The ROAR Podcast

ROAR
  • 4.9 (17)
  • Business
  • Updated Weekly

The ROAR Podcast powered by Seregh and Northwestern University’s School of Professional Studies features dynamic sports industry leaders globally who share their unique career insights and perspectives on a wide range of topics related to the business of sports, including real estate, economics, marketing, branding, media, sponsorship, events, and public policy.    Founded in 2021 and hosted weekly by Northwestern Master of Arts in Sports Administration (MSA) faculty members Adam Grossman and Brice Clinton, along with Caroline Valvardi from Seregh, notable guests have included Milwaukee Bucks President Peter Feigin, ESPN's Sara Spain, and NHL Chief Marketing Officer Heidi Browning.   Grossman is also Chief Analytics Officer at Seregh, a global real estate company that develops and invests in sports and entertainment mixed-use districts surrounding stadiums and arenas. In fall 2025, Seregh acquired ROAR, a sports data analytics company founded by Grossman. 

  1. 2d ago ·  Video

    The ROAR Podcast: Steve Lefton

    Steve Lefton has spent twenty-nine years at what he jokingly calls "the largest firm you've never heard of." Kimley-Horn is eleven thousand people across a hundred and sixty offices — engineers, planners, landscape architects and scientists who handle nearly everything on a project except the architecture. As Executive Chair, and previously as president and CEO during a stretch in which the firm doubled in size, Lefton has watched sports venues transform from standalone buildings into full districts that have to work three hundred and sixty-five days a year. He joins Caroline to trace that shift from the ground up. The conversation moves from his early redevelopment work in post-Hurricane Andrew Miami, to why the districts that succeed feel like organic neighborhoods rather than projects, to the scale problem hiding in plain sight: a New York City block runs about three acres, and these developments can span sixteen to a hundred blocks. That math, he argues, makes public partnership unavoidable. Along the way: what a Kimley-Horn employee is doing beside a police officer on game day with an earpiece in, how the firm moved 2.8 million fans during the World Cup, where Lefton draws the line on AI in a profession of licensed professionals, and why a Commanders project on the RFK site is personal. 00:00 Welcome 00:52 What sports mean to him: family, coaching, and a son playing college lacrosse 03:37 Cornell, landscape architecture, and the "spaces in between" 06:05 Leading Kimley-Horn: doubling the firm in seven years 07:37 Two projects that shaped him: the Miami River Corridor and Midtown Miami 10:36 "The largest firm you've never heard of" — and how the sports practice grew 14:11 Public-private partnerships and playing the honest broker 16:33 Beyond the deal: moving 2.8 million fans at the World Cup 19:54 AI as amplifier: agents on the team and moving up the value chain 22:52 Where he's cautious: faster isn't better, and what a licensed profession can't outsource 25:04 Game day traffic ops: the earpiece, the command center, "go green north" 29:20 What makes a district work: organic neighborhoods, art and science, silo delivery 34:17 Mobility, not transportation — and creating value 365 days a year 36:36 Local insight at national scale, and why the Battery is still the gold standard 37:37 Full circle: Formula One, the Commanders, and RFK with his dad 41:34 Leadership and humility: "you're not that important"

  2. Sep 3 ·  Video

    The ROAR Podcast: George Barrios Return

    George Barrios walked away from a signed offer to run Univision in July 2020, called his former WWE co-CEO Michelle Wilson the next morning, and told her he'd rather build something with her instead. In his second appearance on The ROAR Podcast, he walks Adam Grossman through everything that decision produced: taking Bowlero public via SPAC at the peak of the frothiest IPO market in decades, returning to WWE to architect the merger with UFC that created TKO, and closing this past April on Global Sports Group — a holding company built with CVC around minority stakes in LaLiga, Ligue 1, the WTA, FIVB, and three rugby properties. Leagues and federations only. No teams, by design. Along the way, George unpacks the lesson a former boss gave him at thirty-one — that running a business for the short term is easy, running it for the long term is easy, and doing both at once is the actual job — and the three questions he believes any management team should be able to answer clearly enough for a six-year-old. Then the conversation turns to AI, and the two of them stop agreeing. George argues that a company's alpha lives in its workflow and its data, and that handing that to a vendor under an AI-as-a-service model is a mistake he wouldn't make: build the harness around the model yourself, own the code. Adam pushes back hard from a data governance and partnership angle. Neither one gives ground. Which, as George notes at the close, is about right for a guy whose book is called Sometimes Wrong, But Never in Doubt. 00:00 Round Two 00:31 The Book: Sometimes Wrong, But Never in Doubt 01:29 From Operator to Investor 04:07 The July 2020 Phone Call 06:15 Back to WWE and the Road to TKO 08:58 Taking Bowlero Public 11:38 Why Bowlero — and Why Not the Flying Taxis 13:28 Three Hundred SPAC Sponsors 14:38 The Hardest Thing in Business 17:00 What the Public Markets Expose 20:51 Three Questions, Explained to a Six-Year-Old 23:09 A Detour Through Richard Feynman 24:50 How Global Sports Group Came Together 27:59 Why Sports Wins the Re-Architected Value Chain 30:24 Human Provenance and the Next Three Billion Fans 32:53 Leagues and Federations, Not Teams 35:18 "Nine Times Out of Ten, It's an Email List" 36:27 Not the First Inning — Batting Practice 37:43 Moving the Needle Without Control 40:23 The Chief Electricity Officer 43:29 Why He Wouldn't Sign Up for AI-as-a-Service 46:47 Build the Harness, Not the Model 47:48 Where Adam Disagrees 51:50 Willing to Be Wrong

