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Behind the scenes stories, experiences and lessons shared by the world's leading event experts. Hosted by Christian Napier.
S1E11 - Frank Supovitz
Christian | October 13, 2023 | Organizational history and stories
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Speaker A This is Event Masters. Behind the scenes stories,
experiences and lessons shared by the world'S leading
event experts, hosted by Christian Napier. We've got
another episode of Event Masters for you today and our
guest. I have to say it's not every day that I get to
talk to somebody who actually can claim hall of famer in
their title. And we're dealing with a real hall of Famer
today. Frank Supovitz is joining us. Frank, thank you so
much for taking the time. How are you?
Speaker A I'm great, Christian. It's great to be here with you
today.
Speaker B Well, I'm honored to have you, frank, before we get
started into story time and looking back at your amazing
career, why don't you tell us where you're joining us
from today and what you're up to?
Speaker A I'm joining you from Long Island, New York, about 35
miles to the east of Manhattan. I started working out of
my home, as so many people did, after COVID. I used to
have an office in Lower Manhattan, and when COVID hit,
that kind of went away and, well, there was no real good
reason to go back to Manhattan. I'm enjoying my commute
on a flight of steps instead of on the Long Island
Railroad. So that's where I am today.
Speaker B Likewise, when COVID hit, all my travel stopped, and I'm
joining you from my home office that is just steps away
from all of the critical infrastructure I need to do my
job, which is the restroom and the kitchen. Right. It's
all good. Well, Frank, I mentioned hall of famer. So you
were actually inducted into the Event Industry Hall of
Fame in 2006? You're also an author, so you've authored
how many books have you authored, Frank?
Speaker A I think I'm in the process of number five.
Speaker B The process of number five. You have written the book on
managing and delivering live events. So wow. This is
incredible. Currently, you are the founder. You run a
company called Fast Traffic, right?
Speaker D That's right.
Speaker B Why don't you tell us a little bit about that
organization?
Speaker A Yeah, Fast Traffic has been just so much fun because it
really touches on every part of the event business,
every part of the venue business, even. We work project
to project. We put project teams together for any number
of clients. For the first six or seven years. We were
located in Lower Manhattan at The South Street Seaport,
New York City. And part of the reason was that I was on
the development team for the rooftop at Pier 17, which
is just to the south of the Brooklyn Bridge, about three
blocks and brand new open air concert and event facility
on the roof of a building that's jutting out into the
East River. And it has become incredibly successful. In
fact, I managed all of the operational elements for
getting the building ready to host audiences of 3400 or
so up on the roof, and now they do about 65 concerts a
summer which is very hardworking building here in New
York. I no longer have them as a continuing client, but
I did go back and do some work for them this summer in
terms of evaluating how they're doing from an
operational perspective, guest experience, security, all
those kinds of things. So South Street Seaport was a big
part of what we did. We've been producing the pre race
show for the Indy 500 since 2016. This past summer, we
were involved with the Major League Baseball draft, the
Major League Baseball All Star Red Carpet show. The
NFL's Hall of Fame game in Canton, Ohio, as well as the
Pro Football Hall of Fame enshrinement ceremony. So
we're involved in a ton of stuff. It's been great fun
because every project is different.
Speaker C Wow, that's amazing. And I'll probably dive into some of
that a little bit later on in our conversation. You
mentioned the National Football League. They're the NFL,
so for our global listeners, the American Football, the
National Football League, and prior to Fast Traffic, you
actually worked for the National Football League as
their Senior Vice President of Events, working in all
these Super Bowls. And I know you've got some Super Bowl
stories, and I'm super excited to dive into that. Before
that, you led the National Hockey League's events and
entertainment department. You developed this NHL
Heritage Classic, which was the first stadium based
outdoor pro hockey game, which was a forerunner to the
really super successful NHL Winter Classic, which is
super cool to see these venues filled up, maybe a
football stadium that's got 70,000 people packed in
there to watch a hockey game. I mean, it's really
amazing. And then prior to that, served as a director of
special events for Radio City Music Hall. Man, you've
done so much. You've been awarded an honorary doctorate
in sports, entertainment and event management from
Johnson and Wells University, as I mentioned, inducted
into the Event Industry Hall of Fame in 2006. In 2014
honored as New York University's Cal Ramsay,
distinguished Lecturer. You've even been in movies. You
had a cameo role in the film Draft Day, which was
directed by Ivan Reitman. So, wow, it's amazing and such
an honor for me to have you join us today and share your
story. And that story looks like a long, distinguished
story. But I'm curious, Frank, how you actually got
involved in all of this. Where did this come from? How
did this start?
Speaker A Oh, it was a total accident, and I backed right into it.
And I do want to say something. I was involved in the
development and creation of the Winter Classic, Heritage
Classic back then, which was in Edmonton, Alberta, and I
do want to just be on the record on it. I actually was a
partner to the Edmonton Oilers on that one. Their head
of marketing called me one day and I will get into the
beginning, but called me one day and had this crazy idea
of doing the All Star Game, the NHL All Star Game
outside. And ultimately, in our conversations, we ended
up developing it as a regular season game, and we did
that together. So I don't want to say that I did that
alone. And in fact, you do none of these things alone.
It always takes a big team of really big thinkers and
creative people and experts as well. So I just wanted to
make sure that that was on the record insofar as how I
got started. I was actually a biology major in college.
