Podcast Alert: Tim Zulawski – AMB Sports & Entertainment

Transcript

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Tim Zulawski: [00:00:00] A family of four, including two beers, can get a full meal for under $30. Then all of a sudden, the kit, the jersey, the merchandise, the other things become more attainable. Ultimately, it shows the fans that we care and they don’t feel gouged. You win.

AJ Maestas: Hello and welcome to the Navigating Sports Business podcast. I’m your host, AJ Maestas, founder of Navigate a data-driven consulting firm, guiding major strategies and decisions in sports and entertainment. We started this podcast hoping to share the interesting stories and experiences of the amazing people we get to work with at Navigate and even though they’re visionaries and famous, in many instances, their true stories aren’t [00:01:00] often heard. Since they’re not on the playing field, our hope is you get to know them better and learn from them as we have.

Today I am happy to be joined by Tim Zulawski, president of AMB Sports and Entertainment, AMBSE owns and operates the Atlanta Falcons, Atlanta United FC, Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the Atlanta Drive, many other things. But we’ll get into that. So, Tim, how you doing?

Tim Zulawski: I’m awesome. Thank you for having me, AJ.

AJ Maestas: Good, good. I’m thrilled you’re here. I, I can’t wait to pick your brain while other people listen, so I appreciate it. For real. What keeps you there? 20 plus years. It’s so rare.

Tim Zulawski: Yeah, so I happened to join in an organization that was on its beginning growth trajectory. So when Arthur bought the team in December of oh one. But it’s a traditionally run NFL franchise family owned. And Arthur had come off of starting the Home Depot. Mm-hmm. And I [00:02:00] joined in July of oh three. And so you have a person and, and that surrounds himself with leadership that was used to thinking, big picture, that was used to very systematic approach to how to deliver for your audience, for your fan, for your associate. Taking the idea of who the customer is and looking at who the customer is in that moment. Sometimes today, our customer could be a music promoter or a talent. Sometimes it could be a college football entity or head coach. Sometimes it could be a fan, sometimes it is our associates and joining in oh three.

We were roughly 80 associates inclusive of coaches renting the Georgia Dome to play the Atlanta Falcons games. There today we’re over 600 full-time associates. And then on a game day running Mercedes-Benz Stadium, over 4,000, you go from renting a facility to operating a facility from limited influence and control to complete influence and control to understanding how to [00:03:00] deliver for the fans, how to again, deliver for the talent. Cause a lot of times people don’t think necessarily of the A music artist as someone you need to deliver for, but you better have the right environment so that they can be successful, which then in turn makes it so they want to come back, which makes it, so their fans want to come back. So, the simplicity of it is. I would say I’m an entrepreneur at heart and I ran into one of the world’s most ultimate entrepreneurs in the case of joining Arthur, him owning the Atlanta Falcons at the time. So, it’s forwarded me a lot of opportunity in my career opportunity from a single sport to multiple sports, from a single contributor to the opportunity to lead over 400 people. Today we bring AMBSE to life.

AJ Maestas: Congratulations. I know you’ve earned that promotion to that final step, I guess shouldn’t say final step, but being the president of the team at your age and all that stuff is, it’s pretty impressive. But it’s so nice to see that loyalty rewarded. Right. 20 plus years there to have risen from such a, yeah.

Tim Zulawski: That’s just so for clarity [00:04:00] to the listening audience as the way AJ packaged that, I’m not going into the grave. I’m 48, depending on how you heard the age. Titles are a, on an identifier obviously of positioning, but as we continue to be a living, breathing organization, no different than starting up Atlanta Drive, which will kick off in early 2025. It gives us the opportunity to bring new things to market, so we’re. Ever In essence in the private equity side of things, you would say you were evergreen.

AJ Maestas: Okay. I like that. This is a golf investment by the way. For those who are not familiar with the TGL, there’s a couple things that makes me want to ask if we could back up to the Falcon specifically cause I remember walking the stadium with you. It was, it was opening and you sharing some of the metrics. At the time it was record breaking. It might still be honestly the amount of revenue you had locked in, how you all had. Done it yourself in so many ways. Do you mind giving us the short version of that story, of what you’re allowed to publicly share as far as the numbers you hit? I remember it was a billion plus in [00:05:00] commitments between sponsorships and premiums and what have you.

