Podcast Alert: Mike Dillon – Pittsburgh Penguins

Transcript

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Mike Dillon: [00:00:00] Yeah. Hockey is an incredible sport. So many times I take people who have never seen a game before, they go… And you say, “Speed.” Just how constant the action is. “Wow, that was the best sports experience I’ve ever seen in person.” 

Jeff Nelson: Hello. Welcome to the Navigating Sports Business podcast. I’m your host today, Jeff Nelson, the president of Navigate. We are a data-driven consulting firm guiding major strategies and decisions in sports and entertainment. We started this podcast to share the experiences and the stories of some of the amazing people we get to work with. They’re not the star athletes on the field, but they are the most influential people off of it. 

Hopefully, you learn a little something about them and a little something from them over the course of our [00:01:00] conversations. 

Today, I’m joined by Mike Dillon, CFO of the Pittsburgh Penguins. Mike’s background includes and this is a long and strong resume here, but an MBA and a JD from Harvard, analytics leadership with the Houston Astros, which are pretty much the pinnacle of analytics in sports strategy consulting at Bain launching a ticketing website in Houston, and now leading finance and strategy for one of the NHL’s most iconic franchises. 

So Mike I appreciate you taking some time to chat with us today. And how’s that resume sound when you hear somebody else say it? 

Mike Dillon: First of all, thanks for thanks for having me today. Great to chat with you. And, as far as the resume goes, look, man, [00:02:00] once you get through that stuff, it’s done and it’s all about what you’re doing now and where you’re going from here. 

Jeff Nelson: Let me ask you, how did you get to what you’re doing now? So you have all that kind of varied experience. What brings you to Pittsburgh, to hockey, to this role? 

Mike Dillon: Yeah. It’s funny. And I think, the more you talk to people in sports the more common this probably is in people’s stories is pretty lucky in terms of how I ended up in with the Penguins and in sports in general. So a lot of it is just through connections I made my time in at the Astros. 

Working on projects at the MLB office is actually doing some fan research around some of the rule changes which have worked pretty well for the sport. Got to know some folks from FSG and worked them pretty closely a- as part of that process. So a few years later FSG bought the Penguins, and then got a phone call, and they they reached out and… I have a nontraditional [00:03:00] background for a CFO. All the things that I’ve done, I don’t have a CPA but that’s not what they were looking for. They were just looking for someone with more of a strategic mindset who could put in some processes help decision-making be more rigorous. 

And that was the role that I could play. And then, filling the team below me with the people who had the CPA and that pure accounting background. And obviously with FSG and the success they’ve had, it was a no-brainer on top of just knowing the people there already. It just made an easy decision. 

Jeff Nelson: This was in 2022, and at that point and you’ll have to help me on the exact timing of when you started, but at that point, the Penguins had made the playoffs, I think, 15 years in a row, and that. 

Mike Dillon: Season would be 16. 16. Yeah, they made it 16 in a row. Yeah, and then I joined. 

So nice spot, right? I join, and then they’re off a streak. The longest playoff streak in North American sports ends. So [00:04:00] yes, that’s and painful, it was, like, close… my first three years has been close misses, except for last year. First years were close misses in the for the playoffs. 

But that’s the way it goes in, in sports and presents new challenges, right? 

Jeff Nelson: Yeah. How does that influence, your day-to-day when you’re really getting up to speed in a new role with a new franchise, and now all of a sudden, the performance on the ice has taken a little bit of a dip? Did that make it harder, more challenging to do the job that, that you were signing up for? 

Mike Dillon: There, there are certainly challenges that, that come up with it when a team underperforms, revenues or as things aren’t as robust as you, you’d hope. But at the end of the day, like, how I, when I tell my teams and how I generally approach things, it’s all about just putting in the right processes that are independent of how the team on the ice is performing. 

[00:05:00] And that’s just going to put you in the best position to achieve the best possible outcome, regardless of what the record is. So yes, you’re going to make more money when the team is better. That’s obvious. But it’s- … how do I optimize the outcome even when a team is not making the playoffs? 

And we actually did that. We set a ticket revenue record in the year we didn’t make the playoffs. And sometimes like the strategy you put in place, and you layer in some things to help control your own destiny a bit, and I can talk more about how we did that. 

