Revenue Above Replacement

Jamie Litoff

Jamie Litoff is the Executive Director of Partnership Marketing for the Chicago Bulls, where she leads the team responsible for bringing the organization's corporate partnerships to life. In her nearly five years with the Bulls, Jamie has grown from Senior Manager to Executive Director — building out a restructured activation team and helping shape the franchise's approach to global partnerships, sustainability initiatives, and authentic brand collaboration at one of the most recognized sports organizations in the world.
Jamie's path to the Bulls spans nearly two decades of sports marketing experience across media, agency, and brand roles. She began her career at CBS Interactive and CBS Sports, where she managed digital sponsorship sales and some of the network's largest cross-platform programs. From there, she moved into the agency world at Intersport and later 160over90 — part of Endeavor — where she led sponsorship activation and content strategy for global brands including Audi, KPMG, Invesco, and National Car Rental across properties ranging from the PGA Tour to Major League Soccer. A stint on the brand side at Guaranteed Rate, managing the White Sox naming rights partnership, rounded out a career arc that gave her fluency in every seat at the table before she ever joined a team.
Beyond her day-to-day role with the Bulls, Jamie spent five years leading the Chicago chapter of WISE — Women in Sports and Events — first as President and then as Chairwoman. Under her leadership, the chapter hosted sold-out events including a panel at NBA All-Star 2020 and continued to grow as a resource for women building careers in the sports and events industries.
Jamie holds a degree from the University of Michigan and a Master's in Sports Administration from Northwestern University. She lives in the Chicago area with her family.

Hannah Berregaard

Hannah Berregaard is the Director of League Operations at Chicago Fire FC, where she oversees the operations and growth of the Chicagoland Indoor Soccer League — a youth indoor league acquired by the Fire in 2025 that serves approximately 14,000 players across roughly 1,000 club teams in the greater Chicago area. In this role, Hannah is responsible for the day-to-day logistics of the league, expanding its footprint into new markets and facilities, and connecting the league to the broader Fire organization as the club builds toward its new purpose-built stadium opening in 2028.
Hannah's path into professional sports is anything but conventional. After earning her undergraduate degree in General Studies and Spanish from the University of Northern Iowa, she spent several years in residential real estate in Iowa — consistently exceeding sales goals and developing the client relationship and business management skills that would later prove central to her work in sports operations. When COVID prompted a career pivot in 2020, Hannah enrolled in Northwestern University's Master of Sports Administration program, graduating in June 2022, while simultaneously returning to the game she grew up playing through a coaching role at a local youth soccer club.
That coaching role opened the door to Chicago FC United, one of the largest youth soccer clubs on Chicago's North Shore, where Hannah joined as Assistant Girls Director. In under two years, she advanced to Director of Club Operations — overseeing all programs across the club's boys, girls, and academy levels — by developing operational, marketing, and organizational capabilities that distinguished her in a field dominated by coaching backgrounds. Her deep knowledge of the youth soccer ecosystem in Chicagoland became the foundation for her transition to the professional side of the sport.
A passionate advocate for growing women's presence in soccer — both on and off the field — Hannah has made it a priority to increase the visibility of women coaches, directors, and players at every level of the game. She holds a Master of Arts in Sports Administration from Northwestern University and a Bachelor's degree from the University of Northern Iowa.

Joey Graziano

Joey Graziano is the Chief Business Officer of the Indiana Pacers and Indiana Fever, where he leads the organization's commercial strategy, mixed-use real estate development, data and analytics initiatives, and fan experience innovation. Under his leadership, the Pacers organization is developing one of the most ambitious sports entertainment districts in the country — a 60-acre mixed-use development surrounding Gainbridge Fieldhouse anchored by a Ritz-Carlton and a Live Nation music venue — with a vision to become a model for public-private sports development that can be replicated across American cities.
 
Before joining the Pacers, Joey spent six years at the NBA as Senior Vice President and Head of Global Event Strategy & Development, where he oversaw strategic planning, new asset creation, and business development for the league's marquee global events, including the NBA All-Star Game, NBA Finals, NBA Draft, and international games. He was one of the key architects of the 2020 NBA Bubble, spearheading the strategy and execution that allowed the league to safely resume its season at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Walt Disney World — a landmark operational achievement that provided a model for the broader sports industry.
 
Prior to the NBA, Joey served as Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel of The Headfirst Companies, where he helped grow a 15-person startup into an industry-leading immersive live event company with more than 1,500 employees operating across 20 states and four countries. At scale, Headfirst produced events for a third of Major League Baseball franchises, the English Premier League, and more than 150 colleges and universities.
 
