Q&A with Brad Sims, CEO, New York City FC

Brad Sims joined New York City FC as Chief Executive Officer in January 2019. Known within the industry for his creativity, Sims has 22 years of sports industry experience and is a 2015 Sports Business Journal 40 Under 40 honoree, as well as a Leaders Global Under 40 Award Winner.

1. So, first, it’d be great if you can talk us through your career journey to date and how you reached your current position at New York City Football Club (NYCFC)?

I’ve worked my entire career in the sport industry. I started out working in professional baseball as the most entry-level ticket salesperson you could be. I spent my days ‘smiling and dialling’, making hundreds of outbound calls a day, and also doing lots of fun other activities like driving a golf cart, putting cones around the parking lot and hoisting the flag up and down the flagpole behind centerfield before and after the game – all the glamorous duties in baseball which in the end, add character. I started at the bottom and tried to work my way up from there.

After selling season tickets, I moved to group sales and then premium seating sales. At that point, I really wanted to get into leadership. That was always my goal. I started with the Atlanta Braves for one year and then Baltimore Orioles for four or five years. I was a big baseball fan and played baseball growing up, so working in baseball was my only goal at that time.

When I was working with the Orioles and managing their three minor league baseball properties in the state of Maryland, they sold their properties to Comcast – the large cable company based in Philadelphia.

Comcast also had a big sports group which owned, at that time, the Philadelphia 76ers in NBA, at the time, Philadelphia Flyers of NHL, two arenas and some other properties. After a couple of months, they asked me to move to Philadelphia to run sales for the 76ers, the Flyers and the whole complex there. That was an interesting situation, because all I really ever wanted to do, coming out of college, was to work in baseball and become a General Manager of a baseball team. I hadn’t thought beyond that. And then, all of a sudden, they asked me to start in Philadelphia the following Monday.

I went from working in baseball to working in basketball and hockey. I knew nothing about hockey. I had never been to a game and never put on a pair of ice skates in my life. I had to learn fast. When opportunities have presented themselves, I’ve been open. I really believed in the people at the organisation had a plan for me, so I said, “All right, see you on Monday.”

I spent a few years in that role and really grew professionally in that time. Some of the folks that I worked with at the Orioles started an entrepreneurial venture building minor league baseball stadiums and creating expansion teams. In September 2005, they recruited me to a new start-up called Opening Day Partners where I was the COO. We built three stadiums in three different markets in a four-year span. It was a neat role where I was able to start from scratch, hire an entire business team and be involved in stadium construction. Our first stadium was in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, followed by York, Pennsylvania followed by Charles County, Maryland right up to Washington DC. In this role I would have boots on in the morning to walk around a construction site, and in the afternoon, I’d have a suit on selling sponsorships, suites and season tickets.

In 2008, after a few years at Opening Day Partners, a friend of mine at the NBA recruited me to New York to work in the NBA League office. I spent four years at the NBA League office – a management consulting role working with several different teams. I was travelling each week, getting on a plane Monday night or Tuesday morning buying in the market and then coming back on Thursday or Friday to work with teams, share best practices and help drive revenue. I was very focused on driving top-line revenue for their organisation and through that, one of the teams I cultivated a relationship with reached out to me.

In May 2012, the Cleveland Cavaliers recruited me to move to Cleveland and help them rebuild their business on the heels of Lebron James going to Miami and the NBA lockout. They created a Chief Commercial Officer role that they hadn’t had previously for me. I was in Cleveland for six and a half years overseeing all commercial properties, and over time, I took on some other opportunities, including:

• The AHL Cleveland Monsters hockey team
• The Cleveland Gladiatiors arena football league team
• An NBA G League team, the Canton Charge
• An NBA 2K E-sports team, Cavs Legion GC

I was involved in a lot of different properties and had a broad remit. I had a great run and got to see Lebron James come back. We accomplished a two hundred plus million-dollar arena renovation project and had four semi-final appearances.

It then got to the point where I felt I was ready for the next step and fortuitously the NYCFC opportunity presented itself in January 2019.

This has been a general theme throughout my career: I try to align myself with great organisations, great people, with multi-property organisations, organisations that had broad reach and with strong brands. NYCFC ticks all the boxes between City Football Group, which is one of a kind in the sports industry. The power of the Manchester City brand, along with the New York Yankees brand, is a powerful combination.

Someone who has been a mentor of mine throughout my career is Tom Glick, who was the former President of NYCFC and also worked at City Football Group for a number of years. I met Tom in 1999 at the baseball winter meetings when he was the GM of the Lansing Lugnuts in Michigan, and I was running the minor league property ticket sales for the Orioles. We stayed in touch over the years. He loved City Football Group and had great experiences both with NYCFC and Manchester City. He always spoke very highly of the organisation which carried a lot of weight with me.

So that’s the not-so-short version of my career, but it’s been a lot of fun.

2. What has been your biggest driver or motivation kind of each time you’ve changed those roles?

Being able to find opportunities to create an impact on the business is the number one thing that is important to me and motivating to me.

I like being challenged. My dad worked for the same company for thirty-six years, and I don’t feel like that’s in my generation. I think people want to be challenged, want to do different things.

My goal is to find organisations where there are legitimate growth opportunities over time.

If it’s the right type of organisation and you can say,” I can see myself being there in the long term,” that’s great.