But those are the things you do. And then when the team wins, you have all the right processes in place, and then, the gains you realize are magnified even more. 

Jeff Nelson: I feel like all of that is so much easier said than done, right? And so I wanna actually seize for a moment on that example you just gave with the ticketing record revenue, even though you didn’t make the playoffs. 

Can you give us a tangible sense of what you did to achieve that outcome, even when [00:06:00] the performance on the ice wasn’t what it had been? 

Mike Dillon: Sure, yeah. There’s some basic blocking, tackling that you have to do in terms of the setup. They really hadn’t done much with dynamic pricing in the past, right? 

So at this point, old hat in in sports. We were able to really put that in place and leverage that. I think there had been a bias towards heavily discounted tickets. Which look my goal and our goal here is to have the building as full as possible and create that home ice advantage. 

But what had happened is it really had eroded the value proposition for season ticket holders. Made it difficult to sell tickets on the primary market. With the secondary at such low prices. So a lot of that was just getting that stuff cleaned up but then doing investigative marketing, right? 

It can be easy to market when you have the core three that have played together for twenty years, takes care of itself. But just starting the engine of understanding the fans who come to one or two or three games a year, and [00:07:00] how we proactively reach out to them and capitalize on the marquee games on our schedule, right? 

Take the best ten games, make those as good as they can be, other than filling the schedule from there. So those are some of the things that, that we put in place that just hadn’t been here before ’cause frankly, they hadn’t needed to, right? It was like one of the best runs for any NHL team certainly in the past twenty-five years. 

Jeff Nelson: On that note, the Penguins might be unique in all of sports in that really for even further back, I think thirty years, you had One or two, or oftentimes two of the top five players in the league. You had Jagr and Lemieux, Crosby, Malkin. I don’t know if you can think of an example like this, but it’s pretty rare to not just have one, but two superstars at all times. 

But now you’re at a point where, okay Sid is on not just the back nine of [00:08:00] his career, but maybe the last couple holes. When you sit down and are working with marketing, when you’re working with ticketing, when you’re thinking about strategy for the Penguins, are you shifting away from stars and Stanley Cups to community, to family? 

What are those meetings like, and how do you approach maybe being at the end of this kind of unparalleled run of superstars? 

Mike Dillon: Yeah. No, that’s a great question, and it’s almost pipe shooting, but it’s a little bit of all the above. Thankfully Sid is still amazing. 

Had the, he had the injury and he’s still one of the best players in the league. It is… the standard had been so high. He is at a different spot in his career, but he’s still someone who is so respected and so revered. We absolutely can and should lean into, to him and the legacy that he’s built. 

What you’ve seen us do more of is, similar to the [00:09:00] legacy of Sid and the core three that, that we have here is leading to the history of the teams, like we’ve talked about. It is one of the most storied storied franchises in the league. I think people are probably surprised to know that, we’re not an original… 

And if you’re a casual fan, you’d think, “Oh, the Penguins are not an original six team.” It has that the brand is that strong. We’ve done things like, we have brought Jagr back. We had the jersey retirement which was a really special moment. We did things like we had brought back Marc-André Fleury and had him retire and actually play in a preseason game for us, which was magical. 

And so you see us leaning more into that history. Trying to connect with our alumni and the players who passed through. We relaunched our hall of fame because there’s a story that we can tell, and we wanna tell that story of, that Pittsburgh is an amazing sports town, and we’re proud to have been part of that, that sports story. 

So it’s just making sure that always stays front and center. At the same time, we’re also investing in things to make [00:10:00] sure casual fans think and know that, that there’s a place for them at PPG Paints- Arena. So we’ve done a lot of investing in heritage nights, it’s almost stealing the page from the baseball playbook. 

Things like Italian heritage night, Irish heritage night. We have a fourth wing night coming up and, we sold 2,000 tickets for that, plus VIP packages. So those are the things that were simultaneous. So it’s like we’re leaning into our heritage and our core hockey fans, but also reaching out to folks who may not have come here as frequently but making sure that we can provide great experiences for them. 

So those are the sorts of things that we’ve had to do, as well as, just investing in, continuing to invest in the nuts and bolts on marketing, right? Just to try to get people to go from one game to two games. So there’s a little bit of, again, all of the above in our strategy. 