Tim Zulawski: You’re accurate. We were able to do what was, you know, put out there publicly. We’re fortunate in that people wanna make business hard, but if you listen to a customer base or listen to whoever you serve, come back and understand what it is you can influence and control and bring forth something that adds value to them. They generally wanna work with you. In the case of Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Atlanta Falcons, Atlanta United at the time, and what we were going to program the venue to be. We’re really meaningful to the state of Georgia in particular and to the southeast region for those who are in the sponsorship world that that may be listening to this. Sometimes you look at a opportunity and you’re like, okay, I’m going to generically say Best Buy online and probably a thousand plus retail points around the United States. So if you have a market, whether it be the Atlanta Falcons or. Another team, your general fan base and your influence is that marketplace.

So then it’s the number of stores as an [00:06:00] example that are in there that really, really how much you mean to Best Buy. Whereas doing a program with the NFL or Major League Baseball that’s a national platform can be more meaningful to them. Being honest with yourselves and understanding who you really impact, and then who does that mean a lot to and understanding their business? Give a little trick to the trade. Go and read someone’s annual report or 10 K before you meet with them. If they’re a publicly traded company. The answers to the tests are in it, and you’ll become more of a consultant to them. You’ll be more knowledgeable. You’ll be able to ask appropriate questions, which will lead you ultimately to bigger dollars. And so the answer to our test and what we were able to generate is we understood ourselves. We understood that we’d be a catalyst for great things to happen in the state of Georgia and in the southeast region. We understood that we would make massive impact in the marketplace, whether it be job related opportunities, whether it be community related functions.

We understood that we would be symbolized. As a fan friendly venue, both in our food and beverage platforms, as well as in what people care about long term being opening up as a [00:07:00] lead platinum venue from a sustainability. So when you have that roadmap, that vision. You understand thus yourself, and then you go out to a marketplace and that is meaningful, meaning we obviously started with every company that made over a billion dollars in gross revenue regardless of industry that had a headquarter or regional office in Georgia. We met with their CEO and so then we, then we found out what they valued. Sometimes they valued programs for their associates. Sometimes they valued programs that were brand and associates. Sometimes it was a B2B or B2C type opportunity. Sometimes it was all. And so then we were able to go back to our proverbial toolbox. Everything I’ve referenced, we own and control and bring forth solutions for them, and we are very fortunate to have, at this point, over 15 founding partners. We have 30 plus partners that are invested across both teams, so substantial relationships. And it’s really all about delivering more for them than they perceive that they have to put forward.

AJ Maestas: Yeah, it was pretty impressive. I remember getting the sense that. [00:08:00] You’re basically sold out building, hadn’t, it was very impressive. So congratulations. Very kind. It’s got to make your owner happy. The thing paid for itself.

Tim Zulawski: We are fortunate in the math, it’s also afforded different opportunities of exploration. So we get, we’ve gotten into the self-promote business, right? So, and what I mean by that, self-promote college games, self-promote music events because we’ve built a platform here that people want to engage. And so when you deliver for folks, just as you do with Navigate, AJ, then people want more. Yeah. And so when people want more, you have the resources to build out more. You have the resources to explore more opportunities and see where you can make a difference. And so I would say yes, the, the success was there financially, but that success also resulted in new opportunities for AMBSE to get involved in.

AJ Maestas: Tell me about some of those opportunities. ’cause I remember we were having a conversation about Georgia Tech. I know the cross-selling opportunities, right? I, I recall you’re getting into the, I can’t remember if it was private equity or venture capital business, but you all are [00:09:00] becoming investors as well, right?

Tim Zulawski: Yeah. Since opening Mercedes-Benz Stadium, we stood up at AMBSE ventures, and we have some different opportunities there. One of our partners in our portfolio, does machine learning and big data analytics across various industries, including concert promotions, meaning predicting what an artist will generate before they go to market. EV charging stations where our utility partner, a utility partner, should put an EV charging station before they invest in it based off of the likelihood of zip code and having electric vehicles in that area to season ticket pricing and what we should price things off based off of the retention expectations and or revenue opportunities. We’ve also gotten into a little bit of development in the real estate aspect. We, with our partner with Emory, we build a medical facility. On the Falcons training grounds on the IIBM performance fields, Emory has a full service outpatient facility as well as Sports Science Lab that [00:10:00] we created. On the operational side of the business, getting into the self road aspect of collegiate football, which recently we announced bringing University of Georgia and Georgia Tech over to Mercedes-Benz Stadium in, in 2025.