Earlier in his career, Joey was an associate at international law firm Jones Day, where he focused on complex civil and criminal litigation. A Mitchell Scholar, he earned an LLM in Public Law from the National University of Ireland, Galway, and conducted bribery and corruption investigations through the World Bank's Office of Evaluation and Suspension. He received his B.A. and J.D. from Georgetown University summa cum laude, where he was a Rhodes Scholar finalist, played collegiate baseball, and was shaped by the university's storied fellowship programs.
Joey is also the founder of a nonprofit in the Dominican Republic that uses baseball to promote literacy for children in the barrio of Consuelo, and he founded the Academy for Veterans to ensure governments honor their commitments to those who served.
 
A Queens native and son of a New York City firefighter, Joey brings a run-toward-the-fire mentality to everything he does — from reimagining how sports organizations create value in their communities, to building the next generation of sports business leaders.

Best Of: Jason Sinnarajah

Jason Sinnarajah joined the Royals in August 2023 as the Sr. Vice President, Chief Operating Officer. In this role, Jason oversees the business analytics, ticket operations, technology and stadium operations departments as well as the team’s relationship with its food and beverage and retail partners at Kauffman Stadium. In 2024, Jason led the revitalization of our concession experience on the Plaza level, the implementation of new local food offerings and an improved GoEntry fan experience to reduce wait times for entering Kauffman Stadium. 
 
Prior to joining the Royals, Jason was Senior Vice President of Business Administration for the Buffalo Bills from 2020-23 where he oversaw ticket and premium sales, marketing, community relations, stadium operations and strategy and analytics. In that time, he led stadium operations during a period of COVID-19 fan protocols with New York State, managed the concessionaire partnership at Highmark Stadium, created a strategy and analytics teams to support the Buffalo Bills and Buffalo Sabres, grew the team’s marketing app audience to Top 5 in the NFL across engagement and registered users and increased overall revenue by 40%. Jason also helped lead efforts to secure a new stadium for the Bills through the building of economic business cases to ownership and local/state government officials for a new stadium in Orchard Park, N.Y. Jason had prior sports experience with the Cleveland Guardians Strategy and Analytics team from 2012-15. 
 
During his tenure, he negotiated a new partnership for their food and beverage business, acquired capital to renovate Progressive Field, set and managed revenue and sales compensation goals across premium seating, ticket sales and corporate partnerships and led efforts to bring an All-Star Game to Cleveland. Outside of sports, Jason spent five years in media and corporate development at Ziff Davis and the Weather Company. At the Weather Company he led business development partnerships with large global media platforms such as Apple, Meta, X and Google, and negotiated media deals with international media companies. At Ziff Davis, Jason led data and e-commerce focused business units and was involved in several M&A transactions to expand the company’s presence in e-commerce and media. 
 
Jason also spent five years at Google where he was responsible for an internal consulting team across the Asia-Pacific region and lived in Tokyo and Sydney. He also held a role leading Google’s partnership across global media and sports and helped build out Google’s early entrance into sports-related content through partnerships with ESPN, and sports leagues such as MLB, NFL, NBA and the NHL. A native of Toronto, Canada, Jason earned his MBA from the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business and a bachelor’s degree in finance and marketing from Boston College.

