Sports business from the seats back.
Troy Kirby talks with sports-business operators about the work that happens before fans reach their seats. The show favors specific examples: WNBA access, college athletic giving, group sales, ticket brokers, venue creativity, and the changing expectations around fandom.
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Tao of Sports Podcast is a long-running sports-business interview show centered on the mechanics behind teams, colleges, venues, and fan relationships. Troy Kirby speaks with people working around ticket sales, brand marketing, athletic development, resource development, sports law, and administration. The result is less polished-panel talk than working conversation. It often sounds like someone opening the back door to the business office and asking how the thing actually runs. Recent episodes move from the Las Vegas Aces and WNBA fan access to Boise State’s annual giving model, then into Lake Superior State group sales, UConn revenue creativity, and the realities of ticket brokers. The show is especially interested in the sales floor. It treats ticketing as a place where culture, money, access, loyalty, and friction all meet. A discussion about kids waiting for autographs becomes a broader point about future fans, athlete accessibility, resale behavior, and security. A conversation about donor benefits becomes a practical look at why colleges are borrowing membership ideas from pro teams. Group sales are not just group sales here. They become questions about expectation-setting, fundraising, group leaders, repeat attendance, and the difference between a realistic win and a perceived failure. The show also spends time on college athletics infrastructure, including NATSO, athletic directors, major gifts, conference moves, and tax questions tied to donations and tickets. It can get blunt about the industry’s odd compromises. That is part of the appeal. Kirby is comfortable debating guests, admitting uncertainty, and following a side road if it reveals how the business works. The pacing is brisk, but the conversations are not stripped down. They build through examples, comparisons, and repeated attempts to make the practical point land. The show fits listeners who want sports business without the executive gloss. It is for people who care how attendance is built, how fans are valued, how schools ask for money, and how the ticket market really behaves after the headline has passed.
Made for: Best for sports-business professionals, college athletics staff, ticketing people, marketers, development teams, and fans curious about how sports organizations make money and build loyalty. It rewards listeners who like practical detail more than quick opinion.
What sets it apart: The show stands out by staying close to the operational layer: ticket benefits, group leaders, donor asks, fan access, brokers, and venue-level experiments. It turns ordinary sales and marketing decisions into useful industry lessons without sanding off the conversation’s rough edges.
Sports Revenue & Marketing Consultant Troy Kirby interviews those in the front office within the professional and amateur sports industry, focusing on the details of the business. Ranging topics include ticket sales, marketing, administration, compliance and facility operations.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Tao of Sports Podcast makes the revenue machinery behind ticketing, fundraising, and fan relationships unusually visible.
Troy Kirby keeps asking how sports organizations turn attention and loyalty into durable revenue. Tao of Sports Podcast gets there through candid conversations with people doing the work, from Deandra Duggans on Las Vegas Aces brand marketing and fan access to Garrett Nolan on…
A season-ticket donation raises a fair question: what do you actually get back?
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A sports-business look at how the Aces balance winning, accessibility, and fan contact with loyalty.
Troy Kirby and Deandra Duggins frame the Las Vegas Aces as a team balancing championship expectations with the less visible work of sales, operations, and marketing.
A practical look at how college athletics is reworking ticketing and giving.
Justin Rogers frames Boise State's ticketing and annual giving work as a clear example of college athletics adjusting to a fundraising model that no longer runs on old assumptions alone.
Andrew Rubenstein links group-ticket discipline to the relationship work behind college athletics annual giving.
Annual giving in college athletics gets a practical framing here, with the most useful angle coming from how a ticket-sales background can change the fundraising conversation.
A clear sports-business conversation on broker access, resale fees, and bots in ticket sales.
Ticket buying can look like a public free-for-all until Troy Kirby and Garrett Nolan slow down to ask who may already be inside the system. Nolan, described as an independent ticketing professional, walks through broker relationships with artists, promoters, and venues, the…
A grounded look at creative ticketing and fan engagement in college athletics.
Dow of Sports looks at the everyday work behind a college athletics operation that keeps trying to sell tickets, grow audiences, and hold onto momentum.
Local geography can make a minor league game the hottest ticket in town.
Ticket demand takes on a different shape when a team is the biggest entertainment option for 90 to 100 miles. This swapcast with Charlie Kaufman's Ticket Talk uses minor league baseball to look at the secondary market, moving from a Charlotte ticket conference to brokers around…
A grounded look at how Aces access helps turn player moments into lasting fan connection.
Deandra Duggins, VP Brand Marketing at the Las Vegas Aces, brings a practical view of how a WNBA team can turn player access into real fan connection.
Sports fandom meets the business behind it.
Career moves inside sport.
Sports stories aimed beyond the scoreboard.
Career lessons from basketball’s working rooms.
Sports business from the betting window.
Troy Kirby interviews Deandra Duggans, VP of Brand Marketing for the Las Vegas Aces, on episode 890 of the Tao of Sports Podcast.
Troy Kirby joins Charlie Kaufman's Ticket Talk to dissect the ticket industry's complexities.
Interview with sports law expert Alisa Jessup discussing legal issues in sports, including campus rights and anthem protests.
Troy Kirby interviews former NHL player Kevin Westgarth about the NHL's initiative to grow hockey in China.
Troy Kirby interviews CSU Bakersfield athletic director Kenneth Siegfried about his career and the school's move to the Big West Conference.
Troy Kirby interviews sales trainer Tibor Shento about improving sales processes and accountability in sports and other industries.
Aces fandom is the business case here.
Justin Rogers talks through the ticket sales and revenue work behind Boise State.
Andrew Rubenstein says Lake Superior State University has signed with Teamworks Influencer under athletic director Tori Lindley to strengthen NIL programming.
["The Dow of Sports Podcast episode 887 centers on Garrett Nolan, an independent ticketing professional, and the economics of venues, casinos, and resale.", "Troy Kirby says he last spoke with Nolan in 2015 at the Forum, when Nolan was tied to Bojangles Coliseum and Ovens Auditorium, now branded the Bowplex.", "Nolan says he left for MGM National Harbor in 2016, moved over to Live Nation in California, and then went freelance after COVID furloughs and layoffs.", "The conversation asks why tenant teams, premium seating, and ticketing tech create very different revenue math for arenas, casinos, and live-event organizers."]
Troy Kirby's episode 886 of the Dow of Sports podcast talks with Craig Cugnot, vice president and general manager for University of Connecticut Athletics through Taymar Sales U., about selling tickets when UConn men's and women's basketball already draw national attention.