Watch or listen to episode 331 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, in which Neil chatted with Phil Andrews, CEO, USA Fencing.

Phil discusses why membership and not medals is the number he watches most closely, why participation comes before fandom in a sport built on doing rather than watching, why coming from outside the sport is a feature and not a bug, why awareness never converts without someone to walk a newcomer into a club, how the mask makes the most cinematic sport in the world also the most marketable, what Mandy Patinkin and a Creator Showdown deliver that $50 million in ads cannot, how USA Fencing earned the most CNN appearances in Paris, the business and operation of a sport’s national governing boy (NGB), and more.

99 minute duration. Listen on Apple, Spotify and YouTube

Try Skipper, the AI tool trained on 13+ years of knowledge shared on this podcast.

Watch or listen to episode 330 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, in which Neil chatted with Bill Bailey, Chief Revenue Officer for Satisfi Labs.

Bill discusses what changed for conversational AI in sports when ChatGPT arrived and why LLMs improved the product instead of killing it, the guardrail work that keeps a team’s agent on-brand, his build-versus-buy rule (build your own internal tools, buy anything that touches a fan), the personalization ladder from a QR code on the suite level to a logged-in season ticket holder and where it turns creepy, why the real danger is questions going unasked rather than unanswered, how live escalation hands a fan to the right rep mid-game, what it means that team web traffic is leaking to ChatGPT, and more.

Try Skipper, the AI tool trained on 13+ years of knowledge shared on this podcast.

73 minute duration. Listen on Apple, Spotify and YouTube

Watch or listen to episode 329 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, in which Neil chatted with Andrew Taylor, Senior Manager of Club Social Strategy for the NFL.

Andrew has worked across a variety of sports: a pro baseball team in Adelaide, Australia, then MLB, the NBA, four years at Greenfly, and now the NFL. We get into why social touches everything and content distribution strategy, the helmets-off content that outperforms everything else across NFL clubs, how a fan actually gets built from a food video to a game, why follower count is a barometer and not a KPI, and what selling baseball to Australia taught him about the NFL’s push abroad.

THE 13-YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF THE PODCAST!

111 minute duration. Listen on Apple, Spotify and YouTube

Watch or listen to episode 328 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, in which Neil chatted with Dave Benson, Founder & CEO, SuperQuickQuestion.

Dave Benson has sat in a lot of seats: ESPN, Bleacher Report, MLB’s Fan Cave, and a marketing run at IBM, before founding SuperQuickQuestion, the one-on-one, one-minute video meet-and-greet platform. We get into why the meet-and-greet has barely changed since our dads’ day, the eye-opening reality that 60% of contracted athlete appearances never actually happen, how a hard one-minute clock makes athletes MORE willing to say yes, the death of the shill post, and why the smartest, most nascent leagues treat fans as assets instead of threats. Packed with stories, real numbers, and takeaways for anyone working in fan engagement.

73 minute duration. Listen on Apple, Spotify and YouTube

Watch or listen to episode 327 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, in which Neil chatted with Joe Farren, Innovation Consultant, Future Sport Co.

Joe Farren has sat in a lot of seats: six years at Hawk-Eye, leading the innovation unit at Manchester City, and now running his own consultancy, Future Sport Co. We get into the Man City Roblox playbook that drove 55 MILLION unique players (and 6,000 new members in four hours), why 3D player tracking data could one day rival media rights, and the fan behaviors that outlast every tech hype cycle. Loaded with case studies and real numbers.

106 minute duration. Listen on Apple, Spotify and YouTube

Watch or listen to episode 326 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, in which Neil chatted with Ben Valenta, EVP of Strategy and Analytics at Fox Sports and co-author of Fans Have More Friends.

Ben discusses how he came to see fandom as a “belonging engine,” and why the real definition of a fan is “passion plus action” (which his team measures through what they call a value score). He breaks down why it’s far easier to grow the fans you already have than to convert non-fans (the 0-to-1 problem), why fandom is horizontal rather than vertical so your next fan is already a fan of something else, and how youth fandom actually takes root through repetition and family bonding rituals. He also gets into the most underrated metrics in sports media, the wellness research at the heart of the book (the bigger the fan, the happier and more connected), the difference between strong-tie and weak-tie fandom online, and the Greg Armstrong story that reframes what a season ticket is really for.

75 minute duration. Listen on Apple, Spotify and YouTube

Watch or listen to episode 325 of the Digital and Social Media Sports podcast, in which Neil chatted with Neil Tennant, Founder of 540 Agency, a creator talent management agency.

Tennant discusses building the NHL’s creator marketing program from the ground up, the two pillars of a creator strategy (experiential activations and commissioned content), using “concentric circles” to build a creator wish list, how the league’s fan UGC program seeded it all, measuring “return on creator spend” and bringing data to a vibes-driven space, the first-of-its-kind 3-on-3 creator tournament he dreamed up around the 4 Nations Face-Off, why long-term relationships and creator equity are the next frontier, how he discovers and signs creators today, what he’s building at 540, and more.

80 minute duration. Listen on Apple, Spotify and YouTube

Watch or listen to episode 324 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, in which Neil chatted with Andy Zeilman, President of WMT Digital, and Chris Freet, EVP and Chief Strategy Officer of WMT Digital.

Andy and Chris discuss how WMT has built a technology-and-data-first company inside college sports, and why the real bottleneck for athletic departments isn’t a lack of data but the ability to act on it. They break down the move from fan ID to fan intelligence, the push to reclaim fans (along with their data and dollars) from social media and back into an owned-and-operated ecosystem, and how AI is powering a fan data flywheel that surfaces new segments and behaviors. They also get into fluid fandom and what it means for college loyalty, where pro sports can actually learn from the innovators in college, and their own distinct paths into the industry.

87 minute duration. Listen on Apple, Spotify and YouTube

Watch or listen to episode 323 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, in which Neil breaks down some of the key themes, insights, and notes from the 2026 Gondola Sports Summit 2026.

WATCH OR LISTEN BELOW!
48 minute duration. Also, find the podcast on Apple, Spotify and YouTube

In a special edition of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, Neil chatted with Sponcon Sports' Alex Kopilow about the recent NFL schedule release, discussing how teams in 2026. The ins and outs of schedule release, which ones stood out and why, the business considerations around schedule release content, and more.