Prediction Markets Explainer

In this episode of the Revenue Above Replacement podcast, Brice and Adam dig into one of the most timely topics in sports business right now: prediction markets, and what Giannis Antetokounmpo’s recent equity stake in Kalshi might signal about where this space is headed.
They start by breaking down what prediction markets actually are and how they differ from traditional sports betting. Instead of wagering against a sportsbook like FanDuel or DraftKings, prediction markets operate through event contracts that trade on binary outcomes — essentially “yes or no” questions. The price of a contract reflects the market’s implied probability of an outcome occurring, which makes the experience feel closer to a financial market than a typical betting product. From there, they discuss why that structural difference matters, especially as these platforms evolve and expand into sports-focused contracts that look and feel a lot like wagering.
The conversation then shifts to regulation and why prediction markets have become controversial. Because they’re structured as event contracts, platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket fall under the oversight of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) rather than the state-by-state regulatory systems that govern sports betting. Brice and Adam talk through the growing debate about whether that’s appropriate, what it means for the future of the category, and why the answer could shape how leagues, teams, and athletes choose to engage with these markets.
They also take a step back to the origins of prediction markets, including their history in academic and political forecasting, and the “wisdom of crowds” idea: when lots of people make independent decisions with real stakes, markets can aggregate information in a way that produces surprisingly accurate predictions. But they’re clear that sports isn’t just about “better forecasts,” and the episode explores the tradeoffs that come with financial incentives in sports contexts. They dig into concerns around manipulation risk, low-liquidity markets, insider information, and where leagues should draw the line on participation by athletes, coaches, and team personnel in any market connected to on-field outcomes.
From there, they zoom back in on the Giannis-Kalshi relationship and what Adam’s research suggests so far. Adam explains the framework behind his article, using data to evaluate brand sentiment, audience behavior, and partnership fit. While Giannis’ fanbase does over-index on interest in sports betting compared to the general public, it appears less aligned than broader NBA fandom, and early online sentiment around the partnership is mixed. That leads to a broader conversation about what “success” looks like for these partnerships: short-term sentiment versus long-term awareness, whether “all press is good press,” and how athlete investments in emerging categories can create value even if the immediate reaction is complicated.
They close by widening the lens again to the bigger trajectory of sports wagering and prediction markets. They discuss how leagues are experimenting with relationships in this space, why new categories often trigger a fresh wave of sponsorship and marketing dollars, and how prediction markets might ultimately evolve beyond entertainment into legitimate hedging tools for sports organizations. The episode ends with an open question that sits at the heart of the conversation: are we moving toward a world where you can trade a market on anything in life, and if so, should we?
Overall, Brice and Adam frame prediction markets as a fast-moving, still-early industry that’s blurring the line between finance and sports gambling. And as regulation, league strategy, and consumer adoption continue to develop, they make the case that understanding how these markets work — and what risks and opportunities they create — is quickly becoming essential for anyone in the sports business ecosystem.

Adam Zimmerman

Adam Zimmerman is Senior Vice President of Marketing and Content of the Atlanta Braves and reports directly to the team’s President/CEO.
 
Over his tenure with the Braves, he has managed the team’s Business Intelligence, Marketing, Communications, Diversity Marketing, Digital, Community Relations, Creative, Alumni Affairs, Fan Experience and Growing the Game departments. He is responsible for strategizing and driving the team’s growing efforts to develop and monetize various content opportunities, including broadcast, video, audio, podcasts, NFT’s, and the emerging Web 3.0./ Metaverse business environment.  
 
Prior to the Braves, Zimmerman was President of Atlanta based agency CSE (now part of Cooper Holdings) where he led award winning work for several Fortune 500 company agency clients and also oversaw the athlete/coach/broadcaster practice. While at CSE, Zimmerman crafted a partnership with MIT and created CSE Evolve, an in-house lab designed to embrace the latest technologies.
 
He plays active roles on MLB’s Strategy and Web 3.0/Metaverse working groups/committees and is published and referenced in high impact trade journals and media as an expert in identifying emerging trends in sports marketing/business models. He is a frequent speaker, presenter and facilitator and sports marketing conferences, seminars, summits and corporate events and has been an instructor for undergraduate/graduate sports marketing classes at University of South Florida, University of Florida, Georgia Tech and University of Georgia. Zimmerman completed the inaugural session of the Business of Sports and Entertainment Executive Education program at Harvard University.
 
Zimmerman resides in Atlanta, Georgia and sits on the board of the Highlands/Cashiers Land Trust, an organization dedicated to limiting commercial development and preserving open space, natural areas, waterways, and/or productive farms and forests.
 
He is a graduate of the University of Florida and was inducted into the College of Health and Human Performance Distinguished Alumni Hall of Fame.

Matt Powell

Matt Powell is the CEO of Moroch, a Dallas-based full-service marketing and communications agency known for helping multi-location brands grow by blending data, insights, technology, and creativity at scale. Matt is an evangelist for new platforms and emerging technologies and someone who got his start in media and built his career by weaving paid, owned, and earned media into integrated strategies that drive real business outcomes.
Across more than two decades with Moroch, he has led the agency through seismic shifts in the industry  from traditional broadcast media buying to data-driven, programmatic advertising and AI-informed creative strategies. Under his leadership, the company has embraced relentless curiosity and collaboration as core values, constantly evolving to meet the needs of today’s brands while fostering a culture where innovation thrives.
 
Matt’s deep understanding of client challenges paired with his ability to spot opportunities on the horizon makes him a sought-after voice on the future of marketing, media, and the convergence of technology and cultural trends. And if he’s not thinking about strategy, you might find him quoting 80s sitcoms with as much confidence as he talks about media platforms.

