Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast

Hosted by Neil Horowitz

Management Marketing SportsInterviews guests

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Episodes

150

Latest episode

Oct 2026

Language

EN-US

About the show

A business-minded look at digital and social media in sports, featuring interviews with pros and thought leaders in the space.

Listen to episodes

60 recent

October 13, 20261 hr 23 min

Episode 333: Borja Sordo of Accenture on Analytics Gap in Front Offices, Doubling the Casual Fan, Lessons From Emerging Leagues, and Monetizing Fans Beyond the Stadium

Watch or listen to episode 333 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, in which Neil chatted with Borja Sordo , North American Sports Practice Lead, Accenture . Borja discusses why teams with some of the most elite analytics operations on the planet still run their front offices without the same rules of engagement, why turning a two-game fan into a four-game fan deserves champagne, whether watching Drive to Survive makes you an F1 fan, how to monetize fans who will never set foot in your stadium, why lifelong fans give teams a feedback loop most brands can only dream of, what the big leagues should learn from emerging leagues, why every experiment needs an ROI behind it, and more. 83 minute duration. Listen on Apple , Spotify and YouTube Try Skipper , the AI tool trained on 13+ years of knowledge shared on this podcast.

September 29, 20262 hr 11 min

Episode 332: Best Of The Podcast – Texas Longhorns, Savannah Bananas, Borussia Dortmund, NIL, MLS, Sustainability, and More

Watch and listen to episode 332 of the Digital and Social Media Sports podcast, a best of, featuring parts of conversations with: 3:51: Marc Jordan | Athletes Unlimited, Teamworks/INFLCR, Texas Longhorns, University of Tampa Athletics — Full Episode 22:38: Caleb Mezzy | Grit & Glue, Baseball and Brands (newsletter) The Athletic, PhD, Neumann University — Full Episode 48:22: Aileen McManamon | 5T Sports Group, Green Sports Alliance, Vancouver Canadians, Fiat, Alfa Romeo — Full Episode 1:05:28: Savanah Alaniz | Visit Corpus Christi, Corpus Christi Sports Commission, Savannah Bananas — Full Episode 1:25:08: Harrison McIntire | SPORTFIVE, Gilt Edge Soccer Marketing — Full Episode 1:48:45: Kyle Sheldon | NAME & NUMBER, Pathway (newsletter) Chicago Fire, Seattle Sounders, D.C. United, NASCAR— Full Episode Watch or Listen below or on Apple , Spotify and YouTube https://youtu.be/oxkoYVOuaaY 120 minute duration. Listen on Apple , Spotify or YouTube . Posted by Neil Horowitz Follow me on Twitter @njh287 Connect on LinkedIn

September 15, 20261 hr 39 min

Episode 331: Phil Andrews (CEO, USA Fencing) on Growing a Challenger Sport, Turning Pop Culture into Participation, Building Stars, and the Road to LA 28

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.

September 1, 20261 hr 12 min

Episode 330: Everything You Need to Know About AI Chatbots in Sports with Bill Bailey (Satisfi Labs, ex-Hornets, SSB)

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

August 18, 20261 hr 50 min

Episode 329: Andrew Taylor of the NFL on Helmets-Off Content, Building the Fan Funnel, Growing the Game Internationally, and How Social Touches Everything

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

August 4, 20261 hr 13 min

Episode 328: Dave Benson on Scaling Athlete Access, Activating Meet & Greets, the Business of Fan Memories, and Operationalizing More Authentic Engagement

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

July 21, 20261 hr 46 min

Episode 327: Joe Farren on Building Sports Innovation That Drives Revenue, How Man City Rocked Roblox, 3D Data, and Emerging & Lasting Fan Behaviors

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

July 7, 20261 hr 14 min

Episode 326: Ben Valenta of Fox Sports on What Really Makes a Fan, the Business of Belonging, and Why Fans Have More Friends

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

June 23, 20261 hr 20 min

Episode 325: Everything You Need to Know About Creator Strategy in Sports with Neil Tennant (540 Agency, ex-NHL)

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

June 9, 20261 hr 26 min

Episode 324: WMT Digital’s Andy Zeilman & Chris Freet on Activating Fan Data and Maximizing O&O in College Sports

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