- PNC is proud to support "Business Forward", where community leaders discuss the issues confronting business in central Illinois.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to "Business Forward", I'm your host, Matt George.

Joining me tonight, Roy Kessel.

Roy is the founder of Sports Philanthropy Network.

Welcome Roy.

- Welcome.

Thank you for having me.

- Well, we've known each other a while, We've had many conversations in the past, about sports and sports as a business, sports as a driver in communities, sports as a driver for morale, and all sorts of things, for kids, and so on.

But what is Sports Philanthropy Network?

- Sports Philanthropy Network is a nonprofit, and it was launched originally, because we saw an opportunity to use sports, to make a greater impact in different communities.

Our feeling is, as you said, sports had is such a power to bring people together, to keep kids engaged in things like school and positive outcomes, and keep them away from negative influences, like gangs, and drugs, and violence.

And so we wanted to see, you know, after working in the sports business world 20 plus years, how can we rally all over those forces together for good?

- Yeah, key words here, educate, spotlight, connect, sports related nonprofits too, in order to build a stronger, healthier, and more inclusive community through sports.

That's good to put on a website, but at the same time, there's a lot going with these kids, and there's a lot of people doing some of the same things in communities.

How do you coordinate in getting everybody to collaborate together?

- Well, that collaboration piece is really one of the big challenges, and one of the great opportunities.

We've seen that, as you said, so many people with the great heart, and great passion for giving back to their communities, for making a difference, and they've chosen sports as a vehicle to do that.

But what hasn't happened is, they haven't worked together in the same way.

And so you may have people doing very similar things, in (indistinct), that somebody's doing in Chicago or St. Louis.

How do we utilize the successes that already exist, and help leverage those to make it easier for somebody to start a new program, or utilize that same program in their own community.

- Yeah, and there's a lot of different ways we can take this conversation.

I think one of 'em is, how do you use sports to do good for social good, social justice, social change?

Like what is the best way right now, that if you were talking to the YMCA, and you're also talking to a professional athlete, what's the best way to get everybody on the same page, in that collaborative effort.

- That's what makes it interesting, each approach is a little bit different, right?

Each athlete comes from a different background, a different community, and so their passions are different, what their particular cause, and what they're interested in varies dramatically.

And so we see individuals that are using their notoriety, and their fame from sports to go into their communities, with everything, with programs and discussions, from mental health to literacy, financial literacy, STEM education, and things like voting rights.

How do you take things,?

The Players Coalition in particular, has adopted some of those voting rights issues, of really bringing the opportunities to communities, where it hasn't existed.

And as you said, sports has an opportunity to bring people together.

People listen, right?

If an athlete goes and tells a story at a school, they're gonna listen very differently, than if Roy goes to tell that same story.

- Right.

- Right?

And so it carries a power, and it gets given a higher degree of credibility, than if you or I tell that same story.

And so what we try and do is listen to what's important to the athlete, or to a sports organization, professional team, a league, a governing body, what are the issues that are important to them and their constituents?

And so you see it with leagues like the NFL, or with players associations, where they really wanna adopt the cause that their players are passionate about.

- Yeah, and it all comes down to just doing good if you think about it.

I mean, I said that earlier, it sounds so simple, but in that process, when you're starting to interview the athletes, so to speak, 'cause that's what you're doing, you're feeling the athlete out, and trying to figure out what their likes and dislikes are, and what their causes are.

But at the same time, every community also has different issues going on.

So you may have, PNCs, one of the underwriters of this show, and they work with a lot of young students, and GRow Up Great, and all these great initiatives.

And they team up with certain people, they team up with "Sesame Street" as an example, but athletes can be used the same way.

And you said something that's very interesting is, the story.

Because it really is a lot of times personal for these athletes, or they grew up a certain way.

And to try to have someone tell that story, and communicate it, no matter how many millions you may be worth, it's hard sometimes, isn't it?

How many times have you seen that?

- Well, we see it a lot, and the athletes have these stories, and one of our big goals in the work that we do, is to help tell those stories, tell the stories of the athletes, tell the stories of sports philanthropy, and show how people are making a difference.

Because if there is a positive story, it might get on ESPN or on FOX Sports for a couple of minutes.

- Right.

- Right?

If somebody sends out a silly tweet, that might be the fodder for all the talking head shows for the whole week, it's running on the ticker the whole week.

And it's really a disservice to these athletes, who so many of them give back to their communities, and what we try and learn, and when we have them on our podcast, Kayla, our executive VP, has Legacy After The Locker Room, she brings on a lot of former players.

