Job Recovery in the Sports Industry – Work In Sports Podcast

Hey everybody, I’m Brian Clapp, VP of Content and Engaged Learning for WorkInSports.com and this is the Work in Sports podcast. After a few decades of living in cities, I now live out in the country a bit. I have 4 acres of land, the grass is green, I have woods and a stream for my kids to play in. It can be a bubble. We can tune out the world - the hate, the racism, the unrest, the divisiveness - should we choose. But we can’t. I can’t. We all play a role, and we can’t just opt-out. Silence is being complicit. I know you didn’t come here for this discussion, there are other reasons you are here. But I want all of the people in our audience, our return listeners, our subscribers, who have gotten to know me over time - to know that I support and love them.I have cried over and over again watching the videos that have become all too common in our society. It isn’t just George Floyd or Eric Garner or Philado Castile, it’s the multitude of other horrific examples of police brutality against Black Americans that have happened without cameras rolling. There are systemic issues that allow for heavily armed white men to enter a state building in Michigan, protesting the fact they have to wear a mask while carrying automatic weapons - and being treated civilly and with calm respect, while an unarmed, handcuffed black man gets murdered on the street over an alleged counterfeit $20 bill. How does this happen?    This is a problem. We can’t ignore it, and as a middle-aged white man I can’t sit here in my bubble pretending this environment is fair and just. It is not. I have many friends who are honorable, respectful, caring police officers, who got into police work to make a positive difference. We can’t make sweeping generalizations against all police, that does not help. That is the exact same problem that got us here -- racial profiling is generalizing a group of people… doing the same to all police isn’t the proper response. But we can be angry. We should be angry. And the best thing we can, from this perspective, is to listen, love, and vote. That’s how we change things. Vote. I hope everyone out there with anger and disgust and fear and dismay -- will take this energy to the polls in November. Everyone needs to vote. That is your power. And everyone needs to love and listen.JusticeForGeorge hell yes justiceforgeorge … but in concert with that -- let’s change the system to be more equitable and fair. It’s past the time for those of us on the outside to just empathize - we need to understand, we need to help the change become reality. One last thing -- as someone who has worked in the media for a long time, you will see the worst worst worst images, because they get eyeballs. I guarantee you 90% of the protests across the country are peaceful, but all you’ll see is burning buildings OR on the flip side people hugging police officers. Those are the edges of the story -- look for the middle. There is no easy transition here so I’ll just make it. Coming up on Wednesday is a conversation I am very excited about, I interviewed Josh Walker president of sports innovation lab, a market research company, about how we recover as a sports industry from our global pandemic -- oh right, amongst all of this chaos we are also still in a global pandemic. Yeah for 2020!Anyway, the interview with Josh is so insightful -- he and his team at sports innovation lab are changing the way we see, feel and experience sports. And teams are catching on to this new way of understanding fan needs. You are going to be way into this conversation, I know I was.As for today’s topic -- here is James from Nevada“He Brian, when coronavirus first became a thing you talked about revenue-generating roles being super important in the near future -- is that still the case? Is that what you see being the leader in the sports industry over the short-term, or the longer this goes have things changed in your mind?”I’m glad you brought this up James because we have to...