I had no experience in the business world at all, but I
was an usher at Radio City Music Hall at the age of 15,
actually. So I was still in high school at the time, and
I worked weekends and put the monkey suit on and walk
the aisles. There were no Fitbits or Apple Watches at
the time, so I have no idea how many steps I took. But a
lot of it was, you know, one of the things you learn
being an usher is customer service. Fan experience now,
we call it. But at the time, it was all about service
and and you learn so much starting from the bottom. When
Radio City changed its format in 1979 to an all live
format, it used to be a movie and a stage show, movie
and a rocket show, you may recall. They started doing a
lot of new and different things, and they offered me a
job. I was graduating college at about the same time,
and I had been accepted to a graduate program at Clemson
University for Master's in Zoology. But I didn't have
the money to go. I was really kind of stuck. And I said,
you know what? I've got this job offer from Radio City
to work in management for a year. I know the building. I
know the people really well. I love the you know it
still has a great amount of love in my heart. Why don't
I do that for a year and I'll go back to school? And
like so many people who say that you never go back to
school. I was having just too good a time working in the
front of house, working in the back house, learning the
business by observation. And I did go back to school at
night to get some business courses. I enrolled in an MBA
program, which I didn't finish, but I did learn lot
about the business world from an academic perspective as
well as from learn by doing. And as a consequence of
that, I was promoted into the marketing department. I
learned about concert promotion, event promotion, and
those types of things. And the last job that they
promoted me into was to help market this idea that they
had to enter the special events business as a production
company. So they not only did events in the building,
but they also exported their creative and production
expertise to third parties in other places around the
world. And I was really honored to get the opportunity
to help them market that. I was coming out of the
marketing department at the time, and while we were
doing that, they also put me on the shows themselves. So
I started as a talent coordinator and then a director of
talent and then associate producer and ultimately a
producer because I was learning by drinking from a fire
hose. We did just so much work. One of those things
turned out to be a Super Bowl halftime in 1988. Working
with as a Radio City person, working with Rockets and
others and learning big event production while I was
doing that, because you didn't hire Radio City to do
small things, you hired Radio City to do big things. And
some of them were corporate events like the Coca Cola
Centennial or Polaroids 50th anniversary. Some of them
were big civic events like the bicentennial of the US.
Constitution, 1987. We did the parade in Philadelphia in
September of 1987, and then the Super Bowl halftime in
January of 1988. Super Bowl 22. So we're well into the
50s now. That was 22. So it was a long time ago. And if
you remember that far back it had 88 grand pianos in it
because it was 1988. Eighty-eight keys on the piano and
88 pianos on the field. So I learned a lot about the
creative side of production as well, and that's where I
started. And ultimately I was offered the opportunity to
start the NHL's event department. They didn't have one.
All of their events were matrix managed. They did a lot
on the team level. There was an office in Montreal that
did the draft, and there was a decision made to bring
all of that into one place and hire somebody to do
nothing but event production and event development and
execution, ultimately. And I ended up doing that for 13
seasons, as you suggested, and then moved on to the NFL
to do another ten seasons for them back in 2005.
Speaker B Okay, well, there's a lot to unpack there. Frank, first
of all, do you ever look back and think, what if I would
have pursued this career in biology and zoology? It hits
close to home to me because I've got a daughter who's in
her final semester of biology undergrad and still
doesn't exactly know what she wants to do with it. So
now I can tell the world, you can always go into events
because they're hiring biology majors in events. But you
ever think back to say, well, gosh, I wonder what life
would have been like if I would have pursued that
biology route?
Speaker A Yeah, all the time. But it's all about learning what you
love to learn and doing what you love to do, and they
don't have to be the same thing. That's okay. It makes
you a more well rounded person. To me, when I'm thinking
about contingency planning, for example, when it comes
to events, I take a very scientific approach to that.
You know, you change one variable at a time. That's the
scientific approach, and see what that does. So I think
I think that background benefited me, but I will say
that nowadays there's actually and I primarily operate
in the sports world, but there are sports management
programs. I actually teach in one at Adolphi University.
I'm an adjunct. And there are event management programs.
Temple University in Philadelphia, for example, has a
terrific one. There was none of that training when I got
out of college and when I was in college. And if there
had been, nobody would have hired me to do any of the
things I did because there would have been people
academically trained to do it. It was a very, very young
industry in the late 70s, early 80s. And they just had
to put people who they felt they could trust to do these
things and learn these things and figure these things
out. But there wasn't that kind of academic training,
and I'm grateful that there wasn't, to be honest.
Speaker B Okay, wow. Well, the second part that I want to come
back to, so that's really helpful, and I'm glad that you
were able to extrapolate knowledge that you learn
through university and biology and apply it. I
experienced a similar thing. I graduated with a degree
in accounting and somehow fell into this event thing
myself, and that being said, was able to apply a lot of
the concepts I learned in accounting. But I want to come
back to the career part of it where you're with Radio
City Music Hall for a long time, and then you make this
decision to take this offer and go to the National
Hockey League. And I'm curious what was going through
your mind there? Did you think that, oh, I'm just going
to be with Radio City Music Hall forever, and I love
this job and it's awesome. Now this other opportunity
presents itself. What is your thought process going
there Saying, do I stay doing something that I know and
I love? And I've had opportunities to learn and grow,
and they've given me opportunities, but now it's time to
turn a new leaf and take this other opportunity. What
was your mindset going into all of that?
Speaker D Well, there was a step in between. There was a small
event company called Eventures that was founded by the
producer that I worked for at Radio City. So he had
left, he had started his own company. He offered me the
opportunity to come and work with him and own a piece of
the company, which I did with another partner. So there
were three of us, and it was based in New York, and we
did a lot of the same kinds of things. And what we
determined and what we had thought and actually had been
validated. You know, it's a people business. You don't
hire companies, or you might in the beginning, but you
develop relationships, and those relationships are what
drives your business. And either you have great
relationships and you drive a great business, or you
have bad relationships and it affects you in the other
way. So we did a lot of the same kinds of things. Now,
you're right. I was at Radio City a very long time. I
felt that I had stagnated a little bit that it was hard
to get to the next step. Once I got to a certain level.
They weren't ready to turn the keys over to me, and
that's okay. I just felt that I could learn more and
contribute more by being somewhere else. Now, having
said that, leaving Radio City was really hard. And I
remember when I had made that decision, I felt like I
sold my mother's house. I was really sad about it, but I
never really looked back, and I never really took a job
ever where I thought I was just going to be there for a
little while. I always felt that wherever I was going to
go, I was going to nest. When other opportunities came
up that seemed like the next progression, if you will. I
thought about it, and I didn't always do it, but I
clearly did it a few times.
