In this episode of the Full Throttle Leaders Podcast, host Michael Falato interviews Carl Thomas, CEO of Driven Sports Entertainment (DRVN). Thomas explains how Driven emerged from the acquisition of ASM Global by Legends, describing the firm as a small, agile boutique that leverages 75 years of combined experience between him and partner Jason Oberlander. The conversation covers Driven’s core services—strategic go‑to‑market planning, sponsorship and naming‑rights sales, and ticketing‑platform integration—highlighting a real‑world example with Frontwave Arena in San Diego and a middleware ticketing solution (Project Admission) that monetizes unsold premium inventory. Thomas discusses valuation approaches for sponsorship deals, the role of third‑party valuation firms, and how AI tools like Anthropic’s Claude Pro and Firefly transcription aid their lean, contractor‑based operation. He also shares insights on target clients (brands entering sponsorship, venue owners, developers) and cites AEG’s commercial partnership group as a benchmark. The episode ends with Thomas’s contact information and a plug for his own podcast, “The Best Boss Ever.”
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Hello everybody, Michael Falato from Full Throttle Falato Leads, GTM Full Throttle, and Full Throttle Leaders is the podcast. We have Carl Thomas from Driven Sports Entertainment. He's the CEO. Hey Carl, how you doing, buddy?
I'm doing great, Michael. Thanks so much for having me. Looking forward to this.
Me too. Tell me a little bit about Driven. I think you've been there for about, what, 10 months? You started this I mean, I'm sorry, you started the position,
right? Well, Driven was the outgrowth of Legends acquiring ASM Global a little over 2 years ago.
Okay.
My partner Jason Oberlander and myself were the numbers 1 and 2 at the commercial partnership group at ASM Global. And when we were acquired by Legends, the 2 of us were invited to leave on the same day in the same meeting, which is typical when you are the company who is purchased and not the acquirer. So we respectively both started consulting businesses. This has been 18 months in the making, Michael. We formally announced it last January, but we blended our consulting businesses. Jason is now the Chief Commercial and Chief Brand Partnership Officer at the newly merged Professional Fighters League with Jake Paul's group MVP. So he is noted as the founder and chairman, and I stepped in as the CEO. We blended our consulting practices and here we are.
What kind of makes Driven different than your last approaches in life as far as a company? Or, and what would you consider yourself a competitor to? And what's different about Driven as far as that goes?
Right. Well, a couple of things. One, we're small, agile boutique. Ergo, we don't cost as much as the high price spread, whether it's CAA, Octagon, Live Nation, OVG, the list goes on. And secondly, Jason and I have been in this marketplace, Michael, for a collective 75 years.
Wow.
Our respective networks are long, wide, and deep. We cherish those networks, and it allows us to work with clients to A, identify their strategic reason for seeking out an agency like Driven. Secondly, we help with go-to-market strategies as needed. We also, in many cases, and I would say, Michael, in most cases, we help bring a service company, an out-of-home company, a public relations company, or represent a venue Example, I'm in North County San Diego. 20 minutes up the road is a 2-year-old arena, brilliantly designed, home of the San Diego Clippers G League team, home of the San Diego Sockers indoor soccer, just launched a single-A hockey club. Opening weekend was last weekend. And Joe Tsai's San Diego Seals, which is indoor lacrosse, also came over to Frontwave Arena. So there are 4 pretty solid sports tenants up there. 7,000 caps soaking wet. Typically you're in the 5,000 to 6,000 range. Every seat has great lines of sight. The acoustics are awesome. The energy is galvanized and centralized. And we've been working with them and for them in the marketplace. And we are about to announce the second largest commercial partnership in their, you know, short but noteworthy history. Yeah. In the healthcare space here in San Diego.
Is it mostly sponsorships or is it sponsorships and tickets or what, where do you guys kind of excel in or both?
Well, we have deep experience across all of those categories from naming rights to founding partners to ticketing platforms. But typically what we're looking to do is help our clients get new customers. Simple. Simply stated. So we're customer-focused on behalf of our clients. And, you know, one of our clients is a ticketing platform. It's brilliant. It's middleware. It sits between and is fully integrated with the underlying ticketing system, be it Ticketmaster or, you know, Axios or You name it.
Yeah. What—
Across probably the 10 best primary ticketing platforms. And then they're consumer-facing, direct-to-consumer. So they take premium that's unsold. Like example, Crypto.com Arena has 180 suites. Do you think every one of those is full on every game night or every concert night? Absolutely not. So a company like Project Admission takes the available inventory because they're integrated with the primary platform and they sell something, it immediately reconciles to the manifest. And is taken off the market.
And
one example.
Awesome. What's a tip or tactic or strategy as far as sales, marketing, operations, or AI or SaaS that you learned that was really amazing that you're glad you did it, or one that you said, oh my God, what did I do? I'm glad I learned and lost fast.
Right. Well, technology in the early 2000s, I was tapped for the second time by Ron Benzion, who was the CEO at Tickets.com, to come in as the chief revenue officer as well as the chief marketing officer. And frankly, while we both came out of the theme park world and the sporting world on my side, we sort of understood that everybody who came into a venue or a theme park or an arena Or a stadium needed a ticket, but how to actually get the ticket and and then buy it over the internet—that's what ticket.com was, Michael. At that moment in time, tickets.com was the most robust, most accurate, and fastest ticketing platform to sell tickets via the internet, which is why which is why Major League Baseball bought us in 2005.
Yeah, I actually, um, worked with Tickets.com and went to a couple of their, uh, shows. Was in Costa Mesa and visited them.
Right.
