FemiAjayi
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

Product Concept · Fan Engagement

Draft Day, Your Way.

What if following the NBA Draft felt less like watching and more like playing?

Every June, millions of NBA fans watch the draft the same way — passive, reactive, waiting to find out what their team did. They have opinions. They have rankings. They've been watching these prospects all season. But the experience gives them nowhere to put any of that.

That's the product gap I want to close.

The Concept

A Draft War Room for Every Fan

Imagine an app — or a web experience — that puts you inside your favorite team's draft night. Not as a spectator. As the decision-maker.

You pick your team. You see their real roster, their real cap situation, and their real areas of need. You build your own big board — ranking the top prospects the way you see them, not the way ESPN tells you to. The app shows you the realistic odds of each player falling to your pick. You watch the draft unfold in real time — or simulate it — and when your team is on the clock, you make the call.

It's part fantasy sports, part video game, part real front-office intelligence. And you can do it solo, or with a group of friends — each managing a different team, competing to see who builds the best roster on draft night.

The core loop is simple:

01

Pick Your Team

Select any NBA team. See their real roster, salary cap, and draft position. The app tells you exactly what they need — and where their pick lands.

02

Build Your Board

Auto-generate a consensus big board, then make it yours. Move players up or down based on your own scouting. See each prospect's stats, strengths, weaknesses, and the realistic probability they'll be available when your team picks.

03

Make the Pick

Simulate how the picks fall before yours. Then — when your team is on the clock — you decide. Who do you take? Does your guy fall to you, or does someone snatch him three picks early? Draft night becomes something you play, not something you watch.

The Opportunity

Why This Is a Real Product

The sports app landscape is full of stat trackers and highlight reels. What's missing is deep fan engagement during the moments that actually shape a franchise — the draft, free agency, the trade deadline.

Fantasy basketball has proven that fans will invest serious time and energy when you give them agency. But fantasy is season-long and roster-wide. The draft is a single night. It's emotional, high-stakes, and deeply personal for fans who care about their team's future.

Nobody has built the right experience for that moment yet.

Familiar Mechanic, New Context

Fantasy sports has 60M+ players in the US. Draft-night engagement applies the same "I'm the GM" fantasy to the moment fans care about most.

Data Fans Already Want

Cap space, roster needs, prospect profiles, drop probabilities — this information exists. The product makes it accessible, visual, and interactive instead of buried in articles.

Social by Design

Group draft rooms where friends each run a different team. Live pick reactions. Post-draft roster grades. The social layer turns a two-hour broadcast into a shared experience.

Open Questions

What I'd Explore

The product questions I'd want to answer first.

This concept has real legs — but the interesting product questions are the ones I haven't fully answered yet:

Real-time or Simulated?

Does this work best as a live experience that updates as actual picks are made on draft night — or as a year-round simulation tool fans can play anytime? The live version is more exciting. The simulation version has a longer shelf life. Maybe both.

Where does the data come from?

Cap data, roster construction, prospect scouting reports — this requires real data infrastructure or partnership with a league data provider. That's a build vs. buy vs. partner decision that shapes the whole roadmap.

Solo or social first?

The solo war room experience is compelling on its own. But the group draft room — where you and five friends each run a different team — might be the product's real differentiator. Which do you build first?

Fan product or front-office tool?

The same core mechanics — big board management, roster needs mapping, prospect probability modeling — are tools real front offices use. Is there a B2B version of this? A consumer version that bridges both? That's the long-term question.

Try It Now

Hawks Draft War Room — Interactive Demo

I built a working prototype scoped specifically to the Atlanta Hawks and the 2026 NBA Draft. It's not the full product vision — it's a proof of concept for the core mechanic: what does it feel like to be in the war room on draft night?

The demo includes the real top 13 prospects in this draft class, the Hawks' actual roster and cap situation, real scouting data, and a full draft simulator where you make the pick when Atlanta is on the clock at #8.

Interactive Demo

Atlanta Hawks · 2026 Draft War Room

13 Real ProspectsLive Draft SimulatorFull Player Profiles

Build your Hawks big board. Simulate how picks 1–7 fall. Make the call at #8. See how your pick fits the roster.

🦅 Open the War Room

"The best sports products don't just show fans what happened. They give fans a place to show what they would have done."

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