Speaker B Well, let's hop into the NHL then, because one of the
things that you sent me prior to us recording this, you
sent a few stories which I thought were amazing, and one
of those was about learning the hard way that hope is
not a strategy. And that learning came through. Your
first NHL All Star game in Montreal. And so I'm curious
for you, and I can't wait to hear the story behind this
important lesson learned that hope is not a strategy.
Speaker A Yeah, I'm not the first person to say it, but it's 100%
true. I was relatively new at the NHL. I had been there
almost a year.
Speaker D And we were getting ready to play the All Star Game. It
was 1993 in Montreal at the Montreal Forum, which is the
Temple of Hockey, or was the Temple of Hockey before the
Montreal Canadiens moved somewhere else. And it was the
75th anniversary of the league, but it was also the
100th birthday of the Stanley Cup. The Stanley Cup
actually predates the NHL by about a quarter century.
And so you have this priceless sterling silver trophy,
the Holy Grail of that sport, and the All Star Game was
being played on the hundredth anniversary of the Stanley
Cup in the city in which the most Stanley Cup champions
were crowned. So it was very meaningful. Again, I wasn't
new to the sport. I was a fan, but there's so much that
you don't know when you're fan, you're not on the inside
of the culture. But I felt it was a really important
thing to commemorate, and celebrate that birthday, that
anniversary. So I had this idea that we would have three
Montreal Canadiens alumni whose names are engraved on
the Stanley Cup multiple times, skate around the rink
with the cup above their heads to start the national
broadcast. I thought that would really be cool. And
apparently so do the Montreal Canadiens. So they helped
me procure Maurice "The Rocket" Richard, Guy Lafluer and
Jean Beliveau were some of the greatest Montreal
Canadiens ever. And they were in Canadiens gear. And
they were sitting in the Zamboni tunnel about ten
minutes prior to the game starting. And I got this radio
call about ten minutes ahead from the stage manager down
there wondering where the Stanley Cup was. Nobody knew
where it was, and we're about to go on national
television. Now, I knew where it was. It had been at my
boss's sponsor brunch, at a hotel across town, and I had
asked him not to have it there or to Let me have it
earlier, because, like any event person, you want your
stuff and your people there well ahead of time, so that
you're not struggling if something happens. But he
didn't want to do that. And frankly, it was my new boss,
so I was really being overly respectful, as anybody
would, but I said, I don't know. I hope it will be there
on time. I don't know if it's going to be, but I
imagined It would be, and I really hoped, and of course,
I just made that assumption he's going to make sure it
gets there, because I told him what I needed it for and
all of that, and it's not there. And I'm about to dump
this segment just before we go on television, and sure
enough, I get a radio call that the Stanley Cup Is In
the building. It's about 30 seconds before we go to air,
and I said, Great. Get it out of the road box. Get It
into the hands of Maurice Richard, and let's go. And so
out it comes. Maurice Richard grabs the trophies, steps
out onto the Ice, holds It above his head, and he drops
It, and it falls to the ice, and it makes us sound like
I imagine the Liberty Bell might have when it was
cracked. And sure enough, we damage this 100 year old
trophy. Not all. Actually, today's trophy Is not quite
100 years old. The original bowl is somewhere else. But
it's still old, it's still priceless, it's still
sterling silver, and it's still dented. And I thought I
was going to die on national television. I'm not on
national television. The cup is. And then I look up, and
they're showing It on instant replay over and over again
in slow motion, and it's just one of the most
embarrassing moments of my life. Apparently what
happened was it was -25 degrees in Montreal that day.
And the streets are covered in ice. And when the cup
keeper throws the cup in the back of a cab the cab is
just sitting in traffic. I know none of this. So the cup
keeper realizes he's not going to get there in time if
he sits in the cab. So he takes the road box out of the
cab and he's pushing it down the street on the ice and
gets it to the forum just in time. But what it did in
the meantime was the trophy got chilled to -25 so with
no time for it to be warmed up. It gets into the hands
of Maurice Richard and he can't hold it. It's just too
darn cold. I'm surprised he didn't stick to it. And down
the trophy went. Hope is not a strategy. Right? If I
wasn't 100% sure that the trophy was going to be there
on time, I should have done it at different part of the
game, right? During an intermission or during a whistle
stoppage or something like that. It's an all star game.
I can get away with that. But because I wanted to do it
at the beginning and I had no contingency plan to do it
anywhere else. I had a bad plan. So I hoped it had
worked out, and it didn't. And I should have known
better to be honest. So it's not my boss's fault. It was
my fault. And that's where I learned that lesson.
Speaker B Well, you're telling me this story and especially the
end there, and it's making me think back to your biology
and scientific training. You talked about the variables.
Nobody accounted for the variable that the trophy would
be chilled to -25 and nobody could actually hold on to
the thing because it would be physically impossible to
hold it. It's just too cold. So. Wow, what a great
lesson. I wanted to touch on the NHL thing. The creation
of this heritage classic. It's something that had been
highlighted in your bio. And I wanted to understand what
was the genesis of that? How did that idea come about?
And how did you end up planning and ultimately
delivering what has now turned into a really iconic
event for hockey here?
