Building a National Sports League From Scratch, with Paul Beirne, Executive | Sports Business Strategist | Community Builder

What does it take to build a national sports league from scratch? Today's guest, Paul Bern, has done just that after trailblazing roles with a Toronto Raptors, Toronto Football Club, a Brighton & Hose Albion Football Club just to name a few. I'm Claire Kenney and in this episode of Don't Get Your Tickets, we will dive into Lee Creation, Transatlantic Sports Culture and why the next big opportunities might lie outside the top tier. Paul Bern's journey through the sports world includes launching the Toronto Raptors, the NBA, helping build Toronto Football Club in Major League Soccer, leading commercial operations at Brighton & Hose Albion in the UK and serving as the founding president of the Canadian Premier League. It's great to have you here today, Paul. Now, before we dive into your professional career, can you just tell us a little bit about your background and walk us through your journey and what's led you to where you are today? Thank you, Claire. It's a lovely introduction. Thanks for having me on. I like a lot of sports business professionals. I'm sure I studied music at university and I thought I was going to be a music teacher. During the university period of my life, I fell into theatre and by that I mean I found myself working in theatres to pay my way through school and theatres led me to the box office and the ticket office. That was really when I got my start. I worked in a number of theatres for a number of years and then I took a job with what was going to eventually become the expansion Toronto Raptors in the NBA. That's the National Basketball Association. I had never been to a professional basketball game. I knew nothing about the game, but I got a job in the ticket office. While I thought it was just going to be my next job, it turns out I stayed in that organization for 18 years. The Toronto Raptors was purchased by the Toronto Maple Leafs. All of a sudden I woke up one day and I was overseeing all of the ticketing for both the Toronto Raptors in the NBA and the Toronto Maple Leafs in the NHL. In addition to that, we had a venue that was extremely busy. We were busy about 340 nights a year. I oversaw all of the ticketing there. About 12 years into that stint, I was looking for something more and I spoke to the bosses and they pointed me in the direction of a new entity that we were considering investing in and that was Major League Soccer. So I led the charge on a new Canadian team in an American league called Toronto FC and built that, built a stadium at the same time. We sold out our first match and we sold out every match for the first 8 seasons. After that, I was recruited to go to Brighton and my friend Paul Barber was the chief exec there. Brighton was in the second tier in the championship at that point and I were saw their commercial operations for a few years. And then I was recruited back to Canada by an owner of a Canadian football team, Canadian football being Canada's version of American football just to make sure everybody understands what I'm talking about. And he had just built a stadium and he was looking for a solution in soccer and that was the original seed of an idea that became ultimately the Canadian Premier League. And I really want to delve deep into that now you're calling in today from Toronto. So is that where you grew up? Is that where you started life? Yes, Toronto is my home and I've had many journeys away, but I always gravitate back towards home. And obviously I share your pride in being a jaw Irish national as well, but that's for another conversation. So let's talk about the Canadian Premier League. No, it's not every day you meet someone who's built a professional sports league from scratch. And you became the first ever president of that league in 2016. Can you tell us a little bit more exactly how that came about? And what was the spark that made you realize it Canada needed its own league rather than just having teams playing in the US system? Well, you know, it started with Toronto FC and what we didn't realize when we started Toronto FC was the importance of a domestic league in North America. There's a tradition of Canadian teams joining American leagues. So as an example, the Toronto Blue Jays play in Major League baseball where the only non American team in that league. And nobody really bats an eye. It just makes sense for that league. Similarly in basketball, the raptors are the only non American team in the NBA. But when it comes to football, as most of your listeners will know, it is not normal. There's a handful of situations where you have, you know, Welsh teams playing in the English Premier League or you have monaco playing in the French league. But those are outlier situations. Generally, everyone has a domestic league. And so that was the gap that we identified and we tried to fill. When you're looking at Canada as a nation within ConquerCaf and the quality of our players, we've always produced very, very good players. But we've been guilty of not having a system to produce great players. So those great players emerged in spite of our systems instead of because of our systems. And even when we had the, what ultimately became three Canadian teams