To our Front Office Sports community:
We are incredibly excited to announce that Fara Leff, Chief Operating Officer of Klutch Sports Group and one of the most powerful and respected executives in sports, is joining our board.
Leff has partnered with Klutch CEO and Founder Rich Paul from the start in 2012 and is an integral part of everything the company is doing. In 2021, TIME recognized Klutch on its first-ever list of TIME100 Most Influential Companies.
We were going to put together a formal note explaining why we asked Fara to join our board and then saw the email she sent to her friends and felt her words said it far better than we could. We are so thankful that she is now part of our mission.
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Friends:
I’m incredibly excited to announce that I will be joining the Board of Directors of Front Office Sports as part of their recent investment from Crain Communications. I’m pretty sure everyone receiving this email reads FOS religiously and loves the energy, innovation, and generational shift Adam White and the team are bringing to our industry.
Adam reached out to me after my IG post challenging sports business media gained attention. For the record, that post was not aimed at one specific media outlet but was intended to get our entire industry to look at itself more critically. Some of the most important and dynamic deal makers and power players in sports are women. Not in women’s sports…in sports. The business of sports is Constance Schwartz, Jill Smoller, Michele Campbell, Nicole Lynn, Carmen Wilson, Shannon McGauley, Linda Rambis and Chrysa Chin. Jeanie Buss, just like Jerry Jones and Hal Steinbrenner, is leading one of the most iconic and influential organizations in all of business. I am not even scratching the surface of the countless women in our industry-leading with grace and fearlessness. That’s my point. We are ubiquitous– teams, agencies, marketing, media, and sports properties- and everything in sports business should reflect this reality.
Sports is not a sector. Like music and entertainment, sports is culture. And women are at the forefront of where it’s going. Our impact across sports is significant and growing. We do not need “women in sports” lists or summits. We need the industry to recognize and reflect that the business of sports is no longer controlled by a small group of powerful men.
Thankfully we are seeing a new, vibrant media ecosystem covering our industry in unique ways. It’s not just Front Office Sports challenging the status quo. Sportico, Boardroom, and SportsPro are just a few of the publishers gaining traction with audiences looking for more reporting and more stories about the impact of sports across business and culture. It’s also important to recognize Liz Mullen at SBJ who has spent her career telling some of the most important stories about the business of sports.
I’m incredibly proud to continue building Klutch Sports Group with Rich Paul and our team, deepening our partnership with UTA and growing our continued focus on creating more equity and better representation across sports. Our clients inspire me. I hope this small announcement and contributing to the evolution of Front Office Sports will continue building our industry for the better. Thank you for your support.
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Fara will play an integral role in the evolution of Front Office Sports as we continue to cover this fast-growing space and push the pace of innovation.
We are committed to building a best-in-class platform and having a diverse group of world-class business leaders on our board is paramount to achieving that.
Best,
Adam White
Founder and CEO, Front Office Sports