Speaker A Yeah. Lesson of knowing who your audience is. And I
think that's true. If you're an event person, whether
you do big public events or you're doing private events
for a specific group, knowing your audience is really so
I mentioned before that I had gotten this call from the
head of marketing at the Edmonton Oilers. His name was
Alan Watt. His name is Alan Watt. Still. And he said,
all right, we have this crazy idea of doing the All Star
Game outside. In a stadium. And a stadium game had been
done already, actually. The Michigan - Michigan State
had done an outdoor stadium game, but it had never been
done on the professional level. And I said to myself,
boy, this is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. And
the reason I said that is because I did know my
audience. All star games are not as much public events
as they are big corporate hospitality events. So that's
when leagues entertain their sponsors, their
broadcasters, all of their partners, and I would say
somewhere around half to two thirds of the audience are
invited guests that wouldn't normally be paying for a
ticket. Fans make up the rest of it. And I said to
myself, I don't see sponsors sitting outside in the
winter, in the cold to watch an all star game, which
competitively is meaningless, right? They're not even
that good in terms of being good games. I think by the
second or maybe even the third period, people would be
pretty much gone. I said to myself, this is really not a
good idea. So we hung up the phone, and then I called
Alan back about two weeks later and I said, you know,
all right, now it's my turn for a stupid idea. How about
we think about playing this for two points? It's a
regular season game. Can we do it as a regular season
game? And Alan, to his credit, said, you know, I was
going to call you and ask you the same thing. So we
spent a year really studying every contingency of what
it would take. And what if it rained? What if we had a
blizzard? What if it snowed? What if it was too warm?
What if it wasn't warm enough? What if it was too cold?
And so we went through everything, and we hired a
physician from he was an arctic surgeon or arctic doctor
that specialized in how people react to deep cold. He
worked up in the northern Alberta. And so we looked at
that and we looked at what would happen if it was
pouring rain. What would happen if we had twelve inches
of snow, would we play the game? All of those kinds of
things. We spent a year on that. And then we convinced
the commissioner that we had a good plan. He didn't want
to be embarrassed, didn't want to embarrass the NHL, and
I don't blame him. And then it got on the schedule. Now,
we played that game in late, late November. We picked
that date for two reasons. One is we wanted the Edmonton
Oilers to play the Montreal Canadiens, so it'd be two
great Stanley Cup teams with Stanley Cup heritages, if
you will. The second was we wanted it to be cold enough,
but we felt that I think it was November 22, it wouldn't
be deep, deep, deep, deep cold. And boy, were we
surprised. It was minus nine when we dropped the puck,
it was very cold. I think that was the longest and
deepest I've been in -30 but this was minus nine. And I
was out there all day and into the night. It was really
something. I think it was 57,000 fans filled
Commonwealth Stadium. It was capacity. We played, or
they played an alumni game first. So there was a
Canadians alumni, edmonton Oilers alumni played that
game. We had fans that were sitting in mummy, just, just
incredibly cold. But that's knowing your audience in
Edmonton, they come out in that I think if we did it for
the first time somewhere in the US. It wouldn't have
gone as well as it does now, now that there's this
tradition of doing these outdoor winter Games. But if it
was minus nine, even in New York or Boston or Detroit or
Chicago some of the older know traditional hockey towns
in the United States I don't think we would have
succeeded in doing it for the first time at Edmonton in
that it was a point of Canadian pride and it sold out
and people were there. There was not an empty seat at
the end of the game.
Speaker B Well, what a fascinating story. And one of the things
that's really interesting to me about it is this point
that you made, which, hey, I know my audience, and
having the wherewithal I don't know if courage is the
right word, but to say to the powers that be. Hey, why
don't we take this in a slightly different direction
that I think could make this event more successful?
Because you could have just shied away from it and said,
okay, yeah, that sounds a great idea, let's do this for
the All Star Game. And it could have turned out very,
very differently. I congratulate you for having that
conviction and having this gut feeling, this intuition
based on your experience, to say, you know what, that
idea is interesting. Let me propose another one that
could be potentially more.
Speaker A We got we got lucky with that one, I think.
Speaker B Okay, so you're with the NHL for a long period of time,
and then you transition to the NFL, the National
Football League. So why don't you tell us a little bit
about that?
Speaker C You know, moving on from NHL and then going to work for
the was a, it was an incredible opportunity that I
thought I'd be at the NHL till I retired. I loved the
sport and I loved the fans and I loved the players and
the culture of the the people ask me what the
differences are between the two. I'm an American. But in
Canada, the NHL is the NFL. It's dominant. And I
recognize that it was a great responsibility, especially
as an American working on a Canadian heirloom, if you
will, heirloom sport. But as I mentioned, when you're a
fan, and I was a fan of hockey, as I was a fan of
football, you don't really understand the inner workings
as well. I mean, people think they do, but they really
don't until you're in it. And they all are very
culturally different. You would do a championship
practice in public in hockey. You would never do that in
football. And there was a lot that I really didn't
understand as I went in there, and I didn't know what I
didn't know when I got to the NFL. I did know that I
said, I'm not going to make that mistake twice. So the
first thing I did when I got there was I spoke with the
head of the football operations department, two
gentlemen, Art Shell, hall of fame coach, former coach,
and a gentleman named Peter Hadhazy, who were in charge
of football operations. And I said, do you have a game
operations manual? And they said, yeah, well, of course
we do. And I said, well, would you give me the game
operations manual? I'd like to read it. And every sport
has the analogous document, kind of the rules of the
road and what you're allowed to do, what you're not
allowed to do, and all of that. My first day at work was
in Jacksonville just before Super Bowl 39, and I took
the book with me, and I read it in my hotel room every
night till I got to the end of it. And then I arranged a
meeting with the football operations team and said, all
right, I have a few questions on the book. And they kind
of looked at me and said, you actually read that? And I
said, yeah, I did. And they were like, Nobody reads
that. I guess they were impressed because I was sort of
the hockey guy coming in, and it's like, what does the
hockey guy know about football? Well, the hockey guy
learned about what he needed to know. There's ways that
you take care of the ice, well, there's ways you take
care of the turf, and there are things you can do, and
there's things you can't do, and here's what you can do
pregame, and here's how you do what you can do pregame,
and all of those types of things. There were rules of
the road, and I think they were really impressed that I
took the time, energy, and effort and parenthetically.