in MLS and they each have an academy, you know, for a nation of 40 million people, that's not a lot of, you know, elite youth development that's happening. And so the Canadian Premier League was really set out to solve that problem. So you spent 2017 and 2018, traveling across Canada, looking for owners and venues and I guess trying to bring people with you. So what were the biggest hurdles you faced in terms of getting people convincing them that it domestically would work? Well, you mentioned some of the issues already. Geography is a big issue. The lack of infrastructure. We don't have a lot of outdoor stadiums in Canada. And then finding owners. We also are not a nation of billionaires. So we needed to find the right combination of community, venue or at least opportunity to build a venue. And ownership group that was ideally local, well-funded and eager to create something. You know, I'm a big fan of the power of sport, not just the games themselves, but what sport can mean to a community. So that was part of the storytelling, trying to ensure that people understood that this was more than just a bunch of games on a few weekends in the summer. And you know, we weren't just launching a league. We were launching the infrastructure around it and the ecosystem in the industry. So we needed young professionals who had never been a kitman before or a trainer before or a manager of tickets or a manager of media and communications. All of that stuff had to be built from scratch. And it was a very exciting time. I'd say it's not a finished product today. You know, we're at 2026. So we're heading into our eighth year, I think, in two of those years we're COVID years. So you could argue we're heading into our sixth year. So it's still a very young league. So you have eight clubs at the moment in the Premier League. And I've read about quite a few Canadian players starting to play in Europe. Clubs like Celtic by Munich is that do you see as a direct result of the formation of the Premier League that players are now at a standard that they can play globally. Well, you mentioned by Munich and Celtic. And I would say most of the players that are Canadian that are playing in the top tier of European football. I suspect they would have made it there anyway. They're just pure talents and they have the right mentality to get there by themselves. However, it's the tier right behind them. We went from having 18 professional players playing in Canada with the three Canadian teams. And that's an estimate to over 100 playing professionally. And so within that cohort of 100. Of course, the first year they were all rookies. Every single one of them had never played pro before. In the second year, almost all of them were rookies and some of them were like in their second year and so on. So, you know, from a player maturity perspective and a player development perspective, we still have a long way to go. These things aren't measured in years. They're measured in generations. But what we've been able to teach them is things like professional training every day and having a professional perspective and the travails of travel, you know, it is hard to travel in Canada. Almost none of our games are drivable. So, a travel day means that you get up, you go to the airport and we fly commercial. So, you sit in the lounge and you wait and you go through security and then you get on a plane and it's not a short flight. It's usually a four or five or six hour flight. And then you get off the plane, you stretch your legs. Now you get on a bus. You get on the bus, go to the hotel. Every week they go through what is an absolute anomaly for anybody playing in Europe. If they're playing in Europe, if they're playing in Champions League or Europa League, yes, they're getting on planes, but most of the time they're not. And so, yeah, it's a difficult grind and you know, it takes time to teach players that this is their life. But it also is incredibly character building. And so we've seen really good results in terms of players building a career in the game, primarily, you can then moving on and you know, finding other opportunities for themselves. Elsewhere in the world, which doesn't bother us. We want players to move on. Yeah, I'm covering that vast geography. It's quite amazing. I'm presuming you had an airline as one of your first monsters of the league. We did, but you still have to pay for all that fuel and all that. Like nothing's free. So they didn't have enough to help us, but it's the most expensive line item on the budget. And so after convincing the clubs to join up and be part of this new sort of club licensing system, how did you approach the commercial strategy, convincing whether it's broadcasters, sponsors to invest in such a new sports product. Well, thankfully with the three Canadian teams in MLS, the idea of professional soccer was easier to sell than it had been previously. And the challenge was bringing it to the smaller markets. We don't have a lot of big media markets in Canada. And so when you go to a smaller market, some of them don't have a local television station. Some of them don't have a local newspaper. And so the challenge is being present out on the street and in the community and in the parks and in that type of thing. So it's very much a grassroots