Back in the fall of 1974, I was tasked by Philadelphia Wings general manager Jack Bionda, one of the five greatest box lacrosse players of all time, and our director of player personnel, Ken Wood, to begin assembling information on every draft-eligible box and field lacrosse player in North America. I gathered stats books from … Read more
a comunicano sports | strategy & media intelligence report| June 2026 A strategic analysis of sponsorship economics, the RSN collapse and the architecture of a bigger play Term defined: vMVPD A traditional MVPD, like Comcast or DirecTV, delivers bundled television channels over physical infrastructure it owns or leases: cable lines, satellite transponders, set-top boxes. A … Read more
I came up in sports when the data was a stat line in the morning paper and the fan experience was a hot dog, a bad seat, and a prayer that your team didn’t blow a lead in the ninth. I worked marketing for four professional sports teams. I spent time at a sports licensee … Read more
Most industries talk about AI transformation in the future tense. Sports just moved it to the present tense. Two deals announced this week look like separate news items. They’re not. Together, they signal a structural inflection point that will separate the organizations that thrive in the next decade from the ones that scramble to catch … Read more
The Verdict Is In. Now the Real Fight Begins. A jury found Live Nation guilty on every count — and the breakup question just got a lot harder to dodge. Someone I’ve known in the music industry called me the morning after the April 15th verdict. He has managed mid-size touring acts and stadium artists, … Read more
The archetypes of today’s NHL grassroots and amateur hockey programs were not originally league-driven. They were community-driven, sponsor-driven, entrepreneur-driven, and in many cases arena-driven. The NHL eventually institutionalized what local hockey people had already proven worked. There are several foundational archetypes that shaped modern hockey participation systems. To find out, I asked ChatGPT for the … Read more
Detroit has always known something the rest of the country is still figuring out. Hockey isn’t a sport played in that city. It’s a religion. And like any good religion, it was only a matter of time before the women got their own church. The Professional Women’s Hockey League announced this morning that Detroit will … Read more
Major League Soccer announced its 2026 MLS Innovation Lab cohort last week. Five companies. Five focused bets across player performance, fan engagement, and media production. And almost every mainstream coverage angle missed the actual story. The story isn’t the companies. The story is the laboratory itself. What Was Actually Announced MLS selected five companies for … Read more
The invisible layer wins. Every billion-dollar sports business running today, streaming rights, fantasy platforms, betting exchanges, and performance analytics all run on APIs that most executives couldn’t name and most investors never audit. That’s the opportunity and the risk sitting in the same sentence. The Plumbing No One Talks About Is Now the Product Over … Read more
“Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.”–Mark Twain There’s a moment in every crisis when the subject of the story gets to make a choice. Get ahead of it, own what’s true, and let the story burn itself out in a news cycle or two. Or dig in, go to … Read more