When I went to work on the Indy 500, I did the same
thing and said, I need to talk to the race operations
director so I could know what I don't know. And that's
really important when you go from and I imagine many of
your listeners aren't in the same kind of situation I
was, where you've got basically one client, right? Your
client is hockey, your client is football. Your client
is whatever sport it is, it's, again, understanding the
culture of the place you're in, because they take those
things really seriously. And that was the first thing.
The second, which was really interesting and eye
opening, my predecessor was still on board when the ball
was kicked off in Jacksonville for Super Bowl 39. It was
the Patriots and the Eagles, and I didn't want to get in
the way, but I wanted to be exposed to everything that I
thought I could be. So I did take a walkie talkie and I
put it on, and I listened to it the entire day. And most
of the time I was down on the sidelines but wandered
around the stadium, but I would listen to everything.
And I remember when I was looking out of my hotel room
window, I was looking around at what the Super Bowl was,
and it was everywhere, and it was big, and there were
tons of people, and I'm like, oh, my God, this thing is
so huge. How am I ever going to manage this? I managed
All Star Games and Stanley Cups and things like that,
and those were big, but this was on a level all too -
and Roger Goodell, who was not yet commissioner, he was
my boss at the time, you know, you're here to take this
to a new level. And I said to myself, I don't know what
that level is. This is a level unto itself. Like, how do
I get it to whatever the next thing is, the next
milestone? So I listened to this radio, and every call
that went up to the command center, to the control area,
I'd heard everything like that before. There was just
more of it. I mean, there was more radio traffic than
I've ever heard. But all of the questions, all of the
issues, I've heard them before, and I said, okay, now I
get it. Now I understand. I have to take this in pieces
and just apply what I've been doing to something bigger
and more exposed. And it made me feel better. It made me
feel like I could do it. The other thing I did when I
started conducting my first Super Bowl meetings with, I
don't know, gosh, there were 150, 200 people in the
room. I said, you know, I need to let people know that I
don't know everything. It's my first Super Bowl coming
up. I'd been exposed to a few of them. I worked on a
halftime show. I had been down in Jacksonville kind of
observing, and I said, I really need to let people know
that I am a human and that I don't know everything, and
I don't think I know everything. And my predecessor, who
had been there for more than 20 years, had everything up
here. So I started off the first meeting with a slide
that said, assume nothing, double check everything. And
I said that because I didn't want people to think that
just because something automatically happened in the
past that they relied on, that they needed something and
it was there that I would know that they needed it and
that I would know it would need to be there. So I said,
Assume nothing, double check everything. And then I
said, I'm going to start every meeting with that. So I
did, and it became kind of a mantra, and it was
successful. People really rose to the occasion and
helped me help them do their jobs. And so I said, the
next year, let's come up with a new one based on the
problems that I saw or the challenges I saw. And the
next one was Communicate or die. And that became the
mantra for that year. I started every meeting with that
communicate or die. And ultimately, I ended up having a
different one every year. And it focused the team in the
beginning. It covered my butt as it progressed. It
focused the team on how we should do business together
and how we're going to execute this together,
recognizing that some of the best event people in the
world were pulling this thing together every year. And
one of the last ones was Fans First. Think about
everything you're doing and how does it affect the fan.
Even if you're just planning stuff, even if it's behind
the scenes stuff, everything we do affects the fan.
Everything we do affects the experience of the guest.
That we sometimes forgot that. And after a year when it
was apparent we did forget it, we changed the mantra for
the following year. And I felt that those were really
great ways of getting the team focused on the work
ahead.
Speaker B I love that the fans first thing is quite interesting
coming from an Olympic environment. The talk is always
athletes first. Right? It's athletes are the heart of
the games, and it's all about the athlete experience,
and everything goes around. It's kind of in the orbit of
the athlete. So I think this is very interesting, this
fan's first approach. I like it. You sent me a couple of
stories that I want to make sure we get to that are part
of your NFL experience, and one of those was involving
Hurricane Katrina. And so I'm wondering if you can tell
the story about the telethon that was staged on Monday
Night Football game with respect to Hurricane Katrina.
Speaker A Yeah, I was relatively new to the league. I started in
January 2005. And in September 2005, Katrina hit New
Orleans. And as many people may recall, the Superdome
was a refuge of last resort. It was horror what people
went through there. And I was in Los Angeles, where we
were preparing to stage the NFL kickoff, which was a big
concert right before the first game of the season on
opening day. And we were in rehearsal, I think it was
the night before the kickoff, and I got a call from Joe
Brown, who was the head of PR at the NFL, and he said,
when are you getting back to New York? We need you. And
I said, I was going to come back after kickoff. And he
said, well, get on the red eye then and get back here
because we need to plan a telethon, and it's happening
in ten days. And I said, okay. It's the Bush Clinton
Katrina fund, which was George Bush and Bill Clinton
working together on a way of raising funds for the
recovery of New Orleans. And he said, the telethon is in
ten days. And I said, okay, well, where are we doing it?
And he said, well, that's the first thing you have to
figure out, and it's on you, so get back here as soon as
you can. So I did, next night, took the red eye back,
went right to the office, went right into meetings.
Where are we going to do this? How are we going to do
this? I recognize that there's a function, a fundraising
function, so it's not just about what's going to be in
front of the camera, but it's also going to be what's
behind the scenes in terms of accepting payments and
donations and that sort of thing, and how you're going
to get that done where no system exists. And we were
able to actually work with ABC and borrow, honest to
God, the Good Morning America set in Times Square. And,
you know, as soon as Good Morning America was done for
the day, we moved in and set up the telethon. And by the
way, it had to be moved back out overnight so that they
could do Good Morning America the next day, too. The
reason it was being done in ten days was New Orleans was
playing the Giants. They were supposed to play it at the
Superdome, and the Superdome had holes in it, and it was
a disaster zone. So they moved the game to the
Meadowlands and played the game in New York and then pre
game, and during the intermission between, there were
two games that night. In between the two games, we
activated this telethon at the Good Morning America set.
