been little stops and starts. I don't really have an any regrets. I thought when I first went to business school, I was for the first year regretting at that time, did I make the right decision? But looking back, I have no regrets. Every opportunity and chapter I've learned from, and so I wouldn't trade anything, I really wouldn't.

Abe Madkour:

Love that one. All right. We know you're busy. We know you've had multiple different big jobs, but how do you get away from it all? You mentioned your husband, you mentioned things that you probably need to just decompress and get away from it, reading, listening to, hobbies, what are they?

Danielle Maged:

I love reading, so I'm glad you brought reading. I actually am a reader and I actually read real books with prints and pages. Someone gave me like a thousand page book recently, it's Bruce Springsteen, All the Songs. It's huge, it's this thick and it actually dissects what's behind every single song that he's written. I don't know who wrote it, I have to actually go back and look at who actually wrote it and why. But it's sitting on my night table and I am actually reading it. I'm reading the history of what every single one, because I'm a huge Springsteen fan. When I have some free time, that's what I'm doing as far as books. Generally speaking, I'm a beach person and as far as what my favorite thing on the planet is to do, my happy place is out in Amagansett in Long Island, is my very, very happy, happy place. I try and get out there as much as I can. I like to be on the beach. I like to just chill, and that's how I decompress. There's people that run marathons and do triathlons, that is definitely not me. I am the complete opposite of that.

Abe Madkour:

Well, we talked about your childhood, so I have to ask this question. Will the Knicks or the Jets ever win again?

Danielle Maged:

The Jets long suffering Jets fan... Knicks, I think the Knicks will. The Jets honestly and I'm weary all my friends over at the Jets, I am a long, long suffering Jets fan. I'm probably a more rather Jets fan than I am Knicks, and I keep thinking they are... With Sanchez, I thought their time had come really and it was so heartbreaking when it didn't, and I'm praying. I'm praying for the day that the Jets actually make it.

Abe Madkour:

Okay.

Danielle Maged:

I hope so.

Abe Madkour:

I know you're diehard Knicks and Jets. All right, now these are a little bit more serious as we end Danielle, finish this sentence for me. The sports industry needs to do a better job of...

Danielle Maged:

Diverse ownership groups, because that's where the power base is and I don't know how to make that happen. It need obviously just diverse ownership groups, honestly.

Abe Madkour:

I know this happens to you a lot. I'm sure neighbors, friends and family, talk to my child who wants to get a job in sports business. The best career advice that you give young people who want to be Danielle Maged, and want to work at the organizations that you've worked in and the roles that you've had is?

Danielle Maged:

Well, this is the number one thing I tell kids and I do talk to a lot of kids. Look at the broader ecosystem, because what I see is that kids in high school, college, whatever it is coming out, they look at the leagues, the teams, maybe they'll look at some of the larger sort of agencies, right? The CAA, the Wasserman, Endeavors, et cetera. But what I say is, take a look at the sports ecosystem, the companies that touch the sports leagues, the up and coming, even whether it's NFTs or the technology companies. I mean, the StubHubs of the day, there are so many companies that provide an entry into sports and I think that the young people just don't understand that scope of sort of how to look at it in a more macro basis, and so you look beyond the obvious choices is my number one piece of advice.

Abe Madkour:

Skill set that they should bring, do you tell them to get in sales? Do you tell them to get in any specific area?

Danielle Maged:

I think ticket sales is a great place, although yeah I think ticket sales is great. It's easier for sure to get in boiler room and sort of the ticket sales aspect. I think sales for women in particular is just not that many of them I think. But again that connotes like a team. I just think that looking again and getting hands on experience when you're in college with any company that touches sports in your college years, there's a lot of opportunities for internships beyond the teams, and teams are super selective as are the leagues. As far as skills themselves, experience number one. I would say interpersonal, kids don't communicate the way we used to, so they're on their phones. They have social media skills, don't get me wrong. But actually speaking face to face, I see with my own. I have two 17 year olds, two boys. I see one of them is very gifted interpersonally and can speak and have conversations, the other one's really shy and I just think that kids need to learn communication skills, both writing and orally and how to actually conduct a conversation. They're just not used to it, so work on that is what I tell kids.

Abe Madkour:

Last question, what's next for Danielle Maged?

Danielle Maged:

Oh, right now I'm in deep with Fanaply. We're working on a bunch of really great partnerships, but we're building... We've been in the ecosystem for three years and so I am 100% focused on Fanaply, growing the business, and getting out there and getting into the ecosystem. They've had multiple vertical partnerships, we're definitely hitting a pivotal stage at the moment. The NFT NFTs are sort of digitizing fandom, it's a really interesting space for me. You guys have covered it a lot. There's just tons of potential at the fan level, not the higher price ones, but just to actually reward and engage and so that's what I'm really focused on, and helping them to get to that next level.

Abe Madkour:

Well I said at the top of the show, you've been a connector, you've been an out front on strategy and on really the commercial and business strategy around sports business for more than two decades, so great to spend time with you today, Danielle Maged. Thanks for joining the SBJ I Factor presented by Allied Sports, and we will see you in-person soon we hope down the road.

Danielle Maged:

Yeah, thank you so much everyone. I really enjoyed it. Thanks, Abe.

Voice Over Announcer:

SBJ I Factor is presented by Allied Sports. A new agency model, built to lead modern marketers in the shift from sponsor to storytelling.