For the first time in over a hundred years, that game won’t be played on their respective campuses. We’ve had a concert series called a TL Live that is in over past year’s featured the like of Luke Comb, Luke Combs, Eric Church, George Strait, not just country Metallica on down the line. These are all risk reward opportunities that are all about expanding the things that we’re strong in. We also are sales agent for a number of the. Big four leagues and or big four events given the Rolodex, the, you know, the events that have come through Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Our sales team understands when it comes to collegiate football or the National Football League, meaning the NFL or F1 or other big events, that we understand who the buyer is and then [00:11:00] are able to help connect that buyer with the promoter based off the opportunities they’re putting forward.

AJ Maestas: So you’re, you’re talking about your ability to. Promote, and I’ve seen it firsthand, right? Your ability to sell across your databases and your tools and what have you. And hopefully I don’t get in trouble for saying it, but it sure looks like Live Nation, you know, is a bit of a monopoly. You, you could see the Justice Department chasing down anything that even slightly looks like a monopoly. Is there any insight you can give into your strategy around being able to be your own promoter or what that means if I’m looking to bring a major event to your facilities?

Tim Zulawski: So we subscribed to a pretty easy philosophy. There’s 365 days and 52 weekends. Last year we didn’t, in 2024, we didn’t cook food 15 days of the year. And so our job is to maximize the utility of Mercedes-Benz Stadium. We’re going to go out and look. So whether there’s opportunities from toured events, Live Nation and the like, bringing events, but that’d be sitting on our hands if they would just took what came to us. So our, what we try to do is go out and look at [00:12:00] where our venue can be the right tool, right opportunity, right platform for something to be brought to Georgia and to Atlanta. We’ve put a recent heavy focus on collegiate football, given the craziness that has gone on in the conferences collapsing n nis and NIL. Funding necessary, you know, so our kind of adage is run to the fire. And so we’d spent time with commissioners and adds and people in that space to understand where their opportunities are, where their challenges are, because we run a venue that we’re experts in putting on football events.

We have a marketplace that’s easily accessible. We have an employee, an associate base that can operate on a dime these events, and we’re backed by an entrepreneur. Arthur Blank, that provides us the working capital to bring anything to light. So the old model of a municipality run venue, no risk. And waiting on promoters, whether it be Live Nation, as I’ve mentioned before, most likely does not [00:13:00] sustain long-term.

The cost of building venues is so high. The cost of franchises is growing so much, and the expertise of the people owning and running these is so deep that the organizations are going to take more risk. They’re gonna become. Full 365 operators, which is great for the public private partnerships that they will put together with their local communities, regional communities, state communities, because it offers the opportunity to have people who are experts in some degree, capitalism. I’ll say capitalism, but on the flip side, serving audiences to bring stuff from around the world to their respective city or state.

AJ Maestas: All right. I love that. And guess what you just got, I’m going to bring you some non-conference, neutral site football, collegiate, matchups. You really want more. You have so many as it is, but you want more? We got more.

Tim Zulawski: Yeah. Look, we just, it’s public so I won’t shy away. It took my deal, it took me all of, I won’t even get into how short it was, but we bought the Georgia, Georgia Tech [00:14:00] game for $10 million last week, and we’ll move it over here pretty easy. We use our data to understand our marketplace. What we, if we offer up something and then what would the schools have made at their venues or what are their needs from NIL or what are their needs from fundraising and things down to like what are their plans? They got renovation plans and on, or they have home and homes that they want to get out of and they want to do one neutral site game.

So there’ll be games where it’s our interest to pay each team as if they had hosted a home game to play at our stadium. They make their money that they tried to make while actually picking up an extra date. On their calendar to arrange a new opponent. And so, you know, they get, in essence an opportunity to double dip. So yes, please any and all we’re interested in and at least understanding who the teams are and then putting it against our marketplace. To understand if it’ll make sense for, for everybody involved.