Jeff Nelson: You set up all the plans for this, obviously, going into a season, but then and tell me if you think I’m wrong here. In some respects, [00:11:00] you guys are outperforming expectations. As of, as this interview, I think you’re second in the division. It’s a three-way fight for that second spot in the division. But it’s a great season so far on the ice. Is there anything that changes kind of mid-season where you guys are sitting down and being like, “Okay, the plan was this, but now it’s gonna be this,” or, “We’re going to bolt on or add on these efforts,” or, “We’re going to invest more in this type of targeted marketing than we had planned because things are going well”? 

Does any of that happen? And if so, yeah, what does that, what has that looked like this year? 

Mike Dillon: No, absolutely. You have your plan to, at the beginning of the season about it. If you’re saying here’s the plays we’re gonna run for six months, and we’re not gonna change them,” that’s not a recipe for success. 

We have what we call the triangle offense. So we have our strategy and analytics team [00:12:00] ticketing and in-marketing meet on a weekly basis formally, and then obviously informally more than that. And that’s where we really get a sense for here’s how games are performing. 

Here’s what the prediction models are showing how they’re looking versus expectation. Here’s where the opportunities are. And we just have a regular cadence to, just to make sure we’re taking advantage of the opportunities that come up. And we can see here’s a game that is already sold out, so we can move some marketing assets and really help fill in some of the other games. 

Or, “Hey, these are some promotions that are really working better than we thought. Let’s do them so- let’s do more of them,” and so out of that, for instance we had a New Year’s a New Year’s Day game and that we had never had one of those before. We didn’t know how it was gonna do. 

It was doing a little bit worse than we had expected. And so we just let’s try fireworks and do an indoor fireworks show.” Actually one of the best fireworks companies is from right outside of Pittsburgh. So we were able to make that happen it fit [00:13:00] in, and we sold a lot of extra tickets. 

And, but delivered a great experience for our fans. So those are the sorts of things that we absolutely have layered in as the season has unfolded. And we just try to do that as much as possible. 

Jeff Nelson: Yeah, like fireworks night is a staple of the baseball world. I know. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it for hockey, and indoor fireworks sounds an insurance premium waiting to go up, but. 

Mike Dillon: There’s a way to do it safely. 

Jeff Nelson: That’s pretty cool. 

Mike Dillon: Believe me, with my CFO hat, I absolutely vetted out all the the insurance consequences. 

Jeff Nelson: Hockey has had a couple of pretty cool moments here in, in the zeitgeist. I wanna ask you about both of them. So the first was the Olympics, which just happened recently, and obviously USA winning the gold in overtime, the rivalry with Canada it was all you couldn’t have scripted it better type of stuff. 

So in the same vein as my last question, something like this is happening. I assume you guys you knew the Olympics were [00:14:00] coming. It’s not like it was unplanned. But when it kinda takes over the conversation in sports the way it did, is there anything an NHL team can do to kinda capitalize on that spotlight that, that has tangible outcomes, that has revenue outcomes, or capturing new fans maybe? What did you guys do? 

Mike Dillon: Yeah, I think it’s a lot of it goes down, boils down to the storytelling. So I don’t know if we have necessarily leapt into sort of the Olympic moment, you have this time where people who are casually paying attention to hockey you have this great iconic moment and are more likely to tune in now. 

I think it’s a good time of year cause it’s down the home stretch and, the races are so tight, so you have these naturally compelling storylines. And one of the things that we know here is about telling, helping to get fans know our players. That’s something we have always been doing. 

We wanna make [00:15:00] sure we continue to do, and we have some great personalities here. Obviously we have the people that the players that folks have known for 20 years and we also have a lot of young guys, and we’re trying to help folks understand their story. You see the power of that storytelling and help build fan favorites and bring people in. 

Jeff Nelson: How much did you… or not how much, but was there a moment during all that where you’re like, “God, I wish we had a player on the US team”? 

Mike Dillon: That’d be nice. It’s the way it it’s the way, it’s the way it goes, but still, an amazing moment for for the US team as much as, folks here. 

It’s hard, right? Because, from the US and, you want the US to win, but it’s man, Sid was so amazing, right? And I guess it made it easier that he could play as tough as that was for the sport. But so it’s amazing, right? It’s hard to get better than that for the sport of hockey. And it’s just on us and on, on the league just make sure we take advantage of that and keep pushing the game [00:16:00] forward. 