It took everybody, every department at the NFL, to get
this thing going. And the partnership of ABC, which was
huge, to be able to give us this opportunity to use
their facilities. And what we did at the time, because
we had no payment mechanism, is we worked with
Ticketmaster to do that. So Ticketmaster was kind of the
back of house very quietly. They didn't really want
people to know they were doing it, but now people know
if they're listening to this podcast. So make sure that
everybody knows. And everybody just pitched in, every
vendor, every partner that we know pitched in to make it
happen. And I have to say, there was kind of this story
arc from that night until a year later. I went down to
New Orleans right after that with a small team of people
who were sent down to take a look at the dome and figure
out whether any games could be played there that season.
It was right at the beginning of the 2005 season, and
there was no possible way, actually, when we got to New
Orleans, you could fire a cannon down the middle of the
airport concourse and not hit anybody. I mean, there was
nobody moving in, nobody moving out. And we determined
that the stadium wasn't usable. And we were told by the
commissioner to find ways to make sure that by next
season it was going to be usable. And it was. A year
later, the NFL staged a big party outside the Dome. The
Goo Goo Dolls played. Everybody in the city was offered
the opportunity to come. I think we have about 25,000
people there, and this is before the doors opened for
the first game coming back after Katrina, a year later.
And when we opened the doors, there was a pregame show
on ESPN, which people may remember. It had U2 and Green
Day singing The Saints Are Coming and Goo Dolls outside
did Better Days, which was tremendous. It wasn't a dry
eye in the house. It was just an incredible experience.
That was the night I've been told by many people,
because I went back and did a Super Bowl some years
later there. That was the night that the people of New
Orleans or people in New Orleans felt that things were
going to be okay again because the city had been
devastated and so many people moved away that never came
back. And doing that first game back may have been the
most important and meaningful thing that I had ever done
or ever been associated with. Wasn't a Super Bowl. It
was the place that that stadium, that team, that event
had in people's psyches down there that really kind of
repaired their hearts and souls. And that was a
remarkable thing to be associated with.
Speaker B It's an absolutely beautiful story, and I really
appreciate you sharing it. I'm trying to remember, where
did the Saints play during that season because they
couldn't play in the Superdome.
Speaker A Yeah, first they played in San Antonio, and then they
moved to Baton Rouge and played at LSU. And we were
helping them every place we know, we sent our ticket
director down there to help them because we were in the
middle of the season or the season had started. So
reticketing everybody who had tickets, who wanted to
keep their tickets and selling additional tickets and
making sure that the team was well supported, it was a
big thing. I mean, it really took a lot of people at the
league to make that you know, the layperson or the
casual or even the fan, they don't really understand the
level of effort that's required to do something like
that. So I appreciate you shedding a little bit of light
on it.
Speaker B You did mention that the Super Bowl did return to New
Orleans eventually, which was fantastic. The Super Bowl
was also infamous in New Orleans because the power went
out. And I remember watching that game thinking, what in
the world happened? And as an event person, I was just
thinking to myself, what is going through everybody's
mind when the power goes out? There as the organizers.
I'm curious, as you look back, what's your memory of
that experience in New Orleans
Speaker A When something goes wrong, you hope you're the only one
who notices it. That's not the case when it happens at
the Super Bowl. There's 115,000,000 people watching on
television, there's 70,000 people outside your window
waiting for you to fix things. And interestingly enough,
if that's not pressure enough for you, I had a crew from
60 Minutes standing right next to me at the time that
the lights went out. Armin Keteyian was the
correspondent. And suddenly the behind the scenes item
that they were doing for a show called 60 Minutes Sports
on Showtime became something else. The ball had just
been kicked off for the second half, right after the
halftime show that Beyonce did, which was tremendous. A
lot of people blamed her show for knocking out the
lights. That's not what happened at all. In fact, the
halftime show was on its own generators because it took
up a whole lot of power. And what happened was when the
lights were restored to start the second half, when they
were re illuminated, and a lot of other things came back
online after the halftime show. A relay on one of the
feeder cables. So a giant circuit breaker saw power
consumption increasing dramatically over a short period
of time. And it's designed to shut itself off if that
happens, because it thinks there's a power surge, and
we're talking about power surge of monumental
proportions. And so it had just been replaced. So post
Katrina, the electrical system had not been replaced. So
of course, about six weeks before the Super Bowl, the
power company replaced all the relays, all the power
cables, and it was installed with factory settings like
just about any piece of equipment. It wasn't built or
didn't anticipate what happened, so it shut itself off.
And luckily, we had law enforcement there and security
professionals who determined it wasn't a fire, it wasn't
a cyberattack, it wasn't a terror attack. We had to know
that right away. Because you have 70,000 people there,
and if they're looking at Twitter and Facebook and other
social media platforms to determine what their next move
is going to be and I'm not talking to them, that's a
problem. Within 90 seconds, we knew that we had a safe
environment. We wanted to tell people to stay in place
and not leave. The reason we could do that is because
stadiums and arenas are equipped with battery backup
public address systems that are good for about a half an
hour for just this purpose. You don't want the power to
go out and you can't talk to people. People will make
their own decisions. If they stampede to the doors,
you've got a problem. So the first thing we did before
we even knew what the problem was, was we told people to
stay in place because again, we knew it was a safe
environment. And then we determined that there was a
power feeder that had failed. There were two that come
into the Superdome, we had a backup. The backup had been
installed during this same process just about six weeks
before. Never had a backup before. Thank God we did. But
what's really remarkable is that the operations team for
the stadium has a procedure if something like this were
to happen, and that's to shut off all the unnecessary
non life safety power drains. Escalators and lighting in
the concourses and beer taps. Although a lot of people
would argue that that's pretty important. Refrigeration,
HVAC, all that stuff got shut off. And it's a good thing
they did, because what was after the investigation, some
weeks later, it was determined if they hadn't, the other
side would have failed, too. And then we're in darkness,
and there's one feeder cable that can be used as a
backup. Now the game would have been over. They were the
ones who kept us from having a complete disaster. After
24 minutes, the operations team restored the power, and
after 24 minutes, we're ready to go. And of course, CBS,
who has more than 100 million people watching, they want
us to get started in a hurry. And we did not do that. We
spent another ten minutes to make sure that all the
information systems, all of the electronic systems were
back up and running. Score, clock, coach to quarterback
systems, instant replay, all of that sort of stuff.
Because if we didn't do that and there was another score
or another or a penalty, a controversial play, whatever
it was, and the officials go to take a look at the
instant replay, and there is none. Now you've got a
different problem, right? You have a potentially
inauthentic game. We still have ray Lewis from the
Baltimore Ravens is still convinced that we did this on
purpose, right, to change the momentum of the game.
Because the Ravens were just killing the 49ers, and then
the 49ers caught up in the second half. So he's
convinced we did it on purpose, not so. And we spent
another ten minutes going through every system before we
kicked the ball off again. And it's a good thing we did,
because there was one coach to quarterback system didn't
work. And we got it up and running, we got it to work,
and everything was fine from that point forward. But
that was really important. That lesson is respond to the
problem, don't react to the problem, right? And if we
had reacted and it was like television is saying, get
the ball kicked off. Get the ball kicked off. Get the
ball kicked off. And we're like, hold on. It's the Super
Bowl. We've been dead in the water for 24 minutes.
What's another ten? Let's get this right. And that's
what we did.
Speaker B One of the reasons I love this story, as you're
retelling it, I come back to the casual fan or the
person who's not involved in this business, thinking,
why is it taking them so long to get the power back on,
right? What's going on? Don't they have any idea what
they're doing? And then you look at it from the other
perspective, it's like it's actually pretty miraculous
you got the power back on, and you got everything up and
running and functioning properly in this amount of time.
Because in these events, I come from more of an Olympic
space. But you'll do a technical rehearsal, and it's
several days. Then you'll do another technical
rehearsal, and it's several days. And if you find a
problem, it takes time to fix those problems. So being
able to actually have this happen and then recover, in
my perspective, in a short period of time, kudos to you
and to the team for actually being able to pull that
off.
Speaker A Yeah, to the team. It really was a team sport, without
question. And we got lucky because I mentioned that we
had a crew from 60 Minutes right beside us. They
documented the whole thing, and we didn't even look at
the camera. I forgot the cameras were even there. I
remember when that episode was going to air. I got a
call from one of the producers of the show, and he said,
I want you to know that we documented what you guys did.
And I don't know what kind of pressure you're under
right now, but I wanted you to know that I think we did
a fair job of documenting what happened. And he couldn't
have been nicer, Alan Goldberg.
Speaker D He said, I want you to call me when the show is finished
and let me know if you're okay.
Speaker A And I said to myself, holy smoke, am I in know my boss
is going to see this. My colleagues are going to see it.
My neighbors are going to see it. My family is going to
see it. Oh, my God, what is he warning me about? I sat
on the edge of my couch watching this with my wife, had
her arms around me the entire time. And you know what?
It was fair. They documented it. It ended up being a
good thing that nobody could say, well, what were they
doing up there? To your point, Christian, what were they
doing up there for 24 minutes or 34 minutes? Which is
what it was once we got started again, and it ended up
being a good day. And part of that is because we did
tabletop exercises for emergencies, crisis management
type of emergencies, and we did it every year. I don't
know if they still do it, but I made sure we did it
every year. And the whole team went right back into
problem solving mode, like we did during this tabletop
simulation. And although we never rehearsed a power
failure, we rehearsed how we respond to problems, and it
made all the difference. We just went right back into
problem solving mode.
Speaker B Well, again, it's fascinating, and I really appreciate
you sharing that experience you mentioned, well, I don't
know what they're doing in the NFL anymore because you
eventually left the so I'm curious about that. You're
again with the NFL for a long period of time, and then
you leave. I don't know what the timing is between that
and founding this new company, Fast Traffic, but talk to
us a little bit about that transition.
Speaker A I meant to start my own firm before I left the NFL, and
I was very fortunate to be entrusted with the management
of nine Super Bowls as well as NFL drafts and things of
that nature and lots of other stuff. And I am so
appreciative of what the NFL did for me and the trust
that they had in me. But I felt after 23 years of
working for sports leagues and ten plus working for
Radio City, I wanted to try new things. I just wanted to
try new things. I didn't think I could grow anymore
doing the same thing every year. The difference between
running your own firm and working for sports leagues for
23 years is when you're working for the sports league,
you're on a treadmill you can't control. When you're
working for yourself, you're working on a treadmill you
can control. It's still a treadmill, but you can
determine what you do and what you take. I said, that's
really what I want. The back half is being generous back
half of my career to be. I talked to a number of people
that I trusted in the event world and in the venue world
and in the sports world, and they were all very
encouraging to me and said, well when you're ready, call
me. And so I said to myself after the Super Bowl in New
York, which was actually in New Jersey, but New York
market, where it's the first outdoor winter Super Bowl
where the contingency planning was off the chart, right?
Because you have to just like we did for the Winter
Classic or Heritage Classic, except Super Bowl is, like
I said, on a level unto itself. If I've been able to
manage that well, that's the pinnacle for me for Super
Bowls. It's time, and everything worked out fine.
Obviously, there's always stuff that goes wrong, and
there were, but I felt like I had done a good job and
it's time. So that's what I did. And then I had the
opportunity to be on the development team for the
rooftop. I had the opportunity to start working on the
Indie. I started working with the Pro Football Hall of
Fame, all of those really relatively quickly. So the
period of time you ask between my walking out the door
on Park Avenue, my walking in the door at Fast Traffic
was overnight.
Speaker B Well, one other story I want to get to that you talked
to me about before or through an email exchange
highlights the global nature, because everything we've
talked about up until now has happened in North America,
everything that we've discussed. But you've also had
experience globally as well, and you have an interesting
story that happened in Innsbruck. And so I want to dive
into that one.
