A targeted pitch for sports orgs

Building the future of sports — from the inside.

A product management case for why the sports industry is my next chapter.

I've spent 9 years obsessing over enterprise platforms, customer data, and operational efficiency. Sports organizations — from professional leagues to major university programs — are now among the most data-rich, fan-obsessed, and technologically ambitious organizations in the world. The intersection of product management depth and sports passion is exactly where I want to operate.

Let's Start a Conversation Download My Resume

Why Sports — Personal, but Professional

My relationship with sports isn't casual.

I played Division I basketball at Kennesaw State University and competed professionally in the American Basketball Association (ABA). I interned at 680 The Fan, one of Atlanta's premier sports radio stations. I served as Financial Advisor for the Atlanta Entertainment Basketball League.

But what drives my pursuit of sports industry roles isn't nostalgia — it's strategic alignment. The most important problems sports organizations are solving right now — fan engagement, operational efficiency, data monetization, athlete management in the NIL era — are exactly the problems I've been solving in enterprise software for nearly a decade.

This page makes that case.

Femi Ajayi (#23) driving to the basket as a Division I basketball player at Kennesaw State University — #23 · Kennesaw State University · NCAA Division I

Skills That Transfer

What sports orgs need. What I've already built.

Fan Experience & Engagement Apps

My Experience

Led mobile-first enterprise platforms and patient-facing portal UX at scale. Built 0→1 digital products with adoption metrics and feedback loops.

Ticketing, Commerce & Subscription Products

My Experience

Led Honeywell's full subscription and licensing modernization — integrating Zuora and Flexera, supporting pilot-to-paid workflows, automated renewals, and $500K+ in unblocked revenue.

Device & Operations Management

My Experience

Owned an IoT platform managing tens of thousands of enterprise devices across warehouses and facilities — including real-time tracking, predictive alerts, and fleet-wide automation.

Sports Analytics & Data Products

My Experience

Deep experience in telemetry analytics, anomaly detection, and turning raw operational data into actionable insights. I define "data as a product" across my entire career.

Athlete / Player Management Systems

My Experience

Product-managed healthcare CRM platforms used by medical professionals to manage complex, personalized patient workflows — directly analogous to player health, performance, and NIL management systems.

Partnership & Sponsorship Technology

My Experience

Managed B2B commercial relationships at enterprise scale, defining product packaging, contract structures, and go-to-market strategies with Fortune 100 customers.

Before It Was a Product · Find Your Way (2015)

Before it was an industry standard, it was a pitch deck.

In 2015, as a grad student with no technical background and no funding, I designed a mobile stadium navigation app called Find Your Way — and pitched it directly to the General Manager overseeing the development of what would become Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, while the stadium was still under construction.

The vision: a mobile app using Bluetooth beacon technology to give fans real-time, turn-by-turn indoor navigation to their seats, food vendors, merchandise stores, and restrooms — with in-app purchase and eventually seat-side delivery.

I got the meeting. He was engaged. We didn't move forward because I didn't have an enterprise technology partner — a company like IBM — to install and manage the beacon infrastructure. I sent the concept to other stadiums. No responses.

Within five years, every major professional sports venue in North America had built a version of this product. The NFL OnePass app. The MLB Ballpark app. Venue-specific mobile ordering and wayfinding tools at Mercedes-Benz Stadium itself.

I tell this story not as a failure — but as evidence. My product instinct has been oriented toward sports technology for over a decade. What was missing in 2015 wasn't the vision. It was the ecosystem.

2015

Year of original pitch

Mercedes-Benz Stadium

Target venue · under construction at time of pitch

5 years

Time until industry built the product at scale

Read the Full Case Study Try the Interactive Demo

What I'd Build

The Products I Keep Thinking About

Concept 01

College Sports

NIL & Transfer Portal Command Center

A centralized player management platform for the new era of college athletics.

The landscape of college sports has fundamentally changed. NIL deals, transfer portal activity, and multi-year roster planning now require athletic departments to manage data and relationships at a level of complexity that no existing tool handles well. I'd build an internal SaaS platform for university athletic departments — a unified system for tracking roster status and transfer portal activity, managing NIL deal disclosures and compliance, modeling roster financial impact against scholarship budgets, and giving coaches real-time visibility into recruitment pipeline and player development. CRM + ERP built specifically for the modern college athletic department.

Concept 02

Professional Leagues & Teams

Fan Intelligence Platform

Personalized fan experience powered by behavioral data.

Most teams know their fans as ticket holders, not as people. A Fan Intelligence Platform would unify data across ticketing, in-stadium purchases, mobile app behavior, social engagement, and merchandise to build rich fan profiles — then use those profiles to power personalized offers, loyalty rewards, dynamic seat upgrade recommendations, and real-time game-day messaging. Modular SaaS deployable incrementally — starting with the mobile app layer and expanding to stadium operations. The Honeywell Operational Intelligence model, but the customer is a season ticket holder in section 114.

Target Organizations

Where my experience translates.

I am actively pursuing Senior Product Manager and product leadership roles within sports and sports-adjacent organizations.

Professional Sports

· Atlanta Hawks (NBA)
· Atlanta Falcons (NFL)
· NBA League Office
· NFL League Office

College Athletics

· University of Georgia Athletics
· ACC Conference
· SEC Conference
· D1 Athletic Departments

Sports Technology

· Sportradar
· Second Spectrum
· Stats Perform
· Genius Sports
· Ticketmaster / AXS
· IMG / Endeavor
· Fanatics
· NFLPA · NBPA

If your organization is building digital products that improve the athlete experience, fan engagement, or operational efficiency — I want to be part of that conversation.

Let's Connect

Available for Senior PM roles, product leadership, and consulting in sports.

Email Femi Connect on LinkedIn