Jeff Nelson: That is nonfiction. That really happened. But in the fictional world heated rivalry. Yeah. And if anybody is listening to this and has not heard of that yet I encourage you to Google it. 

It has had its own kind of zeitgeist moment of capturing the world’s attention, and certainly the pop culture. People like my wife, who don’t follow hockey at all have you… was there… I always like to picture is there a meeting? I always like to make in my mind the meeting where it’s like we gotta sit down and talk about this. 

What do we do? How do we capture this moment?” Did that happen? Do you guys… was it, was there water cooler talk about this show that turned into, “Oh, this is huge. Is there anything we should be doing in relation to this?” 

Mike Dillon: Oh, yeah, absolutely, right? Anytime there’s organic energy ar- around the sport, it’s important to think about, okay how can [00:17:00] we authentically get in take advantage of that opportunity. And it’s important it has to be authentic and you wanna make sure you’re doing something that it doesn’t feel like you’re just chasing a trend. So those are things we absolutely have conversations about, and I’ve seen teams do some interesting things. 

Like selling the jerseys with the guys’ names on them. That’s pretty smart. It’s a way to reach people who are interested in the sport and trying to, try to build on that, right? It’s, So something we absolutely have talked… We haven’t done anything specifically with it. 

But absolutely the sorts of things that, that we, think about all the time. 

Jeff Nelson: I keep asking questions that are about what you do on the fly, right? Cause you set the plans, and then as you said it’s not a smart strategy to just sit and run the playbook without adjusting. 

But you have a really interesting role relative to most where strategy is rolling up to you, and so you’re [00:18:00] overseeing these strategic decisions, what should we be doing? But then you put your CFO hat on, and I’m sure there are times where what strategy would want to do costs money or has uncertain measurables against it. 

And you put your CFO hat on, and you want to really be making sure that it’s fiscally responsible or that we’ll be able to measure the ROI in some form or fashion. Do you find yourself, even though you said at the outset you come from the strategy side, and you were hired to be more strategy than just the CPA that’s running the books. 

But do you find yourself ever having kind of an internal conflict between the strategy side and the CFO side of your role? 

Mike Dillon: Not really. Yeah, I think part of that is, is when you think about ROI try to think about it in the long run way. Because if you don’t, you’re just gonna keep doing the things that have always worked because that’s the only thing that’s provable. 

So how [00:19:00] we think about it is more like what’s the logic? What’s the rationale behind an idea? Why do we think it’s going to work? And you have to build in things into the plan that we’re gonna experiment with a certain amount of things over the course of the year. I’m not expecting an ROI from these things. 

We have to do them. Yeah, that’s the only way we’re gonna find out the new thing that, that can work. And a, an example of that would be, we did bobbleheads. We actually spend, I think we’re probably one of the higher spending teams on promotional items in, in the NHL for sure. 

And bobbleheads that are proven return. They definitely work. People get excited about that, and you can just go onto eBay and see people selling them for $7500 that they work. One of the things that we tried when I was at the Astros and that we did here was doing a replica championship rings. 

And even going back to when we did it in Houston, those are the sorts of things that it’s not 100% sure they work or not. Will fans actually want them? Will it perform the same? You just gotta [00:20:00] take a chance and see, and it definitely does have that payoff. But it’s just doing it in an intentional way. 

Jeff Nelson: More broadly, I think the reputation in our industry at times is that hockey And hockey teams are maybe still on the business side behind a sport like baseball when it comes to bringing analytics and rigorous data into decision-making. Fair or not, I think that’s the reputation. 

I know you don’t wanna sit here and speak ill of the sport you’re working in, and so I wanna ask: What do you think hockey gets right? What do you think? If you were to point out, “Hey, there are… This is one or two things that from a business standpoint people from the outside might not see,” but hockey franchises you think are doing a great job at what? What would you fill in the blank there? 

Mike Dillon: Yeah, I think hockey fans and teams [00:21:00] in general the passion of the fans is just at a different level than in other sports. Just how, like the frequency of attendance and how it’s part of people’s lives, like the essence of the game. 

I think the teams do a really good job of like nurturing that with the fan base, where it’s like just part of people’s lives a little bit more than it is in other sports. 