To me, it’s all about how we can build the enterprise value of a company over time, including infrastructure, technology, etc.

3. What are you most proud of in your career and why?

For me, it’s about people. It’s people that have worked for me, that I’ve helped grow their careers around the industry. Those are things I’m most proud of.

I have two people who worked for me at different stages early in their careers that are now team presidents: one in NFL, one in NBA. I have another three people that are in C level positions in the big four sports in North America that worked for me at an early level.

4. What’s been some of your biggest struggle in your career and how did you overcome it and was there anything key that you learned from any specific situations?

I have knowingly and purposely sought out challenging situations to work in, so I have faced difficulty.

At one point in my career, I was going for an internal promotion. I thought it was a done deal and then someone at a more senior level told me that it wasn’t going to happen because I was “too good at my current job” and it would be too difficult to replace me. For me, that was a tough spot because I was really excited about the company, the growth opportunities, and the person that I was going to be working with. I liked the people and I thought I was going to be the for the long-term, but I felt pigeon-holed, so it was time to move on.

5. How do you think the role of the CEO will potentially evolve in the next five years and in particular, do you think sort of what skills do you think are the most important to succeed?

There are two focuses that I think as CEO you must focus on simultaneously, delivering on the P&L and delivering for your people.

If you go back ten to twenty years, CEO’s would have sat in the corner office and did not know anybody outside of their leadership team. Now, you’re finding there’s more of a trend of CEO’s who have come up through the business, know the business and understand people are a huge component of it.

My first order of business at NYCFC was to spend thirty minutes in one-on-one meetings with every one of our hundred and thirty employees. I wanted to get to know every employee. I want every member of staff to be comfortable communicating with me.

I think this is something CEO’s weren’t doing in the past, and I hope that this is a tend we see more in the future.

6. How do you establish that in your work-life balance and do you encourage your teams to do the same?

I’m a big believer in work-life balance. But I approach my work-life balance a little differently. Some people have a work-life balance on a daily basis or on a weekly basis. Whether that’s finding time to get to the gym, going for a run or making sure that you spend time with your family. Here, I don’t always do a great job.

When I wake up, I’m thinking about the business. I have a hard time being super present when I’m away from the office.

But, I’m really passionate about travelling, as is my wife. I go hard for three months straight and then we get some kind of vacation planned. My wife and I do an anniversary trip every summer with just the two of us. We try and have this mentality that we always have something lined up to look forward to.

I’d encourage other people to find what works for them. I’m a big believer in if you have superstars on your team, encourage them to do whatever makes them happy.

I want to find ways to feed “A” level performers and enable them to be as productive and happy as possible; work-life balance is a huge part of that.

7. So how do you prioritise your own learning as a busy leader?

When I’m at home, I’m always reading sports business and leadership publications, articles, websites and blogs.

I’m probably on my phone too much because I’m reading everything that’s coming in. There’s so much information opportunity and knowledge out there that I want to make sure that I’m up-to-date on.

I also attend conferences and find opportunities where I can see speakers or collaborate with peers. Even though it can take time out of being in the office, I think it’s important to continue to learn.

We hosted a leadership trainer to meet with our ticket sales management team. I sat with him and picked his brain because I wanted to learn about what he was teaching our guys, what he found was important and things that I could potentially utilise.

I think part of it is being intellectually curious. For me, it’s about trying to just stay up on what’s happening out there outside of the walls of our office.

8. What skills do you think are most important to develop for them to continue to drive the business forward sort of now and in the future?

As technology takes on an increasing importance in our jobs, learning additional skills that have to do with our databases, including reporting tools and pulling data will be increasingly important.

Being more of a data-driven organisation is important to me, and I think data is the future for all businesses. People who can be analytical in every role are people that are going to rise to the top over time – so I’m trying to support advanced learning in those areas.

I think it’s also important to support people where they see their areas of growth. We’re trying to build a culture where people want to learn more and want to increase their skills. We want people who are intellectually curious that want to expand their skill sets – that’s only going to ultimately benefit our organisation.

9. It’d be great if you could tell us the best piece of career advice that you’ve ever been given

One of the best pieces of career advice I got was when I was in my very first job in the industry. My boss at the time asked me, “Is it more important to you to be the first one to get to the next level or is it more important to you to be the best when you’re there?” What she meant by that is, don’t be so focused on trying to go too fast.

She took a role as an Assistant GM after being a GM because the organisation was much better. This was mind-blowing to me.

I learned that it isn’t all about titles. It’s variations of that same advice that has really stuck with me over time that I’ve passed along to others.

10. Top 3 qualities that make a good leader

• Vision – being able to “see” where to take the business with ability to articulate/communicate/motivate the team on how to get there.
• Honesty/Integrity – being someone who leads by example and is someone that team members can feel good about and proud to have leading the organisation.  A straight shooter who tells the truth and demonstrates transparency with his/her team.
• Listening/Empathy – understanding what the pain points are for team members and trying to do whatever they can to minimise/eliminate those things so that team members can operate most effectively.

Did you enjoy this blog? Here is some related content that you may be interested in:

•  Six qualities you need to be an inspirational modern leader
• Q&A with Fred Bunker, VP of Finance, New York City FC
• Q&A with Jon Stemp, Chief of Infrastructure, City Football Group