oriented communication strategy. And as far as media is concerned, for the first six seasons, we had the very good fortune of partnering with media pro out of Spain. They saw our vision and they believed in our vision and they helped us create two things, a broadcast that was very professional seven cameras with a play by play and a color commentary. And so, you know, for a tiny little league, we were punching way above our weight in terms of what our broadcast looked like. And the other thing that they helped us create again is back to building an industry around the game. They helped us create some personalities and some young professionals who are now seasoned professionals in the soccer media landscape. So they since moved on and Canadian Premier League has taken on a large component of that media, but all of the good effort that was created by media pro has stayed behind. And so it's still a league that punches way above it to weight our game to look terrific on television. No, it's so important to have the right media partners. It can make all the difference certainly in the beginning. So let's talk a little bit about the Atlantic divide and the different cultural aspects, sort of US and European sports. So we recently had Lucas Miko Hansen, a playmaker's on the podcast and he was discussing those differences. Now, you've obviously seen it on both sides of the pond as it were moving from North American sports to work with Brighton Hove Albion. Do you agree with the assessment that North American sport is more of a product where European sport particularly football is a culture? I think it is sport specific and yes, I would say in general in North America soccer and major league soccer is a product. And yeah, European football or English football is definitely a culture. However, there's a few caveats. One of the reasons Toronto FC was so successful right from the outset. There's a couple of reasons. One is we understood that football is an urban game. So our ground was walkable. It was near the center of the city, but the other thing is that Toronto is a very multicultural city. And in fact, in 2007 when we launched that happened to be the year where more than 50% of Torontoians were born somewhere else. So if you think about any city that has 50% of its population is born in another country and football is the number one or number two sport in most countries. So half of our city is built on people who are bringing a football culture with them. And so what you end up seeing at a Toronto FC match is a terrific mashup of South American Mexican support, Caribbean support, English support, European support and Asian support. So like all these different flavors of football supporter find their way into a match at Toronto FC and it creates something new and distinctly unique to Toronto. So, you know, on the one hand, yes, soccer is a product in North America. And, you know, we have fireworks and things like that at the games because it's an entertainment property. But on the other hand, in cities like Toronto where they are very cosmopolitan, you do start to see a really interesting football culture emerge. That's really interesting. So I'm seeing parallels I worked on the launch of the Australian League, which was a little bit before you, but that's exactly what you would see. Yeah, in terms of Melbourne versus Perth and you know, seeing different cultures really take ownership of different clubs. Both in my time at Toronto FC and in the creation of the CPL, we really studied the youngest leagues. And so the A league for sure, the J league and the K league were all inspirations for us in terms of understanding what best practices we should be looking at. Yeah, and there's certainly quite a lot there. So I'd love to hear a little bit more about your time at Brighton Hove Albion. So I actually interviewed poor barber last year at a conference at Emirates Stadium. And they're doing amazing things with fan data engagement and obviously player development. What were your impressions of First World Brighton and also the club and English football in general? That's loaded. Yes, I definitely fell in love with Brighton both my wife and I in hindsight, we didn't really know a lot about Brighton and in hindsight, it was definitely the city that was right for us. And it just has its own distinct flavor and it was absolutely the right place for us to land. And it surprised both of us because it's a small city compared to, you know, we're used to Toronto. We're used to five to seven million depending on where you draw the boundaries. And so we're used to a big, big city and Brighton is not that, but you know, much like the Canadian primarily again, our media, I think Brighton punches way above its weight in terms of arts and culture and street life and community. And those are all things that were really important to us. And then if you are feeling small, you can jump on the train and Victoria in 59 minutes, I think Paul convinced me it was under an hour. And in terms of, you know, the football culture and the business culture, it was a shock to my system. I have to say, I was not prepared for, you know, again, coming out of Toronto, I didn't realize how I'll say easy we had it, selling sponsorship and selling partnerships with organizations when you're