Jeff Nelson: That was not meant to be a segway but your answer made it into a segway to my next question, which was gonna be about fans and getting to know fans and engaging with them in a more personalized and more differentiated way. We’ve been fortunate to work with you and the Penguins on this type of work. 

But what do you think is the most notable or necessary change when it comes to the way that teams engage with and build [00:22:00] relationships with their fans? 

Mike Dillon: Yeah. And the work we’ve done with you, just an obvious way and you see it more in sort of non-sports spaces, but it’s not having a one-size-fits-all approach to messaging. 

I think there had long been this approach like, “Oh, we’ll just send out a lot of emails.” And it’s “Oh, did you how are questions came?” “Oh, we’re planning on saying on email tomorrow. Maybe a text.” It’s okay what are you saying, and what’s the value proposition? And coming out of the work that we do with you all it’s really getting an understanding of our different segments, not just in terms of the behavioral aspects in terms of what they do or how they engage with us, but what’s the message that, that resonates with them the most? 

And, and how should you approach them and what are the products that are the right fit? And coming out of that project Like that’s something that, that we have invested in, a lot more. So it’s understanding when we’re sending out emails or if we have a game, it’s what are the segments, and they’re getting different emails, different value [00:23:00] propositions, different subject lines, different content in the body. 

Different communication cadence as well. Those are the things that, that teams absolutely need to do if they’re not already. I know it’s something that’s more common, but it’s just so much more important. 

Jeff Nelson: I get the chance here to use a an expression born out of hockey, but you hear the smartest people say “don’t skate to where the puck is, skate to where the puck is going.” 

Which is another way of saying AI is clearly where a lot of the business world is going, and so our world should be no different. Where do you see AI influencing either the way teams are able to personalize that message and build the relationship with fans, or other ways you think that AI is gonna maybe revolutionize the way that teams [00:24:00] operate? 

Mike Dillon: Oh, yeah, absolutely. There are, a couple of different areas where we are either leveraging AI now or fast going to. I think where we’ve seen the earliest gains is really on the modeling side of things where if we think about our tr- our lead scoring for instance or retention modeling where you might have had an analyst have to put together a model and maybe take a little bit of time now, you can really iterate so much faster and get it into the hands of whether it’s the sales reps or the retention reps to action on it so much faster with specific recommendations for what to do. 

So that’s really the low-hanging fruit. And it just helped us. So we’re still, it’s not really for saving on headcount, but it just helped the people that we have spend more time on action rather than on the analysis. Similarly on the marketing side, I think that’s where you’re gonna see a huge amount of benefit. 

So if you think about the segmentation that, [00:25:00] that we did, okay, like obviously, yes, we need to hit people with distinctive messages. There’s a lot of work that can go into that, and how can effectively test all those different messages and different creative? It’s AI can really help with that. 

Oh, I can have an analyst try to generate 10 potential subject lines or, I could run a profile through AI and it can help set that up so it just helps things move along. It increases your capacity to work and to gain insights. Those are things that we’re really excited about. 

I would just say, we always try to think though about the use case. So going back to your analogy, it’s what are we trying to do and how we’ll push our business forward? We don’t need wanna be innovative in context. I don’t need to going going out and try to invent use cases, but try to see what works in other areas, and try to go there first and build it from there. 

I think that just helps build credibility with with ownership and honestly internally as well, ’cause the more you have a thesis behind what you’re doing, the more likely you are to have [00:26:00] success than, to generate enthusiasm behind the investment. 

Jeff Nelson: Are you getting pitched all the time by new companies saying, “We have an AI solution that’s gonna totally change the way that you operate the Penguins or totally change your P&L?” Or are you- 

Mike Dillon: All the time. 

Jeff Nelson: How do you sift through it? 

Mike Dillon: Yeah. We just have discipline on our end, right? Like I, I just, I try to minimize the number of new things that we’re bringing on because every time we bring on a new thing, it takes a lot longer than you think than it would to try to implement it. 

So we try to pick a few and then optimize those, let those play out make sure we’re getting, we’re getting full value on those before we think about, okay where else can we take? Just having that focus just found gets us to better outcomes. 

Jeff Nelson: If you were trying to use a crystal ball to place one big strategic bet for the next decade of NHL business growth, what are you [00:27:00] betting on? Or where would you focus? Where do you think the growth for the NHL is in the next decade? 