AJ Maestas: No problem. I’ll just hold you that 10 million per game and coming your way. [00:15:00]

Tim Zulawski: I’ll give you, I’ll give you my short list of schools that that works for.

AJ Maestas: Yeah, yeah. I gotcha. I know, I know. Not anybody and everybody. All right. Are there going to be any other major property investments? Is there going to be another, let’s call it big five Sports League team in a, in Atlanta or beyond?

Tim Zulawski: It’s not on our horizon. Arthur made an investment into the PGA tour itself as part of the tour’s expansion into the for-profit side of the business earlier in 24. That would say would be the most recent in conjunction with Atlanta Drive. So the golf business, which. Part of the Blank Family of Businesses is also PGA Tour Superstores, so the largest golf and tennis retail in the world as part of our portfolio as well. So the Game of Golf, the expansion of the game of golf, Arthur’s one of the biggest, that is the biggest donor to First Tee, which is about using the game of golf for people to learn and develop life skills from, as well as the expansion exposure of the game to audiences otherwise wouldn’t participate in the game of golf.[00:16:00]

I would say 2024 in particular was a heavy focus on golf. You asked the question of an another big four, big five, the immediacy meaning 25, 26. We will not be playing something Arthur subscribes to a no finish line mentality. And so I would never say never, as it relates to AMBSE and where we ultimately think we can make a positive difference in society.

AJ Maestas: Interesting. I was just spending time with some NHL executives speculating on what that next market will be, and we even did some work around, you know, the consequences of the departure of the NHL from Atlanta. Just had to ask. Given. I think about Atlanta as a rising market and it’s got to be on everyone’s radar, right. If they’re not there. So had to ask.

Tim Zulawski: Yeah, I grew up playing hockey. I actually worked for Tampa Bay Lightning early in my career. I love the sport. I would say not something that today we’ve been in the exploration. I do know there’s a couple other entities that have been exploring that opportunity for Atlanta. Personally Love again, love the game. [00:17:00] And if it comes to Atlanta, I’m sure my family and I will be in the seats cheering it on for some games.

AJ Maestas: Last question about the Falcons. I know I’m pestering you specifically about fine AMBSE and stuff like that’re, but you’ve probably had to answer this a billion times. The low prices on your concessions, a bunch of people have copied it. I almost felt like you had the license to do so because you had killed it on all the other revenue streams that it was almost like, I don’t want to say you didn’t need it, but I felt like you had exceeded expectations so much in the revenue generation coming out of the opening of the building that you could afford to. But now with this a few years in the rear view mirror. What can you tell our industry about those low food prices, what it really means to attraction of fans, customer experience, et cetera, any great lessons?

Tim Zulawski: Yeah. Look, the most critical lesson that applies to everything in business is to listen to your customer. If you go to the history of food pricing and food experience at sport and entertainment or movie theaters or alike, it was treated as a person, as a captive audience. You came in and you spent, you’re [00:18:00] required to spend a lot of money for questionable quality of food and questionable speed of service, and.

Because they could, and that is not who Arthur Blank is. At the time when we were building the stadium in a combination of people leaving a, a major event and only talking about how their food prices were cheap and what, how that resonated with them and Arthur being in an venue that did treat him as a captive person or audience, it, it was very clear to to Arthur that. We need to make this part of the fan experience coming to Mercedes-Benz Stadium, our, our motto is Welcome home and, and I would hope that you don’t invite people into your home and then all of a sudden try to say, Hey, I got you here. That beer that you want out of my fridge is really expensive. In fact, I’m sure in a traditional manner you would just say, you’re my guest.

What can I get you? So as close to you are my guess what can I get you as we can be is where we have been. We have. At times actually only lowered our prices and not raised our prices. But when it comes to our fan friendly items, and it is an [00:19:00] unequivocal for us, when we bring in all these major events, we’ll have the 28 Super Bowl, 2031, final Four, we’ll have FIFA World Cup Club, world Championship on the line. Our food pricing will remain unchanged because for us, it is a part of coming into our home. It’s part of the experience, and it’s part of the, ultimately the satisfaction. And if you can create. Millions of satisfied guests. They will become super advocates for our offering for Mercedes-Benz Stadium, for Atlanta Falcons, for Atlanta, United, for anything that comes through the doors of Mercedes-Benz.

And then that’s where the business we’re in is advocacy. So it’s been outstanding. It also, the profitability is there and transference is there when people come to an venue. And AJ, I’ll put you on the spot if you’re going and you’ve got four people with you at an event. How much do you expect to spend on food and beverage?

AJ Maestas: For all four of us? Probably 200 bucks.

Tim Zulawski: Okay. So if you chose our family friendly items, a family of four, including two beers, can get a full meal for under [00:20:00] $30. So what ends up happening is now if you have others that you care about with you, which if a group of four you would then, especially if they’re your children. Then all of a sudden the kit, the jersey, the merchandise, the other things become more attainable. The macro irony of the whole thing is most of the time people actually leave spending more than they plan to spend. Yeah. But their satisfaction is much higher. Then when that we do, so we, after action, every event generally about 3000 survey responses on seven thou, 70,000 people across 70 plus KPIs. And they, and we have been number one in the NFL two years ago and we were within decimal points being number one last year and total fan satisfaction. And we expect to be number one in this coming year. In doing so, treating food and beverage, which is staple to your experience as a part of the fan experience, ultimately shows the fans that we care. When you care and feel cared, you feel valued. Then additionally they can, I would say, transfer, I’ll go back to that [00:21:00] term, some of that value to those with them.

And so they walk out those doors and someone’s got the kit, the hat, the scarf, the, the jersey and, and the memory, and they don’t feel gouged. You win. And so we’ve been very blessed to win. Since opening the doors of Mercedes-Benz Stadium,

AJ Maestas: I’m probably underreporting that spending as I think about it. Let’s be realistic. I never thought about the idea of price demand elasticity in it, like increasing total spending, but that’s not crazy.

Tim Zulawski: Isn’t that the same par total satisfaction?

AJ Maestas: Exactly. Yeah. And you have so many one-off, I shouldn’t say one-off, but you have so many rare events because of your city status and the building and your ability to attract these events.

That World Cup, you mentioned World Cup, you’re going to host eight matches for the 2026 World Cup. Everyone going there is going to want to memorialize that attendance for sure. Okay. If we could talk about soccer for a second. We’re predicting 32 million new soccer fans in the US from 22 to 26. As a result of World Cup. [00:22:00] In past World Cups, there was a similar lift on a percent basis and not much of a reversion to the mean. Right? It wasn’t lash in the pan, I’m back, I don’t care about soccer. There was a lot of stickiness. Let’s call it like 80% or so, right, that remain interested in the sport, picked up an international club or a domestic club, things like that. Any thoughts? Have you looked forward to what this might mean for Atlanta United or just MLS in general?

Tim Zulawski: Anytime you can get a spotlight on a sport you participate in, there’s opportunity. There’s also opportunity from the city perspective, especially Atlanta, given that 80% of the US consuming Publix within a two hour flight of Atlanta, we do believe that we’ll be a hunkered community, if you will. Yeah. Where people will come to Atlanta for our five group stage matches, see where their teams go. Then use Atlanta as a home base operations and fly out. That also gives us sample opportunity to cross market community events with Atlanta United. It gives them a chance to be in our stadium and sample the stadium and what it’s like, and that’s not just out of town, but in town folks, because [00:23:00] that’s also the irony of international soccer and the game of soccer is we recently had an EPL match where 23,000 of the fans attending the match up 60 plus had never been in Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Okay, great. So a new audience, 13,000 of that 23,000 lived within 10 miles from Mercedes-Benz City.

AJ Maestas: Wow. Really?

Tim Zulawski: So when you think about this, they’ve, we’ve had Atlanta United since 2017. We’ve been playing at a very high level. Including winning the MLS cup in 2018 and yet 13,000 people that live within 10 miles of stadium had not come to a united match but liked the game of soccer. So we do believe that the game coming on that scale, drawing in that many casuals, ’cause you will have a lot of casuals and you also have the opportunity of conversion. You also have the opportunity of influence at the youngest ages. People build disproportionately their fan affinity before the age of roughly 15.