A.J. Edds

A.J. Edds is the Big Ten Conference's Vice President, football operations, moving into that position in July 2022, after previously serving as the conference’s assistant director (and later associate director), sports administration since arriving at the conference in October 2017. In his present capacity, Edds oversees the day-to-day operations associated with Big Ten football, as well as coordinating relationships with the conference's numerous bowl partners.
During his initial tenure at the Big Ten in the sports administration department, Edds served as a sport liaison, oversees the Olympic sport officiating program and was also a liaison to the Big Ten Sports Management Committee. Prior to joining the Big Ten, Edds worked as a regional manager at Rocksolid, LLC, in Chicago.
A former Big Ten student-athlete, Edds was a three-year starter at linebacker for the Iowa Hawkeyes and earned Academic All-Big Ten honors on three occasions. As a senior in 2009, Edds was named second-team All-Big Ten and served as a team captain on a Hawkeyes team that finished the year No. 7 overall in the Associated Press poll and earned a trip to the Orange Bowl. Following his collegiate playing career, Edds was selected by the Miami Dolphins in the fourth round of the 2010 NFL Draft. He went on to play in the NFL from 2010-15, spending time with the Dolphins, Indianapolis Colts, New England Patriots, New York Jets and Jacksonville Jaguars.
Edds graduated from the University of Iowa in 2010 with a degree in management and organizations. In 2019, he earned a master’s degree in sports administration from Northwestern University. Edds is the son of Anne and David.

Max Mitchell

In this episode, Adam Grossman sits down with Max Mitchell, a Northwestern MSA graduate student and teaching assistant, to unpack the findings from Max’s thesis research (and accompanying article) on NIL, the transfer portal, and player movement in college football. Using a novel, data-driven approach, Max challenges the popular narrative that NIL and transfers are chaotic and unsystematic. Instead, the data suggests something far more familiar: athletes are making rational, incentive-based decisions that closely resemble traditional labor market behavior.
Max walks through how his research journey began with a simple observation during a Clemson–Florida State game—and evolved into a multi-year project involving tens of thousands of recruits, thousands of transfers, and hundreds of hours of data cleaning, matching, and modeling. Along the way, he explains how structural barriers before college shape player outcomes, why transfer behavior changed so dramatically after 2018 and 2021, and how NIL fundamentally altered the incentives facing college athletes.
The conversation dives deep into what motivates players to transfer, why “upward” and “downward” transfers optimize for different outcomes, and how athletes balance short-term playing time with long-term professional upside. Perhaps most notably, Max shares a striking finding: NIL valuations are now a stronger predictor of NFL participation than high school star ratings—suggesting that dynamic, market-based signals may outperform static recruiting metrics when it comes to forecasting success.
The episode also explores what this means for programs, conferences, and the future of college football. From NIL spend correlating with wins, to roster mobility increasing as financial incentives grow, the discussion reframes NIL not as chaos—but as a market finding its structure in real time.
Whether you’re a student of sports analytics, a college athletics administrator, or just trying to understand how NIL is reshaping the game, this episode offers a rare, data-backed look at what’s really happening beneath the headlines.

Brandon Crone

Brandon Crone's career in sports spans nearly every level of the game, shaped by deep Indiana basketball roots and a people-first approach to leadership. A Butler University graduate, Brandon was a four-year scholarship basketball player for the Bulldogs before continuing his playing career professionally overseas. During three seasons in Europe, he competed in countries including France, Sweden, Poland, Germany, and Hungary—experiences that not only sharpened his understanding of the game, but also broadened his perspective on culture, independence, and leadership.
After returning to the U.S., Brandon transitioned into college coaching, spending more than a decade on Division I basketball staffs in a variety of roles, including operations and assistant coaching. His time in college athletics gave him a front-row seat to the business of sports—recruiting, budgets, television deals, and, more recently, the evolution of NIL. He later served as Executive Director of All Good Dawgs, Butler’s nonprofit NIL collective, where he helped connect student-athletes with community service initiatives across Indianapolis while navigating the rapidly changing NIL landscape.
Today, Brandon serves as the Athletic Director of the Carmel Dads’ Club, one of the largest and most respected youth sports organizations in the country. Under his leadership, the organization supports more than 15,000 participants annually across 13 sports, powered by thousands of volunteers and a strong community-first mission. In this role, Brandon oversees everything from facilities and scheduling to program development and parent engagement, applying lessons learned from high-level basketball to grassroots sports.
A former player, coach, administrator, and now parent-coach, Brandon brings a unique perspective on how sports shape people at every stage—from youth leagues to professional arenas. His work today focuses on creating accessible, well-run, and values-driven sports experiences that emphasize development, discipline, and community over shortcuts and hype.