Mike Dillon: Yeah. There’s a few things around that. It’s hard to say there’s one, one thing ’cause there’s the sport and then the team. Team level where we could get growth is similar to lots of other sports teams. 

It’s on the premium side and, thinking about the real estate and the full experience of attending the event. Surely growth there on, on the team side. But, thinking about the sport more generally, it’s how do we grow the game in the US, and there are probably things that that that we can do around that. 

It’ll be interesting with that the new CBA getting an extra regular season game. There are probably opportunities. I know they’re looking at this, just having games in non core city markets. For instance, think we’ll see more games in Europe as we try to grow the game over there and New new countries. 

Just trying to grow the international profile of the game, which I think will certainly pay dividends for the sport as well. So there, [00:28:00] there are probably different answers, right? But ultimately as the league invests in growing a profile of the sport, I think that should just help teams naturally. 

‘Cause the more… Hockey is an incredible sport. So many times when I take people who have never seen a game before, they go, and you see the speed and how, just how ac- constant the action is. They’re like, “Wow, that was the best sports experience I’ve ever seen in person.” And it’s hard, ’cause it doesn’t translate quite the same on TV, although it’s gotten better with the size of TVs increasing. 

I think that certainly helped. But it’s just getting, keep exposure to that. And then the players, they’re just different than, what you find in other sports, how down to earth so many of them are, and naturally relatable so many of them are. I think we just have, we’re at a unique moment in, in sport, so it’s just incumbent upon the league and the teams as well just to try to tell that story. 

Jeff Nelson: That’s such an interesting point because, I think you’re spot on that there’s no greater disconnect [00:29:00] between the in-person and the TV product than hockey. And I’ve always thought of that through the lens of how great that is for the in-person product. But as I heard you say all that, and as you think about the business of sports and the fact that so much of the money is in TV, and obviously we have this regional sports network crisis going on. 

That maybe, or not maybe, that really is a double-edged sword, right? That the TV product not being as amazing as the in-person, as you said, genuinely is. That’s actually an interesting challenge for the league, and I’m guessing they’ve been talking and thinking about this for decades, and I’m just now thinking about it. 

But yeah. Do you think there’s a solve there? Or like you said, the TVs are bigger and better, so that helps, but I think it’s still true that you just can’t capture, or it’s hard to capture just how [00:30:00] amazing it is in person on TV. But that’s yeah. What do you do about that?  

Mike Dillon: Yeah. That’s a hard one to to solve. And I think it goes back to what I’ve been been, what I have been saying about telling the story and helping fans get to understand the players a little bit better. ‘Cause it’s tough as a sport. 

It’s like these guys, they’re, they have their helmets on, or you look at The the name recognition of even someone like Sidney Crosby, and it’s pretty low in the United States, like one of the best hockey players ever. So not everyone knows who he is. Like, how do we get in positions to try to show their faces a bit more? 

So everyone asks about TV, but it’s “Oh, what? We have social media. Like, how do we leverage that a bit more?” But it is… I- it’s just gonna be a hard part of the game. But I think the answer is try and get people to to gravitate towards the personalities, to try to get them then to test out the product. 

“Oh, this is someone I like. I like this person. Let me- I’m gonna go out to the game and see, what it’s really and then hopefully you’re hooking them in from there.[00:31:00]  

Jeff Nelson: So it sounds like you spent a lot of time in baseball where the big challenge is marketing stars, and now you’re in hockey where the big challenge is marketing stars. 

Mike Dillon: Not everyone can be the NBA. 

Jeff Nelson: A few quick hitters for you. More for fun, more to get to know Mike Dillon. And the first one’s very selfish because I don’t plan any trips without figuring out where to eat first, and I’m actually gonna be in Pittsburgh this summer on a baseball trip with my son. 

What is your favorite place to eat in Pittsburgh? One meal. Where are you going? Where should I go? 

Mike Dillon: I love Dianoia’s. Italian place in the Strip District. 

Jeff Nelson: Can you spell that for us? 

Mike Dillon: D-I A-N-O-I-A. 

Jeff Nelson: Okay. And what am I ordering there? 

Mike Dillon: The gnocchi is fantastic. It’s it’s top-notch. It’s, it’s, Pittsburgh has a really good Italian scene. 

