In late 2020, AMB Sport and entertainment considered a proposal to include tickets to a road game in Atlanta Falcons club season ticket packages. But first, then-CRO Tim Zulawski would need a few key questions answered: Can their opponents guarantee enough quality inventory? How will they insure the program? Would this really move the needle for fans on the fence about buying or renewing season tickets?

Zulawski and his colleagues investigated these questions on their own, but to reach their goal of going to market in just three months, they wanted more research and validation. That’s where the NFL’s Club Business Development department came in, with ticket sales and market research data to back them up. The Falcons went ahead with the plan and have done so ever since, even selling out their 2024 season tickets.

It’s one of many examples team managers around the league give to show how NFL Club Business Development, a 14-year-old division of the NFL that has rapidly grown in size and influence over the past decade, is making their jobs easier.

“They’re not a consultant, they’re our partner, and they’re a phone call away,” Zulawski said. “They always want to make sure we’re doing better tomorrow than we’re doing today, and the responsiveness and accuracy is outstanding. We fly them in every year to go over every KPI they measure.”

Club BD, as it’s colloquially known, was launched in 2010 by two people who worked within the now-defunct NFL’s corporate development department. Now with 30 employees based in New York, Los Angeles and London, it has been run throughout its existence by Senior Vice President Bobby Gallo, who joined the NFL when the program was created after 14 years with Madison Square Garden.

The basic concept is to facilitate more efficient information sharing between teams. Its first job was to act as the NFL’s internal resource for teams seeking feedback on ideas, benchmarks and best practices. With information collected from all 32 teams, Club BD can quickly inform teams if they are extreme on pricing or staffing, for example, or quickly spread ideas that work in one place to many markets.

With that as a baseline, Gallo’s team has creatively expanded its footprint to meet other club needs. The business runs several original programs designed to help teams understand their customers and run more efficiently.

By helping teams with important club tasks such as ticketing and service, Club BD has developed a capability that the league office traditionally lacked. As a result, Club BD today powers all league-based ticket deals and sales, generating nine figures in revenue annually. It used to be just the Super Bowl and the Pro Bowl, but every international game is a league-run event and they’re growing fast.

The department has four main departments:

1. Club advice: The department’s core function, club consulting, includes account directors and managers assigned to specific teams. These account managers speak daily with senior management in their assigned clubs, both on defined projects and as one-off sounding boards. With the day-to-day work of a team growing more different than the work of the league over time, these account managers occupy a powerful position – often a link between senior club management and anyone in the league.

The consulting business is led by Vice President Rob Hoffman, who also oversees club sponsorships and premium offerings.

“We interact hundreds and thousands of times with the clubs over the course of weeks and months,” said Gallo, who reports to Peter O’Reilly, executive vice president of club operations, international and league events.

2. Club strategy and analysis: This department manages club operations and business data, allowing teams to benchmark themselves in terms of pricing, strategy, headcount and overall optimization. For example, one of the division’s key ongoing projects is the Voice of the Fan surveys, detailed customer service feedback forms given to fans at every game.

Data collection, management and analysis are complex, but they are critical to answering the most common questions teams ask: Are we outliers compared to the rest of the league, and if so, do we have a good reason? This division is led by Vice President Cory Mingelgreen.

3. Club engagement and ticket partner management: This rapidly growing division includes specific initiatives held entirely within Club BD, and a large part of the league’s ticketing efforts. It is chaired by Vice President Laura Lefton.

This includes the league observer program, where league employees attend each game and discreetly evaluate the in-stadium experience, and team employee performance (teams also send peer observers to each other). It also includes the Fan of the Year program, a key initiative for all teams.

This division also provides business contacts to all Super Bowl and international game participants, helping them maximize the unique business opportunities created by these games. As the international schedule grows, this has become a large part of the division’s mission.

In terms of ticket sales, Lefton’s group oversees the league’s contractual relationship with Ticketmaster and the sale and marketing of Pro Bowl tickets.

4. League tickets: This group handles the operational side of ticket sales at league events, including the Super Bowl, Pro Bowl and international games. This division is led by Director Stephen Cerasoli, for domestic events, and Senior Director Helen Thomas-Boland, working from London, for international games.

The teams’ willingness to use this division is a big part of the growth story, Gallo said. Teams are not required to seek or accept Club BD’s advice, but all do, and some generate new ideas for how Club BD can help the group. The league consultants’ work was initially mostly outgoing; now clubs call the league. Club BD pioneered regular presidents’ meetings throughout the league, where top club executives discuss common challenges and share operational procedures at a deeper level than owners do in their meetings.

“I give them all the credit for our growth, because without them being as open as they are or have been, I don’t know that we’re having this conversation; probably not, Gallo said.

Somehow the importance of the club business development department seems obvious. A business expert with no prior sports knowledge could be excused for assuming that a mutual aid/intelligence sharing function at the league level had been there all along.

But in fact, it’s part of a relatively recent development as valuations have skyrocketed, driven by the financial demands placed on teams to recoup the cost of acquisition for their owners.

“The sophistication with which people now run these companies is so advanced,” Zulawski said. “If you spend $6 billion to buy Washington Commanders, they’re going to require every resource to go into the strategic plan and be deployed. And that’s why departments like Bobby’s are extremely valuable.”

Club BD’s day-to-day work is very hands-on and detailed, the kind of analysis and intelligence work that every company does to one degree or another. But strategically it is at the center of the sensitive, dynamic relationship between the league and the clubs.

On the one hand, there is a long tradition of cooperation among owners, thanks to the NFL’s longstanding practice of revenue sharing and a mutual belief that the NFL is only as strong as its weakest member.

But at the same time, owners can get prickly if there’s a sense that Park Avenue is telling them how to run their business. In fact, a single Gallo PowerPoint slide highlighting poor ticket sales at five clubs started a minor controversy in 2021, with complaints that they unfairly singled out teams.

Finding the right balance between advice and orders is a soft skill at the heart of Club BD’s success. Arizona Cardinals COO Jeremy Walls says Gallo and his team are succeeding.

“They do a really good job of providing you with context, information, data and support, but they also really respect the fact that we’re the ones here running our business, and we’re the ones who know our market better than anyone else. ” Walls said. “They just have a really good balance with it. I think that’s important.”

Walls, who from 2010-12 led the NBA’s version of Club BD, Team Marketing and Business Operations, worked for the Miami Dolphins for nearly 11 years before taking the top business job in Phoenix last fall.

One of his first calls was to Club BD, and Gallo, Hoffman and account manager Scott LaBounty came to Phoenix for meetings with Walls and owner Michael Bidwill.

They provided detailed pricing and analysis for new on-field luxury suites the Cardinals built at State Farm Stadium. Walls said the division’s track record of straight dealing and understanding has built a baseline of faith.

“It takes humility, honestly. It takes confidence,” Walls said. “They have confidence in the law. Teams trust that they have our best interests in mind while taking the league’s into account. We’re all in this together.”

Gallo said demand for their work continues to increase as teams try to maintain the rapid growth of recent decades and stay ahead of competitive threats to recreational spending. Clubs are constantly trying to prevent ticket holders from migrating to the sofa or moving from season tickets to single matches, and many are planning massive investments in new stadiums or renovations.

Artificial intelligence will be another chance for the division to shine. With so many potential applications for the technology, there will be good ideas and bad ideas, and Club BD is at the center of the NFL’s efforts to quickly spread good uses and prevent bad ideas from taking root.

Chicago Bears CEO Kevin Warren said Club BD has advised on virtually every major issue he’s faced since stepping down as Big Ten commissioner for his return to the NFL in 2023. Warren was a leader of the Minnesota Vikings for 14 years prior to the Big Ten and knew NFL team business well. As Chicago’s new CEO, it was easy enough to gather information about the value and structure of the Bears’ sponsorship deal, headcount, stadium program and future stadium plans.

But he still needed information on how the Bears’ practices fit into the broader NFL picture, compared to other big-box clubs. Club BD provides all of this information upon request – not just standard benchmarks, but reports curated for the Bears’ use. “I’ve spent many hours just studying the information they prepare,” Warren said.

“They have so much insight and are so efficient at disseminating large amounts of information, but they are absolutely phenomenal in their ability to crystallize this information into nuggets that are easy to explain and very useful.”