Saturday Scroll: Keeping the ball rolling

Sher has been around soccer all his life. He played collegiate ball, went pro, then turned to sports marketing and talent management. He’s worked with men’s soccer icons Vinícius Júnior, Mesut Özil, and Pelé. He has the unique perspective of a seasoned athlete–turned–business executive, and has identified a few pain points in the sports management landscape.

• “I feel like we've reached a point where the power of the athlete has never been greater — the opportunity to build something that is truly meaningful, to build an audience and to be able to commercialize beyond the field of play has never been greater,” Sher said.

• “And yet, the ecosystem around talent hasn't evolved in the way that it should. And I think that's particularly acute or obvious in women's sport.”

He helped develop campaigns around Pelé’s legacy in the 2000s, a challenge for the retired Brazilian star in his sixties, which gave Sher “a real appreciation for the power of an individual and what that can do to reach audiences, to engage, to build an entire ecosystem around an individual.”

• Now, he’s taking those learnings to support “marketable female star[s],” which he predicts will be the “single biggest accelerator” in this billion-dollar women’s sports industry. That’s what led Sher to create ONM, a boutique athlete agency focused on making icons out of women athletes.

There are other talent agencies focused on women’s sports, including Deep Blue’s rich portfolio dedicated to the ecosystem and Allyson Felix’s Always Alpha, the first “built exclusively for women’s sports.” But ONM wants to stand out by playing the long game: Sher is planning for an exclusive roster of eight to 10 individuals so he can focus on branding their legacies.

“Fame doesn’t equal influence,” he explained. It’s what athletes do with that fame (and how they package it) that creates long-term opportunity. Athletes who build their success, access, and influence during their playing careers — Sher specifically mentioned tennis stars Serena Williams and Roger Federer and the NBA’s Kevin Durant — are the ones who are “winning longer-term.”

• “They operate in a very different way. They think beyond the moment. They think about building. They think about going beyond renting their name to owning their IP.” And that’s something Sher is helping Ali Riley do, too.

When Sher met Riley, she’d played in five FIFA Women’s World Cups and four Olympics, but he saw even bigger things in her post-playing career. Beyond her soccer skills, he saw someone who was “incredibly charismatic” with “enormous potential in media.” He honed in on her magnetic personality and high soccer IQ, then figured out how to build a public narrative around her persona.

• Then, Riley was shooting and editing videos with her phone. Now, she’s a TV broadcaster, podcast host, LOVB team owner, and Angel City’s commercial and creative partner (not to mention a former GIST correspondent).

• “Being at the end of my career, I thought I should be grabbing at any deal that came my way, but [Sher] had plans that went far beyond a quick buck or my minutes on the field,” Riley told The GIST. “His perspective on the industry and his vision of what’s possible for women’s sports made me believe in myself more than ever.”

Together, Sher said, they’re aiming for “what some of the highest-profile male athletes have created: Their own production companies or their own media businesses, owning their own audiences. That's what we're building.”

Sher emphasizes that everything we’re seeing Riley do now was a “long time in the making”: This was all “drawn up a couple years ago,” and we’re now seeing it come to life. “All these things are by design, and she's only just getting started.”

There are women athletes working hard on marketing themselves, and many have built massive audiences outside of sports based on their hobbies: Think the WNBA’s StudBudz or the PWHL’s Aerin Frankel.

• But Sher notes that often, “there's no one behind the scenes who is building beyond their performances in any given time.” Women athletes’ efforts are compounded when someone brings a business mind to their organic talent on and off the field of play.

• “That's a missed opportunity: [A] missed opportunity for them, [and a] missed opportunity for the entire women's sports ecosystem.” Will ONM take advantage of this opportunity? The sports management world will be watching closely to find out.