There were 2 people in, I think, marketing or business development that I was dealing with. I'm trying to remember their name. One writes child books now. Forgot her name, but she was a very, um, colorful person.
Right.
But yeah, that was a, that was a pretty big company and, uh, I think there was Pacquiao back then as well.
Yeah, there was Pacquiao. And one of the reasons Major League Baseball bought Tickets.com is because they got wind that we were deep in negotiations to acquire and merge with Pacquiao and ourselves, which would have taken them numbers 2 and 3 ticketing companies, merged them together because we actually had very few, if you will, clients in common or overlap. So it effectively would have You know, materially expanded our customer base. And what's— what Bob Bowman, the then CEO of Major League Baseball Advanced Media— I remember Bob. Right. Okay. What he recognized was if he didn't buy us before the merger, it was going to cost him a lot more money to buy us after the merger. So we didn't. He came in with a credit facility financed by JPMorgan. And basically, we put an LOI and an MOU in place and gave him a 60-day exclusive negotiating window to take Tickets.com off the market, which he did.
And what's— is Pacioli still alive or?
They are still alive. Well, actually, I think they're part of Learfield. I don't know if they actually go by the name of Pacioli. I think they probably do, but they, they are part of Learfield.
Learfield, there was IMG's, uh, the head—
It was IMG College.
They bought—
then there was Learfield IMG, and then that all now is all bedrocked under Learfield.
Oh, really? So Learfield IMG, just like IMG College, into— okay.
Yep.
Interesting. What's a, what's a, um, what's a great AI tech that you're, that you're loving right now that has maybe nothing to do with Driven but more Something that's keeping you focused.
Well, for sure. Well, these kinds of things like you and I doing right now, we got Firefly taking notes. We're gonna both get the readout of this session, which will be super helpful. But one of the things I'm leaning into, we're lean, we're mean, we're two partners. We have no full-time employees. Any Any individual that makes sense for us to onboard and help us represent a client in the marketplace, we do via a 1099, an independent contractor, right?
Yeah.
So it's, it's, it's, as I said at the outset, super agile. We're boutique. We can get a lot done with the resources we have, largely because of our networks. But I've gone deep into Claude. Pro? Yeah, Anthropic. I bought the Pro plan. Claude has helped in any— a myriad of ways, actually. Like, for example, we, we have identified emerging developments where a performing arts center, an arena, a club, an amphitheater is a significant piece of a mixed-use development. Optimally, we get to the owners of that development as shovels are going in the ground before they've sold a naming rights partner to the venue, or maybe a naming rights partner to the entire district, right? And, and that's our target customer. We, we want to work with those emerging developers bringing to bear our expertise in naming rights. we at ASM Global, 20-plus naming rights deal across the whole portfolio. We were 350 venues under management. So there was renewals, there was new sales, there was swapping out A for B. Yeah. So we got deep expertise there and that's where our performance incentives really are materially beneficial to the company because the minimum term you're going to do for a naming rights deal of any venue, regardless of size, location, or genre, is 10 years. More likely it'll be 15 to 20.
What's the— what's the average retainer that they're paying these stadiums? I know it ranges based on a lot, but—
Well, yeah, it, it does. It's, it's wide-ranging because there are a lot of, I will say, cooks in the kitchen, but they're not all generalists. In fact, they're all niche-specific providers, right? You have ownership representation that sort of acts as the buffer between ownership, the architect, the general contractor. All the subs working with the cities, all that sort of thing. Our niche is specifically and only helping define a go-to-market strategy for sponsorship, typically one naming rights partner and 4 founding partners on a per venue basis. And then everything else gets sort of filled in after that, which logically would fall to the owner of the development and/or the owner of the arena after it's open, because there's going to be, you know,
Do you determine what it should go for? I know there was companies back when I was doing this, like Navigate, or they would basically figure out what is, uh, this sponsorship worth based on all this data. And right before AI, do you guys do that, or do you have to use a third-party company to make sure that you are selling this?
We've done, we've done both. A third-party company is helpful in a number of ways. One, they have expertise in the marketplace. in valuation methodologies. 2, it's a third party unrelated to the 2 primary parties.
Validation.
Yes. So you get, you know, an independent valuation from a trusted source in the marketplace. So you don't have to defend what you go to market with in terms of pricing. You have a glued-together credible valuation.
So as we end this particular podcast, who do you want to reach out to you and how can they reach you?
Sure. I'm pretty easy to find. I'm on LinkedIn. Carl Thomas. Not hard to find. I also host a podcast, my own podcast, which you know about, called The Best Boss Ever. That's an easy way to find me. Driven. We have a LinkedIn page. You can go to the Driven LinkedIn page and get straight to me. My email address is easy, carl.thomas@drivense.com. But the primary targets, Michael, are brands who are in the sponsorship game or contemplating being in the sponsorship game. Because if they're contemplating being in the sponsorship game, they probably don't know all the ins and outs of how to evaluate a sponsorship and what are the benefits and deliverables they should be asking for when they contemplate buying a sponsorship. So that's the buy side. The sell side is the team, the league, the venue operator, the tour, the event. And, you know, there are a number of very successful models in the marketplace. I happen to think that AEG has one of the best commercial partnership groups in the world, and they own venues like Crypto.com Arena and the O2, right? Plus, you know, They own the LA Galaxy. Um, they, they own the LA Kings. So they're really good at build and they own Coachella. Okay.
Yeah. Yeah.
On the AEG Presents side.
Yeah.
So they're, they're a great model that, and we know them well because they were our partner at ASM Global.
Well, thank you again for being on the podcast and I look forward to, uh, hopefully being on yours.