Speaker A Yeah, I was blessed to be able to work at the NFL in the
UK and Mexico on games at the NHL, which just did a game
in Melbourne, Australia, which I've done some work in
Australia, and it's fascinating. They had games in Japan
and Finland, sweden and Austria, actually. And I had the
opportunity to work on all of those. And every one of
those countries has different culture, and they have
different assumptions and they have different languages.
Worked in the UK on some things as well, which know,
again, culturally different, but at least you're talking
the same language. And so I learned that there are
different ways of working in different countries, and
you work on the Olympics, so you know that, again, I
didn't know what I didn't know. And just one quick story
about how clear communication is really important,
right. And culture, you have to understand how they do
business, but clear communication is really important. I
had asked the promoter for that game in Innsbruck for a
bilingual announcer. We had two teams that were from
North America. Neither of them were from French Canada.
So we had to make sure that the players could hear the
penalty announcements and the goals and assists and any
other important information. 1 minute to go in the
period, that sort of thing, that they would hear it in
English and then the audience would hear it in German.
So I, of course, asked the promoter for a bilingual
announcer, and I said, Look, I'd like to see him the day
before the game, have him come out to the arena and just
so I could talk him through the rules as they are played
in North America, in Europe, they play on a different
surface. The rules are a little bit different. The
countdown clock, instead of going to zero, goes up to 20
per period. That sort of thing. So I just wanted to make
sure that he was aware of all of those things. In walks
Karl. Really good guy. His English is okay, we
understand each other. And I said, okay, so first you
make this announcement in English and then you make it
in German. And he says, no, Frank, I do the German, you
do the Canadian. And I said, But I thought you would be
comfortable as a bilingual announcer. And he said yes in
German and Italian, because we were very close to the
Italian border. So in Innsbruck, bilingual means German
and Italian it does not mean English. So I ended up
being the English speaking announcer for that game. And
Karl sat beside me as the German announcer. I didn't
have him announce in Italian. There was no real reason
for that. And I remember my boss coming down to the
timekeeper's bench where we were after the game, and he
said, where did you find that English speaking
announcer? His accent was impeccable, and I never told
him it was me, but it was me.
Speaker B Well, now all is revealed. What an amazing story. Gosh,
I can't believe the time has gone for me so quickly. I
could sit here and listen to these stories for days.
Before we wrap up our conversation, any other stories or
experiences you feel you want to share with our
listeners and viewers?
Speaker A I think that for those of us who have people knocking on
our door, students perhaps that are listening, get
involved. Get your foot in the door. I got into this as
an usher. You're the sum total of all of your
experiences. Everything you ever learn, everything you
ever do is transferable to the next thing. And I would
say, get in there. Get in there. Get your foot in the
door and do whatever it is. Roll up your sleeve and
nothing is beneath you.
Speaker B I think that's great advice. I remember I started out in
Salt Lake, 2002. I left IBM to go work for an Olympic
games. And one of the mantras there was no job is too
small. Right. Whether it's you announcing, okay, well,
somebody's got to do this. I guess I'll step in and I'll
be the PA guy, the PA announcer in Innsbruck. Or I
remember the guy that ran the Rice Eccles Stadium venue
for the opening ceremony for the Salt Lake 2002 games
and comes in 05:00 in the morning. He's out there
shoveling snow because somebody need to shovel the snow.
I think that's fantastic advice, and I really appreciate
you sharing that. I know we talked about a little bit at
the beginning, but tell us a little bit more about Fast
Traffic, the kinds of services that you're providing,
and should any of our listeners or viewers be interested
in connecting with you and learning more about how you
could potentially help them. Tell us, what's the best
way for them to reach out and connect with you?
Speaker A Sure. Well, we again work on projects. So whether it's
an event project or venue development project or a
design project, we put the right teams of people
together, the best in the industry. That's at least what
I try to do to meet the needs of whatever that project
is. So, as I mentioned, we worked for the Howard Hughes
Corporation on the South Street Seaport. The rooftop at
pier 17, that was venue development. We consulted to the
Milwaukee Bucks when they were building the Deer
district outside their new Pfizer Forum because they
wanted a big place that was kind of event ready. It's a
big plaza out in front of the building. We had nothing
to do with the inside. We were just consulted on what to
do with the outside and what kind of infrastructure was
required. We do full on production, working again, with
production partners. We did the Major League Baseball
draft and the All Star Red Carpet Show at the All Star
Game this past year. Actually, the last three years for
Major League Baseball produced the pre race show for the
Indy 500. What's really very interesting about that one
is it's two of us, the production company, the
production team is Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Frequently we're brought in to be part of an
organization that already exists. Pro Football Hall of
Fame is exactly the same thing. We work on the hall of
Fame game. We work on the Merlin Olsen Super Bowl
luncheon. We work on the hall of Fame enshrinement
ceremony. The team I work with there, we bring again.
One production coordinator is them. And that, I think,
is what differentiates us. We don't pop everybody that
we can think of on top of an event. If you need just one
person to help you develop the creative, develop the run
of show, call queues or don't call queues, whatever it
happens to be, we fit the right team. And if it's not a
team, it may just be one person to help. You get your
job done. If you want to reach me, there's two ways to
do that. One is get on LinkedIn with me. I have a
LinkedIn profile. A lot of people DM me from that or
from Twitter or X or whatever they call it. This week.
My handle on Twitter is SUP Events, S-U-P Events. And
you can also reach out through our website
fasttrafficevents.com, and we have a contact page on
there.
Speaker C All right, fantastic. So, people, please do reach out to
Frank. Frank, it's been an immense pleasure for me to
have this conversation, to get to know you. Thank you so
much for spending the time to share your story and
listeners and viewers, thank you also for tuning in.
Please like and subscribe to our podcast and we'll catch
you again soon. Frank, thank you so much.
Speaker A Thank you, Christian. Thank you.
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