I have the Sports Philanthropy Podcast, so we hear about the foundations and the work that they're doing.

But that's where you learn about their stories, and how those passions developed.

- Yeah, I mean, you talk about the podcast, and that's just one of those means that 10 years ago, if you think about it, these athletes... And back in, you know, this kind of ages me, back when my cousin, Jeff George, was slinging the football around, and I was running his foundation, we didn't have social media, and maybe that's a good thing, but it sure changed the landscape of your business?

- 100%.

We have an opportunity to tell the story ourselves, we don't have to necessarily have an intermediary, like a network that agrees to tell our story, we can tell our story ourselves.

And certainly, it helps to be amplified by ESPN, or Fox, or USA Today, or any of the major networks but so many people, if you go and look at social media now, and you look at how many followers these athletes have on Instagram, and how many interactions they have on Twitter, right?

That can be good or bad, depending on the behaviors, and the messaging.

But what you see is that authenticity, and we hear so often how important it is for the athletes to be authentic in their story, not to try to be something that they're not.

They grew up in a certain environment, they grew up in a certain neighborhood, what were their challenges?

If you go back and look historically, as you said before social media, the only time we would hear those stories told, is if they were getting into the hall of fame, and they're sitting there in their acceptance speech, telling their story.

- Very true.

- But now, you learn bits and pieces of that story throughout.

We can tell some of that story for the athlete, we can articulate, why did this athlete decide on the cause of mental health, or suicide prevention, or anti-bullying, what made relevant for their lifetime?

- Yeah, I'm gonna use Brett Favre as an example, his wife had breast cancer.

And so he did pre Twitter and everything else, figure out a way because of his platform, but 99% of the athletes don't have the platform that Brett Favre has, right?

So now in today's world, if you had a cause, like breast cancer as an example, that my wife was diagnosed and I wanted to help fight that, and I had the platform of being an athlete, there are a hundred different platforms now, that you have to navigate, and the athletes necessarily aren't the best at navigating all of those.

So that's where you can also come into play, and other agents, and other handlers, so to speak, to make sure that they're doing all the right things.

- Well, you raised an interesting point, because the ability to tell that story, there's everything across the board.

So Brett Favre obviously had a huge stage, and ability to get that message across.

Most athletes don't, and some of them figure it out on their own, some of them come, and are looking for help.

And one of the interesting parts that you mentioned, is the ability to work and collaborate with other organizations.

Not every athlete needs their own foundation, oftentimes they spend a lot of money setting up a foundation, setting up the infrastructure, paying an executive director a six figure salary, and that ends up being a parent, a spouse, a sibling, or one of their buddies.

And frequently, they're only doing one or two events a year, they're not really running the programming, right?

So they're running a golf outing, they're running a dinner, and the funds from that are better used, to support something like children's home, like cancer research, like the YMCA, and not for them to try to set up a duplicative type of programming structure.

- Yeah, 'cause a lot of times when you think of athletes, you think of the golf tournament or whatever, and that's the actual event.

And you guys work with that, and deal in that space.

But it's also, and this is an important piece, the event experience.

Because that experience, when you're pulling in donors, or you're pulling in supporters, and we're gonna talk about your logo here in a second.

Because the brand of the athlete, and the philanthropic choice of dollars where they go to it's important, and that really kind of drives, and sets the platform as they move throughout their career, which sometimes is short, but it doesn't mean they still can't have that philanthropic piece, and that's where you guys come in to play.

- And I think when you mentioned Brett Favre, that's a perfect example of why some of the athletes, struggle with their foundations at the outset, which is they want to pick a cause, but that cause may not really have identified itself for them yet in their life.

So in Brett's case, if Deanna didn't have breast cancer, he may have picked some other cause, built his foundation around some other cause, and then when that happens, all of a sudden, you have a prolific shift.

If you work with existing foundations, and you raise money, you can allocate the funds wherever you deem appropriate.

So that can shift based on a child who is born with a particular disorder or disease, it could change if somebody is killed by drunk driving or suicide.

There's a number of areas, and you can shift the focus of that foundation.

The struggle is that too many of the athletes are led to believe that their foundation, will be their lifeblood, and their savior, and supporting mechanism when they're done playing sports.

And unless you're Brett Favre, or Dan Marino, or Joe Montana, or Tom Brady, that's very unlikely.

- Yeah.

- And they haven't invested enough to time and resources into building the brand of their foundation while they're playing.

And when you leave, you go to training camp in August, and you get released, that foundation, unless you're again, a hall of fame player, or all pro player, all star, it's gonna be a lot harder to develop the donor base, and the support for that foundation.