  3. Aug 27 ·  Video

    The ROAR Podcast: Renee Washington

    Renee Washington's résumé reads like four careers stacked on top of each other — broadcaster, host, speaker, founder, and soon-to-be author. But the through line traces back to a two-year window at Lehigh in 2014, when she was coaching college soccer, finishing a master's in educational leadership, and deciding whether to return to professional soccer. The NWSL had just completed its first season. The money wasn't a living. A three-time All-American at La Salle and a Hall of Famer, she wasn't asking whether she was good enough to keep playing — she was asking whether she could afford to. In this conversation with Caroline Valvardi, Renee walks through what she found on the other side of that decision: the distinction between Renee the soccer player and Renee the person, and a career built deliberately so that no single job title could take the whole thing down with it. The conversation moves from that transition into what it actually costs to bet on yourself. Renee is candid about launching Renee Washington Media and Consulting with no spouse's salary as a backstop, running a team of roughly a dozen interns while the revenue side is still being built, and rolling out the business in phases rather than all at once. She and Caroline get into the role faith plays when timing is outside your control, how technology and AI let her sustain a genuinely multi-hyphenate operation across time zones, and what broadcasters actually see on the data side — real-time demographics, peak tune-in windows, even ball-tracking data out of this summer's World Cup. And then the counterweight: Renee likes the data but refuses to live and die by it. Impressions are measurable; reaching people who don't already look like your existing audience is the harder thing to chase, and it's the one she's actually chasing. 01:54 Welcome to The ROAR Podcast 02:09 The Summer That Didn't Stop 04:46 A Path That Was Never Linear 08:35 What Nobody Prepares You For: Life After the Game 12:49 Betting on Yourself 17:55 Faith, Control, and Trusting the Timing 23:50 Technology, AI, and Running a Team Across Time Zones 28:05 Social Listening, KPIs, and What Broadcasters Actually See 31:58 Reach Over Impressions: Why She Won't Live and Die by the Data 35:42 Best Advice Received 39:16 Closing Thoughts

  4. Aug 20 ·  Video

    The ROAR Podcast: Alex Heriard-Dubreuil

    Alex Heriard-Dubreuil didn't set out to work in sports. He trained as a civil engineer in Paris, joined Merrill Lynch in the late nineties to invest in real estate across Europe, and spent a decade in London watching an asset class transform from a passive, collect-the-rent business into an actively managed one. In 2008 he moved to the real estate arm of the Arnault family office — the family behind LVMH — where he spent the next seventeen years, thirteen of them based in Hong Kong, building luxury-anchored mixed-use districts across Asia, North America, and Europe. What that platform taught him is the throughline of his entire career: real estate stops being about cash flow the moment you start paying attention to who actually uses the building. In this conversation with host Adam Grossman, Alex explains what mixed-use development genuinely means — and why it is not simply stacking an office on a hotel on a retail box. He walks through the metrics that decide whether a project pencils, from development yield margin to cap rates to the inflation and construction-cost pressures that kill otherwise sound deals. He makes the case for sports and entertainment real estate as an emerging asset class in its own right, explains why downtown revitalization has become the central North American opportunity, and describes the work of aligning team owners, city governments, developers, and capital around a single long-term vision. And he closes with the standard he applies to every deal: a project should still be thriving in thirty years, and it should deliver two returns — one to investors, and one to the community it sits in. 00:00 Welcome and introductions 00:59 Paris, civil engineering, and a first job at Merrill Lynch 03:17 Seventeen years with LVMH: Hong Kong, luxury, and mixed-use 06:14 Why real estate: a tangible asset and a people business 08:10 When real estate was passive 10:41 What "mixed-use" actually means 12:39 The metrics: development yield, cap rates 15:20 Geopolitics, curiosity, and the case for a global career 18:48 Has cross-border investing gotten easier in twenty-seven years? 21:18 What you can only learn on the ground 23:20 Asia after 2008: building for the luxury consumer 26:55 Retail's evolution and the speed of change in China 31:11 Thematic investing: tailwinds, data centers, and differentiation 33:47 Why Seregh — sports, entertainment, and an emerging asset class 37:10 Aligning team owners, cities, and capital 41:01 Stakeholders who want in but need a guide 46:53 What makes a good investment: two returns, not one 49:04 Closing thoughts

