The first Sports Networker event took place last week in NYC and seeing that it was nearly 100 people over capacity at the venue, I would say it was a fairly big success.
I am still receiving thoughtful emails from attendees who said it was packed full of quality sports professionals and they all received a ton of value from connecting in person.
We had Bill Rasmussen, the founder of ESPN who is featured on the picture to the right, in attendance promoting his latest project CollegeFanz, along with the really fun team from LockerBlogger.com, Sports Lawyers, sports social networking platforms, professionals athletes, NBA, MLB, NHL, NFL league and team employees, AFL, agencies, marketing firms, CBS, Madison Square Garden, minor league teams, and a number of other quality professionals (I am leaving out a large group as over 350 in total attended throughout the night).
A number of attendees (almost all of your from what I remember) said you wanted more of these events to occur seeing that this event was extremely beneficial. The one obvious downside was that the venue was not big enough and it was a little loud at times — sorry guys. I will be planning another one of these in NYC over the next two months, along with potentially rolling these out to other cities like L.A., Chicago, and any others where we can get around 300+ to attend.
Feel free to tell me which city you would like me to bring these event to, and any type of format you would like them to be.
I also plan on doing other mini conference/ sports business type events where there is general networking (and even other types of speed networking) along with possible speakers/panel discussions on latest trends in the industry… a hot one being social media right now.
Check out this quick video to see what the atmosphere was like during the event (sorry my hand was getting bumped left and right while recording this video)
I also snapped a bunch of pictures with some of my “online” friends who have been a part of sportsnetworker.com for a while now and I managed to take a few amateur (I mean REALLY amateur) pictures of various sports networker attendees. Feel free to check out the slide show below to see if your recognize any of the faces in the industry.
In the end I was pleased with the event and look forward to doing more of these to help bring quality sports professionals together to connect on a more intimate level and ultimately come closer to achieving their career goals.
If you attended the event please leave a comment below and share your thoughts, tell others what you liked, what you disliked, who you met, the benefits you received from it, and if you think others should attend in the future.
Great photos and video Lewis!
Looks like a rockin’ event, Lewis! Wish I could have been there.
It was a fun time Chris, next time you will have to make the trip!
this looks fantastic. you’ll have to bring it to dallas!
Would love to see one in the Bay Area.
Will an event be planned in Philadelphia?
You need to have one in LA!
Lewis,
Congrats on putting this together. What about an event in sunny S.florida where the sports are hot? We have lots of sports professionals and business people here who would love to connect to each other. And we have great venues to have it at!
Great venue, valuable contacts, entertaining conversations and well planned. The Big Dogs showed up…not the guy at the front desk who works at ESPN, but the actual founder. This type of event allows for big deals to start blooming due to networking with the CEO’s and Owner’s of companies you might have trouble hunting down otherwise. Lewis, Lewis, Lewis, well done.
Hey Lewis,
Thanks for the latest update. There’s a lot of interesting news to look at.
What’s your team’s standpoint on and connection (if any) with European sports business. I’m based in London and believe that the industry would benefit from a local version of Sportsnetworker not to mention the huge opportunities within.
Jon
Great event! The follow-up from this was better than any networking event I have ever been to – keeping it industry-specific like this was very helpful. Thanks and keep it up.