- So I just picked out a couple of events that you've done.

You've worked with the Tournament of Roses, that had to have been cool as can be.

- Yeah, they were an amazing organization, always one of my favorite places to be as a Wisconsin fan, you know, being in the stadium for the Rose Bowl, I think as any football fan, when you see the sun go down, on the San Gabriel Mountains on New Year's day, there's nothing like that setting.

But when you dig into the organization, they do amazing work in the community, and they have a very structured, and large civicly supported base that puts on the parade, and the game, it's an incredible venue.

If you ever have an opportunity to see the Tournament of Rose's House, they have rooms that are large rooms dedicated to each of the parade, the game, the grand Marshall, and the queen of the court.

- Pretty cool stuff.

And you've done a lot with the NFL Coaches Association, and I know you were just at the Super Bowl.

I saw a picture of you and the Commissioner, it's pretty cool.

- It is.

And it's interesting, because having had the opportunity to observe him, we were just down at the owner's meetings in Palm Beach, in March, and the way the Commissioner interacts, he gets a lot of flack, right?

And he's paid a healthy sum of $40 million- - You can take flack for that.

- Right, for $40 million, you can take a lot of flack.

But he's there to be the sounding board, and the person who gets the flack, instead of the owners, right?

And so he does that.

But when you watch him interact, you can see the relationship and the passion, and I'll just pull out one story that really hit me the most.

When we were covering the Super Bowl in Atlanta a few years ago, they have a man of the year event, where they bring in the nominees from each of the NFL cities, and they do a service project.

So this one happened to be at the Boys & Girls Clubs in Atlanta.

And they had about eight stations around the facility.

So some of them were recreational where the players would shoot hoops, or they would run through a little maze, and dive onto a mattress and catch a ball.

And others were a repairing some of the equipment, some of the playground equipment, planting flowers.

And what impressed me is, you know, here comes Roger, it's Friday of Super Bowl week, he's got major events wall to wall all week, and he didn't just come and do a photo op.

He was there for about an hour and a half, talking to the kids, engaging with the kids at the different stations.

And the one in particular, was wheeling mounts of dirt wheelbarRows, over to plant some trees in this facility.

And it would've been really easy for him to pick up a shovel, and take few pictures, and put a couple kids next to him, but he worked for almost an hour, shoveling dirt into the wheelbarRow, so the kids could move 'em.

And if one of the smaller kids struggled with the weight of the wheelbarRow, he would go and help them.

And he worked there, literally getting his hands and shoes dirty, and was there, and not just to take pictures, not trying to find somebody to take pictures, but he worked hard, and I've seen it at other environments as well.

- Well, that's a cool story.

The piece that I really enjoy most about your company, is the education piece, because I think that's the piece that really you could put in any community anywhere.

And that can mean a thousand different things.

But you said, "We strongly commend the organizations that undertake these critical tasks, and give back to the community."

There isn't a show go by here on "Business Forward", where I don't say it's about community, it's always about community, so I love that piece.

Talk about your peace and that education, and what that looks like?

- So our belief is that one of the most important roles that we serve, is to provide that professional development, and education piece for the sports nonprofits.

Many people into the nonprofit space, and start an organization, because they have a passion for their community, and they usually choose to execute that passion through a particular sport, right?

Whether it's baseball, soccer, basketball, hockey, tennis, doesn't matter.

We've seen everything from figure skating, to MMA, to ultimate Frisbee, surfing, beach volleyball, anything you can think of, we've seen an organization out there using.

What happens, unfortunately, is that many of these people really understand that sport, and they know how to run a camp, or a program for that sport, but they may not have run a business, a for-profit company, they may not have ever been part of a nonprofit board.

And so all of a sudden, they get part of the way into that organization that they're trying to develop, and they're like, "Oh, now I gotta figure out how to raise money.

Now I gotta figure out how to build a board of directors.

I have to figure out what compliance issue as I need, what state registration, how do I deal with these tax filings?"

And all of a sudden, they're halfway in, and they're looking at it, and they realize, this isn't just about running an after school soccer program, this is a lot more complex, right?

The soccer programming piece, may be the easiest part to run, and that's what they're least prepared.

And so speaking to groups around the country, I often ask that question.

And usually out of a group of 80 people, I'll get two or three people that have run a business, I'll get another two or three people that have been on a board of directors, and I'll get about 75 people that just love their community, love kids and love sports.

- Right.

So I'm all over the board, 'cause I've got a thousand questions for you.