  5. Aug 13 ·  Video

    Best Of: Jason Wright

    This week on ROAR we're re-running one of our favorite conversations of the season — our sit-down with Jason Wright. If you missed it the first time, it's essential listening on where women's sports, real estate, and revenue actually intersect. Most people still frame women's sports as a movement. Jason Wright runs a fund built on the opposite premise — that it's one of the most under-researched and undervalued asset classes in sports. In this episode, hosts Caroline Valvardi and Adam Grossman trace Wright's path from seven years as an NFL running back, through a labor lockout that became his first lesson in sports business, to McKinsey, the President's chair of the Washington Commanders, and now Project Level, the women's sports fund he launched with Melody Hobson at Ariel Investments. The conversation lands squarely where ROAR lives: the intersection of sports, real estate, and revenue. Wright breaks down the thesis driving Project Level — the modernization of men's sports that women's leagues can now draft on, two decades of family spending on girls' youth sports, and the "net-new fan" who never bought a men's ticket. From there the group digs into the economics of purpose-built women's stadiums, using naming rights to lower the cost of capital, and mixed-use districts that can out-earn the team next door. There's also a Northwestern reunion baked in: three Wildcats, two of them from the class of 2004, with Adam stepping into a dual host-and-guest role. 01:16 From NFL running back to franchise president 04:56 What Northwestern athletics taught them 09:36 NIL, the transfer portal & the leadership question 1 6:06 Why women's sports: the Ariel model & Melody Hobson 20:41 The thesis: three tailwinds & the "net-new fan" 26:52 Data, AI & closing the capability gap 34:28 Inside the LP base & diversifying the asset class 40:23 Purpose-built women's stadiums: the value case 45:11 Mixed-use districts & when real estate out-earns the team 48:44 The public-funding case for women's venues 49:59 What's next: leagues, youth sports & sleeper bets

  6. Aug 7 ·  Video

    The ROAR Podcast: Thayer Lavielle

    When Thayer Lavielle set out to build a research practice around women as fans, athletes, and executives, the problem wasn't interpreting the data. It was that the data didn't exist. She describes searching for insight on women as insurance buyers and turning up a single study from 2003. Six years after launching The Collective in the wake of the U.S. women's national team's World Cup win, that gap has been filled with dozens of proprietary reports, a think tank spanning thirty academic researchers, and — by the organization's own accounting — close to a billion dollars in unlocked investment in women's sport, a figure Thayer suspects is conservative. In this conversation with host Caroline Valvardi, Thayer traces a career that ran through Paris, a New York newsroom, a French beauty conglomerate, and a NASCAR partnership before it ever touched sports strategy. She unpacks what a 15,000-respondent study across twelve countries revealed about the invisible logistical load women carry when booking live entertainment, why women athletes generate roughly twice the engagement of their male counterparts despite smaller followings, and how a decade of proprietary data is changing what AI can actually do for an agency. She also makes the case that the research itself is the flywheel: more data creates more conversation, more conversation attracts more capital, and more capital funds the next round of proof. 00:00 — Welcome and guest introduction00:18 — WNBA All-Star Weekend in Chicago01:20 — All-Star as a convening moment for all of women's sports02:15 — The research gap in women's sports science06:36 — Into PR, then L'Oréal — and the boss who named her gift07:50 — Lancôme: under-qualified, oversized, and figuring it out08:50 — Brands, talent, and the origins of The Collective10:24 — French and religion,12:23 — Launching The Collective in 201913:20 — Women drive the economy — so why is there no data?14:10 — One insurance study from 200315:09 — Building the think tank: ten universities to thirty professors15:50 — Reports as a credibility spine17:07 — Has demand for the research actually increased?18:40 — The flywheel20:18 — Nearly a billion dollars unlocked21:45 — AI as thought partner23:30 — A decade of proprietary data meets query24:00 — Double-checking and gut-checking everything24:45 — The live music study25:15 — Cultural nuance from Hong Kong to Singapore to Toledo26:20 — 83% of women do the booking26:45 — Two and a half hours a day of unseen labor28:45 — From cable TV to social29:14 — Connection, comparison, and what we haven't cracked30:34 — Athletes as creators, NIL, and playing to different strengths32:05 — The RBC study32:50 — How the pandemic became a proving ground33:30 — The virtual draft from Kathy Engelbert's living room34:33 — Five new leagues in one year35:41 — Reflecting on a career

