The business challenges facing the Los Angeles Chargers front office in Costa Mesa midway through the season haven’t changed much since owner Dean Spanos moved the franchise north in January.
Curating, building and maintaining a fickle fan base that extends along the coastline from the Mexico border through Orange and Los Angeles counties into Ventura and the Inland Empire is on the tackling block for Jim Rushton.
“We know we have to really think differently than any other sports franchise,” said Rushton, who joined the Chargers in May as chief revenue officer, a newly created position in the 57-year-old franchise.
The longtime sports and entertainment executive understood the Chargers’ honeymoon wasn’t going to last long in the Southland, especially if the team didn’t perform well on the field.
It didn’t help that the move from San Diego alienated a fan base it still aims to serve. Or that its interim stadium was built for soccer. Or that its new $2.6 billion state-of-the-art stadium in Inglewood, shared with the Los Angeles Rams, won’t open until 2020, a year after initial forecasts.
Rushton’s immediate and long-term goals are the same: turn fans into customers.
He’s done that in previous jobs in the Sun Belt and more traditional die-hard sports towns.
During a nearly two-year stint as chief revenue officer for the Miami Dolphins, Rushton expanded corporate partnerships, creating the Dolphins Business Alliance, the Fins Integrated Media Group, and the Fin Club, the first loyalty rewards program of its kind in the NFL. As vice president of sales for Entercom New England, he helped Sports Radio WEEI and the Red Sox Radio Network become the top radio revenue generator in MLB.
He most recently served as global leader/partner at IBM Interactive Experience in the Boston area, a division he helped develop to boost fan engagement, team performance and venue optimization for clients.
Part of his role there included handling technology, infrastructure and consumer amenities at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the $1.5 billion home of the Atlanta Falcons that opened in the preseason.
He worked with industrial engineers to map out and alleviate friction points for fans, a list that included access to food and beverages, the route to the stadium, parking lot navigation, gate entries, locating seats, and leaving the stadium.
The venue has gained national kudos for its layout and fan-friendly pricing, with several food and drink options from $2 to $6, including draft beers.
Rushton, who oversees a team of 30, has been busy targeting potential sponsors. The Chargers have signed a multiyear deal with Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian, a member of the St. Joseph Hoag Health alliance, as the team’s official health partner.
Under the agreement, Hoag and Hoag Orthopedic Institute will provide the Chargers with physicians trained to treat professional athletes. The team’s headquarters at The Hive in Costa Mesa, which includes nearly 102,000 square feet of office space and an adjacent 3.2-acre training and practice field, was named the Hoag Performance Center.
Giving Back
The Chargers have been good corporate citizens as they aim to build community support off the field. The team and the Spanos family last month announced a $500,000 donation for Hurricane Harvey victims. The funds will go to several groups on the ground—including Houston Food Bank, American Red Cross and Houston SPCA.
The franchise recently partnered with L.A.-based Warehouse Shoe Sale to donate shoes and backpacks to 450 elementary school students in Carson.
This week the team partnered with Kansas City, Mo.-based Team Smile to provide dental care for 300 children. Every Tuesday the Chargers hold charity drives or participate in other civic initiatives.
Rushton also oversees sales of tickets, suites, media partnerships and merchandise, as well as guest and client services. He reports to President of Business Operations A.G. Spanos.
Building Blocks
The Chargers have sold out StubHub Center in Carson each of four games at the venue best known for hosting the L.A. Galaxy soccer club. The small seating area accommodates less than 27,000 fans, roughly half the size of a traditional NFL stadium. The team has taken plenty of knocks by local and national press that have highlighted empty seats during game days and the lack of a home-field advantage, as fans from the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs seemed to nearly match or outnumber those of the Chargers.
Chargers insiders cite the poor start, 0-4 to begin the year, which led some ticket holders to sell seats on third-party websites, particularly against teams with well-traveled fan bases.
Those challenges are nothing new for the Chargers, who faced similar hurdles at their former and outdated home in Mission Valley. Nearly every sports team in the greater L.A. area and Orange County face the dilemma: lose, and fans don’t show up.
Boosting ticket and sponsorship revenue would boost the Chargers’ top line, even though NFL teams share a greater portion of local revenue than the other major sports leagues. Most important, the Chargers and 31 other teams equally share revenue from the NFL’s national TV deals, a figure that will exceed $250 million per franchise this year, based on the Green Bay Packers’ 2016 annual report. The Packers are a publicly owned franchise.
The Chargers entered week nine with a 3-5 record, just out of the playoff picture in the AFC, but have some solid building blocks in running back Melvin Gordon and budding defensive stars Melvin Ingram and Joey Bosa, who broke a league record last month with 19 sacks through his first 20 games.
Where some see little room to run, Rushton sees a wide-open field, considering only 6% of NFL fans have ever attended a game.
“We just have to continue to remind ourselves that we’re new to the market and we’re going to build relationships with fans on a one-on-one basis,” he said, echoing a refrain heard often at the Costa Mesa headquarters. “We’re only 12 or 13 months into having the NFL back in the L.A. market. We know we have so much work to do.”