sitting in the financial capital of the country and you're the only soccer product. And it was very different than coming to England where there's 92 clubs up and down the country. There's one every 10 miles and it was a city of 300,000. And aside from American Express, you know, there's universities and hospitals. If you remove those, Brighton is really an ecosystem of small and medium sized businesses. And I think a lot of English centers are like that. That was just an insight that took me a long time to come around to I just didn't see it right at the outset. So I had a real culture shock in terms of shifting my perspective in terms of what the club needed and what the club could achieve. So in 2020, you left your role as president and founder of the Canadian Premier League and went to run a club yourself, the Pacific football club. So as soon you took a lot of your learnings, obviously not only from the league, but also from your time in the UK. But what prompted that move? Yeah, talk a little bit about your time there managing Pacific football club. The move was prompted mostly by the fact that as president of the league, I found myself being more and more administrator. And, you know, I'm proud of the work I did there for sure, creating operations manuals and governance documents and the league constitution. And then after any given weekend, it was my job to go and slap the wrists of the people who weren't following the rules or following the protocols. And that's just very different from working in a football club. But what I really found is that I missed the day-to-day rhythm of being in a football club. So when the owners of Pacific FC invited me to come out there, I jumped at it. And it was an opportunity for me to oversee both the football and the business. And yeah, I thoroughly enjoyed it. And so during your time at Pacific Football Club, you also created PFC, Mexico. And obviously looking into other territories, as obviously clubs do in the UK and all over the world, to really expand that audience and obviously commercial platform. Can you talk a little bit about that and how that came about and why Mexico in particular? That was a little bit of opportunity mixed with a desire to grow. Again, being in Canada, we benefit from people coming from all over the world to be in our education system and build businesses here and bring their cultures with them. So in this specific case, we met a couple. She is the manager of the Mexican women's national team. And he is a professional level coach who moved Victoria while his wife was doing an MBA. And so they both happened to be in our backyard. And through conversations with them, we really came to understand that there was a real opportunity for Mexican families who have a desire to create a connection with Canada. There's a rowing Mexican community across Canada. And so this was about cultural links as much as it was about football. And from a football perspective, it gave us an opportunity to connect with a generation of footballers in a number of different centers in the region of Mexico City. None of it was in Mexico City, but around Mexico City. And like I said, those cultural connections and the young Mexican players who were playing at a elite level and playing in a Pacific FC kit, there's a level of connection there that can't be overstated. And so in the first year, two teams of theirs traveled to Canada and we had some competition that way. And yeah, we wanted to set the stage for that to be able to continue for years to come. So talking about Mexico, it's always struck me as interesting that obviously Mexico City both massive historic clubs like Club America and Cruz Azul. But there isn't a globally known powerhouse around the world from Mexico City. Why do you think that is? I've thought about that. I think they play in ConquerCalf. And so in terms of international club football, they don't step outside of ConquerCalf except to play at the club World Cup, which is still a growing entity and doesn't get a lot of attention when it happens. And I think Mexican footballers have a real sense of home. And so they want to play domestically. There are exceptions. There definitely have been some world class Mexican players who have played outside of Mexico. But there's tons of world class Mexican players who choose to stay in Mexico. It's funny every time there's a world cup, people are surprised by Mexico and how good they are. And so I think that they shouldn't be because as a footballing nation, they're amazing. They're amazing. The football culture, the professional infrastructure, the quality of the top tier, all of it has been tremendous. And in terms of playing in ConquerCalf, my teams have often had the good fortune of playing in international play. The opportunity to play those Mexican teams. It's a highlight for the Canadian players, a career highlight, but also they're almost unstoppable. Some MLS teams have from time to time beat Mexican clubs. Some Canadian CPL teams have beat Mexican clubs, but in a two-leg matchup, like I said, they're almost unstoppable. If we're winning, probably because they're letting their guard down, because they're tired because it's a Tuesday game and they're not ready for it. That's the beauty of Cup football is that you've got giant playing