  7. Jul 30 ·  Video

    Best Of: Everett Sands, Lendistry

    We're revisiting one of the conversations from The ROAR Podcast that has held up best in the months since it aired — Caroline Valvardi's interview with Everett Sands, Founder and CEO of Lendistry. Lendistry is a mission-driven capital deployer that partners with Goldman Sachs, Amazon, Visa, Walmart, and government agencies (including LA County during the wildfire recovery) to move capital into small businesses and underserved communities. And over the last several years, they've built one of the most deliberate women's sports partnership portfolios in the country: the LA Sparks, Gotham FC, the Chicago Sky, and the Atlanta Dream. In this Best Of episode, Everett walks through why he compares the WNBA today to Formula 1 before Drive to Survive, how Lendistry uses transaction data — down to what hour a small business owner is uploading loan documents — to decide where to show up, and what it looks like to design mixed-use sports and entertainment districts so independent operators can actually compete inside them rather than exist beside them. The conversation also gets into the $85 trillion baby boomer wealth transfer, the growing share of new businesses started by women, the short window athletes have to convert peak earnings into long-term wealth, and Everett's own leadership philosophy — built around a North Star, technology as an equalizer, and a competitive streak he traces back to sports. 00:00 — Intro01:30 — Everett's Career Journey04:00 — What Lendistry Does06:30 — Origins of the Women's Sports Strategy09:00 — The WNBA as Pre-Drive to Survive Formula 111:00 — Investment vs. Philanthropy:13:00 — Building the Partnership Portfolio16:00 — Sports & Entertainment Districts19:00 — The Data Layer22:00 — The $85 Trillion Wealth Transfer25:00 — Athletes as Entrepreneurs28:00 — Business Spotlights31:00 — Leadership Philosophy34:00 — Close

  8. Jul 24 ·  Video

    The ROAR Podcast: WNBA Innovation Summit

    For the first time, co-hosts Adam and Caroline record together — and they do it on location in Chicago at the WNBA All-Star Media & Innovation Summit, sitting courtside on Home Court, the new basketball facility at the Obama Presidential Center. It's a fitting backdrop: a purpose-built venue on a huge piece of developed land, capturing exactly where this show lives — the intersection of sports, real estate, and revenue. That word, purpose-built, becomes the thread through the whole conversation, because the story of women's sports right now isn't only about growth; it's about designing for it from the ground up. Adam and Caroline dig into why "pink it and shrink it" is the wrong playbook, and what it actually takes to build products, performance centers, and content made for women's sports rather than borrowed from the men's game. They get into the data behind the business case, why AI is still underinvested on the business side, what fans really want from athlete-creators (hint: not always the biggest names), and how you actually budget across talent, production, and research. Caroline brings the fan-and-communications lens, Adam brings the data-and-revenue one, and the line they keep returning to ties it together: this was never charity — it's good business, and the data can finally prove it. 00:00 — Cold open: what this episode is really about01:37 — Why this is the first combined episode, live on Home Court02:41 — Obama Center's long road from vision to venue03:49 — Why the WNBA Summit: the topics worth showing up for04:44 — Caroline's take: four All-Stars in05:17 — The data case and the science gap06:04 — "Pink it and shrink it": why purpose-built beats scaled-down07:08 — Playing, fandom, and a male-dominated industry07:53 — Empowerment as business case08:24 — Women in leadership and the coaching09:31 — BOA Construction and the women who built Home Court10:15 — Purpose-built performance centers 13:00 — AI and data: the business case,16:00 — Athletes as creators19:00 — Produced vs. organic 23:00 — Beyond the Summit: All-Star week26:00 — Chicago in the summer

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Ratings & Reviews

4.9
out of 5
17 Ratings

About

The ROAR Podcast powered by Seregh and Northwestern University’s School of Professional Studies features dynamic sports industry leaders globally who share their unique career insights and perspectives on a wide range of topics related to the business of sports, including real estate, economics, marketing, branding, media, sponsorship, events, and public policy.    Founded in 2021 and hosted weekly by Northwestern Master of Arts in Sports Administration (MSA) faculty members Adam Grossman and Brice Clinton, along with Caroline Valvardi from Seregh, notable guests have included Milwaukee Bucks President Peter Feigin, ESPN's Sara Spain, and NHL Chief Marketing Officer Heidi Browning.   Grossman is also Chief Analytics Officer at Seregh, a global real estate company that develops and invests in sports and entertainment mixed-use districts surrounding stadiums and arenas. In fall 2025, Seregh acquired ROAR, a sports data analytics company founded by Grossman. 

Information

  • Creator
    ROAR
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
  • Episodes
    174
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 ROAR
  • Show Website
    The ROAR Podcast

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