I was thinking about the Super Bowl, again, what you're talking about, you were on Radio Row, and most people may, or may not know what that is, I guess they probably don't.

But Radio Row, they only give out about a hundred different passes to do a podcast, or TV, or interviews.

and this and that.

And every celebrity that goes through the Super Bowl, goes through Radio Row.

You were there, what was it like?

See, because that's where I heard...

The game's the game, but all the business deals happen during the days leading up to the game, that's the business?

- Yeah, the week leading up to the game is truly a whirlwind, right?

You start from Monday morning, Radio Row is open, and it's a little bit quieter.

Last year in Tampa was fairly dead, because of COVID, a lot of organizations didn't send their people down, and they stationed your booth, your Radio Row booths, or tables pretty far from each other.

So, you know, one table would be here, and the next one would be behind that backdrop, a pretty big gap.

This year, a little closer together, but not as close as we've seen in other environments.

But as you said, the athletes come through, they wanna come and tell their stories, their agents are trying to get them in there.

And we had over 30 guests come through our booth, and we were honored to be selected by the NFL to be one of those hundred outlets, and have the ability to tell stories.

And it was everything from concussions, to sports law, to sports agents, to athletes that are doing work with cancer, with literacy, and on and on.

And the amazing stories that are there, just shows what important work is going on.

Most of the outlets there are different from the way that we approach it, 'cause they're there either just to have fun, or to just talk about the game, right?

On the field, Xs and Os, who's gonna win, what's your prediction.

And we really try to differentiate that, we wanna have fun as well, but we know that there's so many important communities that are being served by these athletes.

- Yeah, it's pretty interesting.

You mentioned the brain, and you mentioned, you know, in football, well in all sports, but in football, I think of the injuries, and you had a hand early on in your career too, touch on that for a second?

- Yeah, so we had started a company called, SportsBrain back in about 2010.

And it was interesting because it was early on, and in, we'll call it, in the global awareness of sort of the concussion crisis.

And there was much less good information out there, the procedures were still not very well thought through.

There were still a lot of change.

Right, people didn't understand.

I'll give a couple examples.

When we started in 2010, we had gone back, and looked at the data from 2009, '10, and '11.

And there were still some NFL teams, that over the course of an entire year, practices, preseason, season, all the games, reported zero concussions, in a whole year.

And that's only 10, 12 years ago.

And most of them were three and under at that point.

- Isn't that crazy?

- And it just shows you that we weren't measuring, or monitoring what those were.

We've still seen some important changes, there's still, sadly, some high profile fails in the NFL, in the NHL, in FIFA, where you see players that are clearly concussed that are returned to action, and that's just a bad role model for the young players.

It's one thing if you're getting paid as a major league sports athlete, and you've got that elite level medical care, and everything can be taken care of.

But when you have a young a athlete, we've seen crazy things.

We were at a lacrosse tournament in suburban Chicago a few years back.

And interesting contrast, we had two girls, so one girl came with her family, and they came to look at all of our information, and talk to us, and they had taken away her uniform, made her wear sandals, so that she couldn't sneak out on the field, 'cause they knew if they let her dress in her uniform with her friends, she would've taken somebody's stick, and she would've gone out on the field.

On the flip side, there was another girl that had been concussed in one of the early games, matches in that tournament, and they came to speak to us about what they should do.

And it was the middle of the summer, really hot day.

And we said, "Well, get her out of the heat.

you know, maybe take her back to the hotel, and sit with her."

"Oh our other daughter is playing in the tournament, so we can't miss that."

I said, "Well, maybe you can sit with her in the car for a little bit."

"Well, we don't wanna miss this."

And so you talk to the parents.

And again, the parents are the lead access point, and so you have to see what happens.

And we were talking to some other families, and about half an hour later, I turn around, where is this girl sitting?

She's lying in the sun, literally in the worst place you could be of this entire 12 feet old complex, next to these big speakers that are broadcasting music, like to be background music out to 12 fields, but she's lying literally in front of those speakers, which is probably the worst thing that she could have done.

- Wow, you know, I know Jim McMan since I was 16 years old, and he's the one you think about, especially in (indistinct) country, the most, and Junior Seau, and Dave Duerson, and the list goes on.

There's many guys, and many women too.

- Yeah.

- Well, you know, like you said earlier, this discussion, we could just keep talking, and talking, and talking.

But this is sporty, this is your logo, check it out, we appreciate you coming on Roy, what a great conversation.

I'm Matt George, and this is another episode of ""Business Forward"".

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Thank you for tuning into "Business Forward", brought to you by PNC.