minos and the minos, it's the biggest game of their life. And for the giants, it's the weakest game of their season. If you're following the FA Cup here in the UK, but actually one of our club partners, Mackelsfield, they're actually playing this evening. We're recording this on Monday, the 16th of February. So they've got to the fourth round playing Brentford, obviously a Premier League club. So very excited to see if they can continue their sort of giant killing. So they're the love Cup football. Going back to Mexico, let's hope that the World Cup this year helps China more global spot night on Mexican club football as well. So at the same time as running a football club, you're managing director of team and really focusing on the commercial side of helping leagues and clubs. And you're currently working on a new platform called the call up. Can you tell us what it is and who it is designed to help? Sure, it's still evolving, but the call up I used to describe it as a mini linked in for the sports business, but it's more of a career acceleration engine. Think of it as like a digital locker room for the next generation of sports business. So for the person who's already in the game, it's to help them up their skills and up their networking and up their contacts within the industry. For someone at the entry level, it's an opportunity to become part of the sports business community. In sports, a lot of how hiring happens is who you know, and that's not ideal. You know, that's always been a shot at the way some organizations you could argue are hiring in a lazy fashion. But this is an ecosystem. It's an opportunity for people to not only meet people so they can become known, but also become known for what they know. And so that's a real differentiator here is you can position yourself as an expert in subject matter and create opportunities for yourself to get to the next level. And is it focus more on sort of the tier two tier three level in sports because I know that is a focus for you as it is for us at ticket code. Why do you think so many tech service providers sort of ignore that incredibly important part of the sports pyramid? I think it's two reasons one is ego like in North America everyone wants to work at an NFL club. And what I tell anybody that says that to me is if you're working at an NFL club, you're working in a dream land. It's not real. There's so much money, so much attention paid to the NFL that you don't learn how to sell tickets. You don't learn how to do the hard work of filling up a rainy Tuesday night. So that's one is everybody just wants to have the big fish and the other part of it is just the money. It is harder to create a product that solves the problem of hundreds and hundreds of organizations that have only a little bit to spend. So people tend to put their focus into the tens of clubs that can afford something bigger. And again, I think that's just because it's easier. So yes, in my practice, I'm focusing on ways to create value for smaller organizations at a price that they can afford. And you know, the other thing that happens at these small organizations is that people wear multiple hats. So the head of commercial is not just out selling the sponsorship, but they're also going back to their desk and picking up the phone and calling the printer. And they're calling the partner to get their artwork and they're giving the artwork to the artist so that they get it laid out properly. And then they send it to the printer and then they're driving across town to pick up that sign that they got produced in order to bring it back. And in some cases, they're out there with the power drill putting that sign up. And that's the joy of let's call it minor league sport is that you get to do a little bit of everything. But it's high anxiety because you're juggling so many balls. And so yeah, I'm trying to create solutions that solve those problems. Yeah, and I think those people really are the backbone of the sporting industry in so many ways. So does AI play a part in this solution in terms of supporting those people? And where do you see AI in general in the sporting landscape? Well, I'll speak specifically about the business side. There's a world of innovation that will happen on the sporting side on the technical side in terms of match analysis and player analysis. And those types of things, but on the business side, I think AI can just help people become more efficient. It's vitally important for anybody who's selling anything, but in sport, you're selling tickets and you're selling sponsorship and you're selling your media rights. And that media rights are often aggregated and sold at the league level as opposed to the local level. But yeah, it's vitally important that the people doing the selling are out in the community shaking the hands, being present in one-on-one meetings at networking events, at other events in the community. You have to be visible and you have to put in the time to build those relationships and the relationships have to be real. So what makes a real relationship that I remember your name that I remember that last time we spoke, you mentioned that your daughter is in figure skating or at some activity. And I have no problem using technology to help me have a better memory to help me be a better