Stop Selling to Sports Teams Like Enterprise

Richard Pruitt

— 4 min read

A Manifesto for Technology Sales Leaders Who Want to Actually Win in Professional Sports

If you sell technology into professional sports, there is a hard truth you need to accept early:

Sports franchises look like billion-dollar enterprises from the outside, but they operate like small businesses on the inside.

Until you internalize that reality and adjust how you sell, engage, and time your motion you will continue to feel ghosted, delayed, frustrated, or confused by deals that “felt done” but never quite closed.

This is not a sales problem.
This is a misunderstanding of the client.

What follows is a real-world view from the buyer’s side: how sports organizations are structured, how technology leaders actually operate, why deals stall, and what sales professionals must change if they want long-term success in this industry.

Consider this a manifesto, not a pitch guide.

1. The Myth of the Massive Enterprise

Yes, most American professional sports franchises are valued in the billions.
Yes, they manage:

  • Large sporting venues
  • Front offices
  • Practice facilities
  • Distributed scouts and traveling operations staff
  • Live production, broadcast, and video boards
  • Social media teams, podcasts, content studios
  • Merchandise, retail, and e-commerce

On paper, this looks like a complex, global enterprise.

In reality, ~90% of sports teams operate like a local mom-and-pop business that happens to be attached to one of the largest brands in the world.

Budgets are tight.
Headcount is limited.
Margins are scrutinized.
And every dollar spent on technology competes directly with dollars spent on the product on the field.

2. The Reality of Sports Technology Teams

Most professional sports organizations have:

  • 2–3 extremely overqualified individuals
  • Wearing five to seven roles each
  • Acting as both strategic leaders and hands-on operators

These teams are responsible for:

  • Infrastructure
  • Endpoints
  • Identity and access
  • Cybersecurity
  • Vendor management
  • Game-day operations
  • Practice facilities
  • Traveling team technology
  • Emergency response during live events
  • Training and enablement for non-technical staff

And because compensation in sports rarely competes with big tech, these teams are often built on:

  • Passion
  • Loyalty
  • Creativity
  • A strong sense of ownership

Technology leaders in sports are not sitting in conference rooms all day reviewing vendor decks.

They are:

  • Fixing problems
  • Coaching junior staff
  • Covering gaps
  • Supporting all of Sports Operations with C-suite-level urgency

When you do not get a response, it is not disinterest.
It is bandwidth.

3. Why “They Seemed Ready to Move Forward” Isn’t Enough

Let’s say you’ve done everything right so far.

You identified a real problem.
You showed value.
The technology leader agrees your tool would help.

From your perspective, the next step is obvious:

  • Proof of concept
  • Pricing
  • Terms
  • Cyber review

From their perspective, the real work has just begun.

Before anything moves forward, they must assess:

  1. Budget reality
  2. Staff availability
  3. Seasonal timing
  4. Competing implementations
  5. Operational risk during the season

For most teams, the regular season is controlled chaos.
Change equals risk.

That means:

  • New tools often wait for the offseason
  • Even desired tools get deprioritized
  • Implementation time is more valuable than licensing cost

You are not just competing against other vendors.
You are competing against:

  • Scheduled maintenance
  • Security upgrades
  • Legacy system replacements
  • Emergency work that did not exist last week

4. “We’ll Handle the Implementation” Is Not Reassuring

Salespeople love to say this.
Technology leaders hate to hear it.

Because it is almost never true.

Even the easiest tool requires:

  • Learning
  • Governance
  • Updates
  • Monitoring
  • Ownership
  • Support escalation

Someone internally must:

  • Understand it
  • Trust it
  • Defend it
  • Maintain it

Fully managed solutions are not always better. They often introduce:

  • Additional access risk
  • Higher long-term cost
  • Governance complexity
  • Justification challenges

In many cases, the best option is simply to wait until internal capacity exists.

That delay is not a rejection.

5. Time in Sports Is Measured in Seasons, Not Quarters

Here is the blunt truth most sales teams struggle with:

We do not care about your end-of-year numbers.

December is often:

  • The busiest operational period
  • The worst time to implement anything
  • Completely misaligned with most league calendars (looking at you, MLB)

End-of-year pricing does not create urgency if implementation is impossible.

If you want to sell into sports, change your mindset:

  • Stop thinking in fiscal quarters
  • Start thinking in seasons and off-seasons

Convert:

  • EOY pricing → Offseason pricing
  • Quarterly targets → League calendars

Landing a deal with a professional sports team at all is often more valuable than most single deals you will close that year.

6. If You Sell to Sports, Your Implementation Team Is Your Sales Team

If you have an implementation team, they must be:

  • Flexible
  • On standby
  • Ready for narrow windows
  • Comfortable with uncertainty

If you are negotiating during the season, you should already know:

  • When implementation can realistically occur
  • Whether your team can execute at that time

If your tool can be partially owned outside of IT:

  • Offer training for departmental champions
  • Reduce dependency on the tech team
  • IT only maintains governance without full ownership burden

Anything that saves time and cognitive load for the technology team increases your odds of success.

7. Stop Calling It a “Partnership”

This matters more than you think.

In professional sports, the word partner has a specific meaning:

  • Formal corporate partnerships
  • Sponsorships
  • League-approved relationships

Using the term casually signals one of two things:

  1. You are overly excited to work with a sports team
  2. You are a salesperson who will broadcast the relationship to every prospect

Neither builds trust.

Be professional.
Be restrained.
Let the relationship grow organically.

8. Land and Expand - Quietly

If you offer a suite of tools or services:

  • Be content with getting one small win
  • Do not force the upsell

If we like working with you:

  • We will come back
  • We will expand
  • We will advocate internally

As of this off-season I am working with vendors I first spoke to over a 2 year ago.

One started with a small service.
That relationship has already grown 7× not because of aggressive sales tactics, but because:

  • They deliver fast
  • They respect timing
  • They stopped selling once trust was earned
  • They move at the speed I am able to move

Final Thought: Respect the Reality

The fastest way to fail in sports technology sales is to treat a team like a normal enterprise prospect.

The fastest way to succeed is to:

  • Respect time
  • Understand seasons
  • Value implementation over contracts
  • Play the long game

If a sports technology leader continues to engage with you, even sporadically, that is a signal.

When the window opens, the vendors who respected the process will be the ones who get the call.

That is how business is actually done in professional sports.

Read more