Draft:Matt Levine (sports pioneer)

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Matt Levine
Matt Levine, a sports pioneer.
Born	(1939-02-18) February 18, 1939 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Education	Trinity College (CT), Columbia University Graduate School of Business
Spouse	Diane Duerr-Levine
Children	Arielle Levine, Sarsh Levine

Matt Levine is a sports industry business pioneer and marketing professional, called “the ‘father’ of modern sport marketing..,” who is best known as a branding and technology innovator. He is credited with having played a pivotal role in Major League Baseball’s computerized embrace of Sabermetrics originally employed by the ‘Moneyball’ Oakland A’s in 1980, the launch and branding of the National Hockey League San Jose Sharks in 1991 and from 1974-2020 advancements in capitalizing on understanding fan behavior and motivations using digitally-based analytics to help increase attendance.

Early life

Levine was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on February 18, 1939 to parents Sara and Samuel Levine. He attended Trinity College (CT) where he earned a BA in English Literature, served on the Editorial Board of the school’s Tripod newspaper as its Sports Editor and was President of the Delta Phi fraternity, graduating in June 1960.

Following graduation, Levine served in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve, stationed in Cape May, New Jersey and Groton, Connecticut, then became the Associate Editor of the weekly Easton Road Guide newspaper in Glenside, Pennsylvania. Subsequently, he attended the Columbia University Graduate School of Business in New York City where he met his future wife Diane Duerr, in January 1963 receiving an MBA in Finance, having been President of the student body and Vice President of the school’s chapter of AIESEC, an international student exchange program.

Early career

Upon graduation from Columbia Levine was hired by First National City Bank (now Citibank) as a corporate credit and trust department investment analyst after which he joined the Scott Paper Company (1964-1968) as a retail salesman followed by roles in marketing research, brand management and new product development. Then at McKinsey & Co. in New York (1968-1971) he brought his packaged goods experience to bear on consumer, retail and financial services industry engagements. Moving to San Francisco in 1971 he launched the consulting firm, Pacific Select Corp, initially counseling food & beverage industry clients on marketing & sales strategy.

Sports career

Beginning in 1974, Levine transitioned his firm to helping major league pro sports franchises and venues better understand how their fans made ticket purchase decisions and how to increase the productivity of ticket and sponsorship sales, public relations and community development functions. He also provided litigation support and expert witness services on issues of intellectual property, licensed merchandise retailing and franchise relocation conflict. His clients included the four major United States pro sport leagues (NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL), their law firms, more than 60 professional franchises, a major university athletic department, the event promoters of professional tennis, mixed martial arts, equine polo and 3x3 basketball as well as the operators of sports stadia and racetracks.

Major League Baseball

In 1979, Levine’s company was retained by new Oakland A’s ownership (the Levi Strauss-leading Haas family) to recruit marketing leadership and guide development of a marketing plan to turn around the image and attendance fortunes of the franchise.

In response to the request of team president Roy Eisenhardt to help increase the listenership and viewership of its radio and television broadcasts, Levine proposed adding engaging statistical content to the franchise’s broadcast talent’s commentary as well as provide the team manager and coaches with more in-depth player performance and game tactics planning insight. This led to creating and installing the ‘EDGE 1.000’ computer system and software (developed in collaboration with Dr. Richard Cramer and Dr. Steven Mann - both early proselytizers of Sabermetrics conceived and popularized by Bill James). The new technology would facilitate digitally gathering, analyzing and graphically depicting in-game pitch-by-pitch and hitting pattern data in real time. The system also included portably stored digitized in-house amateur and professional scouting databases.

Levine secured financial support for the development hardware components from Apple Corp., Corvus (portable storage systems), D.C. Hayes (modems) and Digital Equipment Corporation.

Building on the successful A’s installation and their validation of the system’s value in 1981 Levine launched Sports Team Analysis & Tracking Systems (STATS) as a Pacific Select Corp subsidiary (with Cramer and Mann), that led to other teams acquiring the systems, notably the Houston Astros, New York Yankees and Chicago White Sox.

The story of the A’s use of the newly accessible information made possible by EDGE 1.000 became the foundation for the best-selling book “Moneyball” by Michael Lewis published in 2003 by W.W. Norton & Company, further popularized in 2011 by the movie of the same name featuring Brad Pitt and distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing.

