Beyond The Game: Sports-Adjacent Careers With Pro-Level Payoffs [Op-Ed]

We’ve all heard the statistic: Less than 1% of young athletes achieve elite status in professional sports.

For every LeBron James, 99 youth basketball players will forge different paths off the court.

For every Patrick Mahomes, 99 former Pop Warner standouts will find meaning and purpose beyond the gridiron.

For every Angel Reese, 99 little girls will trade their hoop dreams for pursuits outside the WNBA.

There is an opportunity to help our young people channel the discipline, teamwork and sacrifice that team sports instill into successful sports-adjacent careers. From lucrative food and beverage contracts to franchise-fueled mixed-use entertainment developments, the ever-expanding business of professional sports provides countless inroads for young people to apply these transferable skills and find success on their own entrepreneurial terms.

I had the privilege recently to participate in a Diversity in Sports forum at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, North Carolina. The event included networking, a panel discussion and a career fair designed to help students recognize that their love of a game can be transformed into actionable, achievable success far removed from drills and whistles but close enough to keep the endorphins pumping.

That said, we have to do a better job of expanding — and explaining — what people see as legitimate engagement opportunities within the business of sports.

The sports/entertainment industry is unrivaled in the diversity of its ecosystem, but we have to show our young people where to look. Yes, it’s stadiums and arenas and merchandising, but it’s also food and beverage suppliers, IT companies and fan engagement specialists.

We have to attract the talent by helping them see themselves in these roles – and understand that their interests, background, and hustle have a place in this growing industry.

We also have to teach them that false career starts may penalize their growth potential in the short-term, but learning from those early missteps and responsibly regrouping allows them to find long-term success.

I, myself, began my college studies as pre-med but pivoted to finance after an internship on Wall Street ignited a fire in my soul to see capital deployed more equitably and strategically.

And the timing of my about-face paid off because – after nearly two decades of developing my career across roles in public finance, investment banking, infrastructure development, and community capital – I was prepared when major sports leagues began relaxing ownership rules and the value of expanded media rights surged. Private equity is now allowing Main Street investors to claim their piece of the $460 billion global sports market, a figure expected to nearly double within the next 10 years.

Likewise, as a co-founder of the National Black Bank Foundation (NBBF) – alongside banker and fintech executive Ashley Bell and Bernice King, the youngest daughter of slain civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King – I’ve been fortunate for the past five years to support financial inclusion and empowerment as the sports/entertainment banking landscape shifts to embrace previously excluded financial institutions.

In this role, the NBBF has facilitated Minority Deposit Institution (MDI) and Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) participation in syndicated loans totaling roughly $1.6 billion, investments that directly serve the communities producing both the on-field/on-court talent and their homegrown fan bases. In fact, our very first venture convened 10 Black-owned banks to facilitate the $35 million refinancing of the Atlanta Hawks’ practice facility, making it the first major professional sports facility in the country financed solely by Black banks.

This Indiana boy who left home to study medicine in Louisiana certainly never dreamed he’d instead spend his days facilitating community stakes in multi-million-dollar sports developments, but life has a way of revealing your strengths where you never thought to look.

Exposure is everything, though, and we must do a better job of promoting pathways to sports-adjacent careers or risk squandering a rich talent pipeline with the power to transform local economies and build generational wealth.

Brandon Comer is managing partner of Alterity Capital, founder and CEO of Comer Capital Group LLC and a co-founder of the National Black Bank Foundation.

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