And so if we can do good by the kids as Mercedes-Benz Stadium do good by the kids and show Atlanta United in conjunction with the [00:24:00] collective enjoyment of the FIFA World Cup, then we have an opportunity to humanize us. And for those who reside within a driving distance of Mercedes-Benz Stadium, get you back out, whether it be for a single match or multiple matches, and then if others can do that. Then you can elevate the entire game of the MLS. I think there’s a lot of things that we’re not even talking about. That’ll be offshoots, city’s preparation for it, logistics, even custom and customer service. The highlighting of the venues themselves across the board on a global scale so that people return home and, and hopefully have a great experience not only in Atlanta, but in Dallas and in and Kansas City and LA and the, and the other venues will be hosting. For that period of time, soccer will be the focal point. So it should draw in more casuals and give us the opportunity to move ’em down the funnel to hopefully one day be an avid.

AJ Maestas: I love that you even know that there were 13,000 people there that hadn’t previously attended. Like what percent of US professional sports organizations would even know those were unique attendees or new, unique [00:25:00] attendees.

Tim Zulawski: I would say this, so thank you, but the business you and I started in 30 years ago is not the business that we’re in today. Relative to the infrastructure it is in that we give special moments for people to forget their every day build memories, escape reality, share memories on down the line. It is not from the sophistication. So as new ownership has come in as owners like Arthur Blank, who come from a fortune to 1000 background. My understanding at one point Home Depot is the size of Microsoft and IBM combined, right? They were opening stores at a ridiculous rate. So when you look at that, the acumen that took to build something like that, and you bring that to a venue, to a team, to a city with high level of concentration, then you bring in one in five year.

Strategic plans. You bring in a customer focus. You bring in a desire to understand and use data and to resources. So people have a strategic plan, they have a goal, they have a process, they have tactics and and resources [00:26:00] necessary to execute the process to achieve the goal. When you do that. You all of a sudden look and sound sophisticated, but it really isn’t. But you’re no longer the mom and pop shop that just put their tickets up for sale, took the check, took the cash, licked their thumb, and put it up in the air and said, here’s what ticket pricing should be. The bar has been raised the cost to be a season ticket member across most sports, if not all has been raised. The expectations of the consumer has been raised. Data analytics, the use of artificial intelligence in various ways. Predictive machine learning, deep thinking on down the line is all part of our every day. And I would say that was not the case really not too long ago. But definitely as very successful men and business women have come into owning sports franchises, we have become more similar to the. Fortune 1000 base then I’m a pop shop.

AJ Maestas: I agree. And I love the progress. Don’t you think that’s a little atypical in the sports world? Like where would you stack rank [00:27:00] this organization? What does your gut tell you? You take the big five sports leagues in the US stack rank what percentile is AMBSE in business practices?

Tim Zulawski: I would hold us in the top echelon with a humbleness that there’s something to learn from everybody. We take great pride in benchmarking. There’s Arthur in particular. If we’re gonna start up something new, it’s all about who’s done it, how are they doing it, what are their consumers saying about it? How do we learn both what not to do, what to do. And we have enterprises that we admire, respect, and I’ve got plenty of colleagues as such. And some people are an inch wide and a mile deep in their expertise. And some people are a inch deep at a mile wide. And so we, we get the opportunity not only to learn from people within our industry, but a lot of times we go out across other non-sport related industries to learn best practices. So I think we’re doing okay. Remember we have no finish line here. [00:28:00]

AJ Maestas: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that you’re playing the Forever Game, which I’m a big fan of. I think you can run at a higher ethical standard while also having this. Perpetual growth mindset at the same time. Right. If you’re playing that, that long game. Yeah. I, I love hearing you say that. Do you mind if I ask you some rapid fire questions here to wrap up?

Tim Zulawski: Go for it

AJ Maestas: Okay, cool. What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

[00:28:23] Tim Zulawski: There’s a lot of advice and one of it would be try to be a perpetual learner, and I don’t mean. Via book, but I’d say the very simplistic one I, I got from my father, who is a guy that took over his family’s farm at 15, was kicked out of high school and worked a line of General Motors and then built nine homes so that his kids could, and family could have a better life than he had was don’t lie.

AJ Maestas: Oh, that’s good.

Tim Zulawski: And the lying comes in, omission. Lying comes in various ways. Again, for those who I have the privilege to interact with in my career, a lot of times people will say, we appreciate your candor. Whether they really [00:29:00] appreciate it or not, I’m not sure, but I’ve been fortunate through that candor to build great relationships with people. Mm-hmm. And so my dad’s simple thing was, don’t lie, you’ll get burned 500 fold from it.