National Basketball Association

NBA Commissioner David Stern retained Levine to develop, produce and distribute an unprecedented television-based way to reach a younger generation of fans built around the star-studded Los Angeles Lakers featuring Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Levine, along with Bob Brand, a Hollywood television producer, director and writer, collaborated with MCA Records and the company’s chairman, Irving Azoff, to conceive a first-of-its-kind music video featuring in-game Lakers highlights and the song ‘My Secret (Didja Gitit Yet?)’ performed by the popular teen-focused Boston-based group New Edition. The video was featured on the 1985 CBS television broadcast of the 1985 NBA Finals as well as on MTV and other prominent music video channels.

San Jose Sharks

Levine, as its second employee and EVP Business Operations, gained prominence for heading the branding efforts of the new San Jose Sharks franchise who began play during the 1991-92 National Hockey League season, a foundation that has anchored the franchise for a run of success and popularity through the subsequent decades.

The four building blocks of his approach included:

-         Developing intellectual property (team name, logo family and colors) using consumer packaged goods marketing research tools that catapulted awareness and popularity of the team around the world. Its licensed merchandise accounted for the largest team share of National Hockey League retail sales during the franchise’s first two years, generating the second most club licensing revenue across all major pro sport leagues with the exception of the Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls. The Hockey News called the Sharks original jerseys the best in NHL history.

-         Conceiving community grass roots programs that spread the understanding of hockey, strengthened connections to families with school-aged children and cemented relationships with recreational facilities and elementary school educators. These were accomplished through – (a) the groundbreaking “Sharks & Parks” street hockey program subsequently adapted by the NHL, (b) “S.J. Sharkie’s Think Tank,” a graphical educational tool for 4^th through 6^th graders teaching geography, mathematics and science concepts using hockey facts & figures and the interactive “The Science of Hockey,” a joint venture with the San Francisco-based Exploratorium.

-         Reinventing the staging and presentation of NHL games, employing a new animated laser technology to tell a dramatic story during the team’s opening week, hiring a Disney spin-off company to build a signature two-ton, 22-foot tall sharkhead tunnel through which players continue to skate onto the ice to open games and installing a shark fin atop the team’s ice-refreshing Zamboni machines.

-         Converting traditional events into globally covered media news, including introducing the team’s first uniforms in an on-ice media conference featuring hockey legend Gordie Howe and Sharks owner George Gund III that ESPN called “the hockey play of the week” and birthing new mascot S.J.Sharkie out of CO2-spewing Zamboni on the Madison Square Garden Network that was shown during the evening sports news in virtually all top 50 U.S. media markets, receiving the same ESPN accolades.

Community service

Over the course of his career Levine has provided pro bono marketing advisory services to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Houston Grand Opera, the York Theatre Company (New York), American Musical Theatre San Jose, the Tech Museum of Innovation (now Tech Interactive) in San Jose and Lyric Theatre (San Jose)

He serves on the Board of Trustee of Palo Alto University where he sits on the Executive Committee, chairs the Infrastructure and Environment Committee and is an Advancement Committee member.

With the Commonwealth Club of California, he serves on the Membership & Marketing Committee and the Silicon Valley Advisory Council.

Awards

Levine earned a myriad of honors and awards in his distinguished career, including:

-         He was selected by the national trade publication Advertising Age in the July 6, 1992 edition for its first ‘Marketing 100’ class honoring the top marking executives in the nation, citing his excellence in brand marketing

-         He was featured in the ‘New Directions in Differentiating and Positioning’ video case study in 1993 by Philip Kotler, internationally acclaimed marketing consultant and professor at Northwestern University’s J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management.

-         He was selected by the San Francisco Focus as part of the ‘Bay Area Brain Trust,’ featuring ‘101 achievers who make this the smartest place on Earth’ in July 1995.

-         He was inducted into the Northern California Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 2018 along with national TV sports commentator Chris Berman and columnist Mike Silver.

-         Received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2018 Sports and Entertainment Analytics Conference under auspices of the Vinik Sports & Entertainment Management Program at the University of South Florida.

Personal life

Levine and his wife Diane Duerr-Levine live in Los Altos in Northern California and have two children, Arielle and Sarsh.