Jeff Nelson: Interesting. You always hear about the pierogis, right? Or those [00:32:00] sandwiches with the fries on them. 

Mike Dillon: Yeah. Yeah, lots of things. Pittsburgh, strong diner scene too, but I go with like the Dianoia’s or, Alla Famiglia, also pretty fantastic. They’re a veal shop, but you will be full for a week. 

Jeff Nelson: Okay. Okay. Bigger rush, clinching a playoff berth or closing a big deal? 

Mike Dillon: Yeah. Hopefully I’ll have a chance to answer that, let’s with more recent experience but yeah, it’s the playoff, clinching the playoffs. 

That’s why folks are in this, no, no doubt, if it were just about the deal, I’d be in the wrong business. But it’s it’s n- it’s not j- When you clinch a playoff spot, the thing about sports, the magic of sports and how it brings together a community like no other thing can. 

You just really feel that in the moment of clinching, and I know hopefully we’ll have a chance to experience that here with Pittsburgh this year. 

Jeff Nelson: One thing about you that would surprise the people you work with? 

Mike Dillon: They probably wouldn’t know that in in college my job [00:33:00] was cleaning bathrooms. So which they would not expect. That was my job. I was at Harvard, so that’s what I did. 

Jeff Nelson: No, but what bathrooms are we talking about? 

Mike Dillon: Student dorms. I don’t think they do that anymore. It was the highest paying job. And I think you’re putting on the CFO hat how to optimize my time. 

A good character building experience for sure. It shows I’m willing to do what you have to do. They would not guess that. 

Jeff Nelson: No, you’ll roll up your sleeves. 

Mike Dillon: I think you look at the resume and say, “Oh, this guy went to, Harvard three times. Maybe he’s like a little stuffy, won’t get in the muck.” 

Jeff Nelson: Now also picturing like a Goodwill Hunting scenario where you’re like coming out of the bathroom with the mop and there’s a problem on the board, and you the guy, cleaning the bathrooms. 

Mike Dillon: I wish. But yeah not quite, but yeah. Look it’s one of those experiences that I think helped make me who I am now. 

Jeff Nelson: And then this last one. Wait, I forget… I failed to talk about or ask at the outset, where are you from originally? 

Mike Dillon: So I’m from the Boston area. Which like to your Goodwill Hunting point, that could have happened. But accents are like [00:34:00] 50/50 in the town I’m from, and so I didn’t get… I did not pick it up. 

Jeff Nelson: Which town? 

Mike Dillon: Sharon. It’s it’s halfway between Boston and Providence, right next to Foxborough. 

Jeff Nelson: Okay. So I asked that question before I ask the real question, which is, who is your favorite athlete of all time, and why? 

Mike Dillon: Yeah, it’s, I think as a kid it was Jim Rice for the Red Sox. Just like he was my favorite by far. So it was, I got to go to the game where his number was retired and just is- you ever… It’s sports, it’s like the magic when you’re a kid. 

It’s never… There’s nothing that ever up- replicates that, so he’ll always be my favorite, right? And obviously Boston has been blessed with a lot of great players and even when I was a kid, but he’s the one that will always stand out for me. 

Jeff Nelson: That’s a good one. I’m impressed it wasn’t just like Larry Bird or Tom Brady. 

Jim Rice was a great player, but it’s not the, it’s not the one that you most often hear. I know. 

Mike Dillon: A little bit of a curveball, but that’s my favorite. [00:35:00] I’m loyal. 

Jeff Nelson: I love it. That’s great. Well- I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with us, and I am very hopeful, not just because you guys have been a great client but because you deserve it. 

I’m really hopeful you guys make the playoffs, and there’s a big celebration, and the curse of Mike Dillon is broken. 

Mike Dillon: That’s why I have fun on many levels. So I appreciate the good thoughts there, and, we’ll we’ll see how the next few weeks unfold. 

Jeff Nelson: If if our listeners have any questions or comments, things I didn’t touch on that you wish I had please feel free to reach out to us. 

My email is Jeff@NVGT.com. You can also connect with me on my personal LinkedIn or the Navigate page. But other than that, I just wanna thank you again, Mike. This has been awesome. 

Mike Dillon: Yeah, thank you. Great to connect. 

Jeff Nelson: Thank you for joining us on [00:36:00] Navigating Sports Business, everyone. 

Please stay well.