AJ Maestas: The late great Roger Velde of Notre Dame was the first podcast guest I ever had, and that was his. Oh really? I can almost hear him saying it. Yeah. He said, don’t ever. I think like, why would that be so hard? But somehow that is a real meaningful there. There’s times where even out of just being polite, a little white lie that you want to tell,

Tim Zulawski: there is times in negotiations, oh, you never said that. Or X, Y, Z. People will learn, lose credibility in it. Owning, yes, I committed to that. Here’s what the output of how, what that commitment means to me. If you’re trying to build a relationship with somebody, a long-term partnership with somebody, they don’t want you to suffer or lose. That’s not how you start up a partnership, right? [00:30:00] Yeah. But if you hide it and you try to manipulate around it, you’ll tend to erode that negotiation. You’ll tend to erode that relationship. You probably don’t get the relationship. You don’t probably don’t get the partnership. So it’s just a, a easy way to example that manifested.

AJ Maestas: I like it. You also don’t have to remember what you said. No. If you don’t lie. This is very true.

Tim Zulawski: Yeah. Maybe that’s part of the stress reduction. My wife tells me I don’t remember much.

AJ Maestas: Yeah. I’m enjoying trying to not really dwell on things or remember them. So that’s my opinion. I’m really grateful we get to be a part of what you all are doing, and for so many years it’s been so impressive to watch from a distance and to have some small part in. It’s pretty incredible. We’re really proud of our work in MLS and our ability to help teams launch successfully. But I think you rewrote the playbook, putting 70,000 butts in seats and what have you and your success there. The stadium was one of a kind. I think you’re the first I, I think it’s fair to say that really hit a grand slam walk off home run [00:31:00] with the opening of the building, paying for the thing financially and giving the fans so much back and for the city. Everyone sells these buildings as bringing a million events to the city. Quite often that’s not true, especially with football stadiums, which you have. That building has had dozens and dozens of marquee events in Atlanta. What a run, what a run, and I know it’s not done. I know golf, and we’ll see where we go next.

But I’m really impressed and proud of you for the work and really of the organization to hold onto you and motivate you and keep you engaged for 20 plus years. It’s pretty cool and pretty rare. Congratulations. Is what I’m doing. Yeah.

Tim Zulawski: First, AJ, thank you for the, the kind acknowledgement, Navigate yourself. Have been there for a number of years on the journey and you’ve helped us be informed for our partners. So equally, thank you for your contribution to ultimately us listening and responding, to those we serve from a Mercedes-Benz Stadium standpoint and a BS. Factually accurate in the fact that we’re the busiest 70,000 seat stadium in the world. So that does give us an opportunity to create a lot of memories and [00:32:00] impact on a lot of lives, both locally, nationally, and domestically, and soon to be internationally with some of the events. And we do it with the help of a lot of outstanding people across a lot of what, let’s say, unsung businesses.

When people are unsung functions. When people think of sports and entertainment, they might think of sales and marketing and sponsorship and those things. When you run a enterprise like us, it’s guest services, it’s housekeeping, it’s concessions, it’s everyone who touches. The fan as before they even come in the doors as they consider coming to our city, our state, our venue, we all get an opportunity to make a positive impact on ’em and as they return, and there’s a lot of people that go into it. And I have a really blessed opportunity to work with outstanding people up and down, and then partners like yourselves in helping us bring this to life. So thank you.

AJ Maestas: Yeah, and I would say it’s so much more than just Atlanta. Let, let’s be honest, right? You represent a whole region. I think it’s fair to say it’s headquarters of the southeast of the US with so much population [00:33:00] growth since the beginning of COVID, and really before that there was a Sunbelt movement. But yeah, no end in sight. I’m so grateful for you giving us your time. If anyone listening has any questions or comments, please feel free to reach out to us. My email is AJ@NVGT.com You can also connect with us on my personal LinkedIn page or the Navigate LinkedIn page. And again, this is AJ Maestas of Navigate with Tim Zulawski. Thank you for joining us on Navigating Sports Business.

Tim Zulawski: My pleasure. Thank you, AJ.