Additional references

- San Francisco Chronicle, “What the Fans Really Want,” by Glenn Dickey, March 13,1975, Sporting Green section

-           San Francisco Chronicle, “The Approach is Different’” by Glenn Dickey, October 13, 1976, Sporting Green section

-           Business Week, “World Team Tennis Makes a Deathbed Try,” April 9, 1979

-           The Sporting News, “We believe . . . Gasoline for Baseball,” July 21, 1979, by C.C.Johnson Spink

-           Sports Illustrated, “More Victories Equals More Fans Equal More Profits, Right? Wrong, Wrong, Wrong,” April 28, 1980, by Ray Kennedy, pp.34-45

-           Philadelphia Daily News, “Women Still an Untapped Audience,” February 23, 1981, by Stan Hochman, p. 75

-           A’s News, “Athletics Baseball Enters the Computer Age,” March 1982, by Barnaby L. Dingoes, pp. 32-3

-           Apple, The Personal Computer Magazine, “The A’s Have It,” May 1982, by Neil Fitelson,

pp. 6-7

-           Discover, “Turning Baseball into a Science,” June 1982, by Kevin McKean, pp.28-31

-           The Sporting News, “Computer Baseball: Terminals Provide A’s and White Sox Look to the Future,” June 1982, by Glenn Dickey

-           Personal Computing, “Could (Should?) an Athlete Be Perfect,” October 1982, by Jeffrey Rothfelder, pp. 50-5

-           San Francisco Business Journal, “Local Company Hopes to Score with Sports Software,” January 24, 1983, by Richard L.Cohen, pp. 10-11

-           San Jose Mercury News, “Outlook: Pacific Select Makes its Name as a Team Player,” April 18, 1983, by Steve Kaufman

-           Venture, “Making it Happen: Baseball Software Gives the Pitch,” May 1983, by Cathy Hedgecock

-           Sports Illustrated, “It’s the Apple of his Eye,” June 23, 1983, by Ray Kennedy, pp.72-4

-           San Francisco Chronicle, “Why Warrior Execs Stayed Home,” by Ron Thomas, September 18, 1986, Sporting Green section

-           San Francisco Chronicle, “The Warriors’ New Offense - They Want Fans to Worry-and Care-About Them,” September 18, 1986, by Ron Thomas, Sporting Green section

-           UPI, “Sports Business: “NHL Tries to Sell Itself to San Francisco Area,” June 5, 1990, by William D. Murray

-           San Jose Mercury News, “What’s Next for the Sharks,” September 16, 1990, by Mike Weaver

-           Vancouver Province, “Fans on Feed Frenzy,” October 28, 1990, by Kent Gilchrist

-           San Francisco Examiner, “Fans can expect a tasty Shark soup,” November 4, 1990, by Harry Jupiter

-           Winnipeg Free Press, “California Dreamin’,” December 9, 1990, by Tim Campbell

-           Oakland Tribune, “Sharks have designs for a first-class future,” February 13, 1991, by Carl Steward.

-           Ottawa Sun, “Success Story in San Jose,” December 11, 1991, by Earl McRae

-           Wall Street Journal, “From Sharks to Hornets, Team Logos Help Sports Apparel Score,” February 1992, by Laurie M. Grossman

-           Feeding Frenzy, The Wild new World of the San Jose Sharks, Taylor Publishing Company, 1994, by Steve Cameron, pp. x, 32, 37, 115-19

-           Building Strong Brands, The Free Press, Division of Simon & Schuster, 1996, by David A. Aaker, p.262

-           The Numbers Game, Thomas Dunne Books, Imprint of St. Martin’s Press, 2004,  by Alan Schwarzer, pp. 139-40, 143-44, 151, 174

-           Sport Marketing, Human Kinetics, 2007 (3d Edition), by Bernard J.Mullin, Stephen Hardy, William A. Sutton, pp. 13, 17, 164, 226, 457

-           Silicon Valley Business Journal, “Meet the Sharks’ No. 2 Hire,”July 12, 2013, by Lauren Hepler

-           The Accidental Career, self published (Hong Kong), 2013, by Benny Ho, pp. 111-32

-           Start Small, Imagine Big, Chavez Media, 2015, by Rick Chavez, pp. 30-43

-           100 Things Sharks Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die, Triumph Books LLC, 2016, by Ross McKeon, chapters 2, 13, 33, 35, 45

-           Goodbye, Oakland . . . Winning, Wanderlust and a Sports Town’s Fight for Survival, Triumph Books LLC, 2023, by Andy Dolich and Dave Newhouse, pp.201-3, 235-45