friend. That's where I think AI can help bring structure to the side of the business that nobody sees, the administration side of the business. So the salesperson can stay focused on selling. They can stay focused on being out in the community and having those one-on-one conversations. The last thing you want is someone tethered to their desk, filling out forums and doing the grant work that is necessary, but it doesn't contribute to that relationship building and ultimately to the bottom line. Yeah, and it's interesting that the emotion and spontaneity of sports, both on and off the pit in many ways, is AI resistant, but there's certainly ways that AI can be employed. Absolutely. I mean, the combination of COVID, work from home, more and more people are spending more and more time behind a screen, that they are craving in-person events, activities, experiences. And so I think sport at all levels, you know, and part of me thinks that sport at the second tier, like hyper-local sport, is poised for a renaissance. You know, poised for a moment where people are going to decide they want to go to those events more frequently because it gives you something metaphysical in your soul that you can't get from a computer and you can't get from scrolling TikTok or whatever. Yeah, I totally agree with that. So, poised been great chatting to you, and I've got a lot more questions to ask you, but we'll have to do that another day. But to wrap up, based on your incredible experience from startups to establishing a national league, which is really something quite incredible. What advice would you give to someone looking to build a career in the commercial side of sports today? I think I would put it into three buckets. The first bucket is be relentlessly useful. Always find a way to contribute, to solve real problems. Don't be afraid of getting up from behind your desk and moving boxes if that's what's required, because often that is exactly what's required. But Kitman just received a shipment of kit and it's sitting out in the rain and it needs to be moved indoors. Don't be afraid of doing that. Be the first one to lend a hand everywhere within the organization. I think reliability is a superpower in sport. I think relationships, some mastering relationships. And what I was saying before about being out in the community, it does involve swallowing your pride and getting over that initial challenge of coming out of your shell and speaking to people in a public setting and being the first one to approach someone and say, hi, my name is I do this. I think you really want to find ways to connect with people on a human level. Don't let people define themselves by their job title. Go deeper. Ask them about their life. Ask them about their hobbies and their passions. And aligned with that is within every organization, there's leaders who have the big titles and then there's the people that are actually doing the leading or the organizing. And so be keenly aware of, you know, the title doesn't necessarily mean that they're the most important person in that organization. And so as you start to meet people in organizations, you start to understand that they're really influential people at the middle and the bottom of the organizational chart. And then the last thing I'd say is just the systems, learn the systems of sport and sport business. I think so many young people come out of these terrific sports business programs at universities all over the world. And they are book smart, but they're not street smart. And they don't know how to do a V look up in an Excel spreadsheet or pivot table or they don't know how sponsorships come together. They're not familiar with the terminology of the sport. So they don't know what lifetime value of the customer really means like those types of concepts. So, you know, I said be relentlessly useful previously. But I would say also be relentlessly curious and don't be afraid to ask questions and understand how the system works and you can become indispensable within it. So that's what I would say be useful, be curious and relationships. Brilliant advice. I'm going to send this to every young person that I know. And then finally, if people want to learn more about your work or check out the call up, where is the best place for them to find you? So the call up is about to launch. I'm currently accepting email signups so that I can keep people aware of when it's ready for prime time. And that's at the call up dot club and people can find me on LinkedIn at my first name in my last name Paul burn. And that's it. My website for my consulting is team bow dot CA. So that's team B O like business operations team bow dot CA. Brilliant. Well, okay, everyone. You heard it here. And you have been listening to don't forget your tickets. Today's guest was Paul burn pioneering sports executive and founder of the call up. Thank you so much for. Thank you Claire. Thanks for having me. So we hope this conversation gave you a fresh perspective on the global sports landscape and an insight into Canadian football and obviously football across the world from the top tier down to the grassroots. As always, thank you to ticket code for powering this podcast. My name is Claire Kenny and until next time have a wonderful day. You You You You You [BLANK_AUDIO]