Led by CEO Dave Nugent, Next League is a global team of strategists and technologists, specializing in creating, designing, building and operating technology solutions for sports organizations.
Next League combines product-agnostic guidance with end-to-end strategy, design, development, and operations of technology products and platforms - exclusively in the sports industry. The company co-founded by Dave Nugent in 2021, is also at the forefront of helping these legacy companies become smarter using real time solutions in growth areas like AI to make sure they are connected, engaged and growing in areas of dire need like fan loyalty and engagement to improving fan experience and making sure that success is real and measured for all involved.
Dave Nugent joined SportsJam with Doug Doyle to talk about Next League and its impact on the world of sports business and technology.
"We're in the business of objective counsel. The sports industry and the world at large, the world of tech has become very complicated. We help sports organizations think about how they should invest in technology in order to achieve their desired business outcomes. We help connect those outcomes to technology like operating architecting, building, designing and operating tech with and for them. Because we don't own products or platforms, we can do that in an objective way."
Next League architects and operates complex technologies for the largest sports brands in the world for everyone from NASCAR, TMRW Sports, USOPC, the Golden State Warriors, Bay FC, the USTA, and the LPGA.
Next League is the fifth tech start-up Dave Nugent has founded or co-founded. He has a 25-year-plus track record in successfully launching, growing, and running new businesses. He's been an entrepreneur most of his adult life.
Nugent admits AI is a big part of the sports tech world and is every changing.
"There have been artificial intelligence technologies in sports business for a while now. We've seen this coming over the last 18-24 months. I think over the last 12 months, it's becoming increasingly obvious that this was going the change the way do what we do. In a way, it's not a specific technology or set of technologies, as much as it is changing the way everyone is going to behave. How are they going to access all the things that are important to them. I wish I could say I saw this coming five years ago, but it's more like a couple of years."
Nugent is also the author of the book Zero Sales, Generating Services Revenue Without Selling, which is based on his career experience working in and managing commercial organizations.
He's all about creating a positive work environment and culture, transparency,
"We built this organization as a culture first organization. Having the chance to run similar businesses in the past, we started at a place where we made a conscious decision that we were not going to create relationships with clients that were fully transactional. We wanted all of our relationships to be based on a long-term view of what we could do together as partners. When you take a long-term view, you can make decisions that are not purely based on commercial parameters if you will and that's worked."
You can see the entire SportsJam with Doug Doyle interview with Dave Nugent below:
