NFL agent Leigh Steinberg talks Las Vegas, business of sport

It happened more than 21 years ago, but veteran NFL agent Leigh Steinberg still remembers it quite vividly.

“I was at the Las Vegas airport coming in and someone ran up and said, ‘Show me the money,’” Steinberg said with a laugh. “That never stops.”

Probably never will.

Steinberg was the inspiration for “Jerry Maguire” and is thereby associated with the 1996 film’s iconic line to this day. He returned last week to Las Vegas to speak at the Powerteam Success Summit, sharing some of the lessons he learned while negotiating more than $4 billion worth of contracts over the course of five decades.

The 72-year-old spoke with the Review-Journal about how the business of sport has evolved and how Las Vegas has evolved into a mecca of sport.

Answers have been edited for length and clarity.

RJ: You’re a legend in this business. How do you feel your profession has evolved during your career?

Steinberg: The amount of sports programming is exponentially larger. That NFL team that made $2 million from their national television contract in 1975 is now making $200 million. You have this massive source of revenue that revolutionizes everything.

Then you have the building of new stadiums, arenas that have all these ancillary revenue streams. Luxury boxes and premium seating and jumbo scoreboards and sponsorships and naming rights.

Then you have the development of new ways to have fans interact more closely with sport, so we have the development of fantasy sports with 40 million people playing fantasy football.

And then, of course, gambling. So if Rip Van Winkle had gone to sleep when I started back in 1975 with Steve Bartkowski as the first pick overall, he’d been in culture shock if he awakened today.

RJ: With that in mind, how have you adapted in your work with your clients?

Steinberg: The first thing to think about is the advent of social media and the fact that athletes can control directly their own message. The standard of judging athletic popularity is how many followers they have on Twitter and Instagram. You have athletes producing their own content.

It’s both an opportunity for revenue generation and higher profile, but there’s also risk that the universality of any message, if it’s negative or not right, can tarnish an athlete’s image.

We continue to push the concept of athletic role modeling. It can also be messaging. I worked with the heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis in boxing, and he cut a public service announcement that said “Real men don’t hit women.” That can do more to change rebellious adolescent feelings toward domestic violence than 1,000 authority figures ever could.

RJ: In 2021, it feels like athletes have more agency over their careers than ever before. How has that affected the business?

Steinberg: I think it’s more basketball and baseball because of the way their free agency operates. Free agency allows them the ability to be the shoppers for the ideal opportunity.

Football free agency has never worked that way. The most invaluable players in those sports are signed long term and are never allowed to come close to the end of their contracts. They have always had the internal power.

You look at Russell Wilson. He’s always had the power to talk to his coach or general manager. They’d be foolish not to take into account what their critical players say. They’ve always had the power to talk about personnel or scheme. But the best way to get traded or to enhance a situation is to not say anything publicly.

Behind the scenes, players can do things in football but not in the overt way that happens in the other sports.

RJ: With you returning to Las Vegas, what do you make of the city as a pro sports market?

Steinberg: Vegas has come of age. What people who come here for vacation don’t realize is there’s a massive local population and residence. If you’d try to convince somebody that ice hockey in the desert was a good bet, they might have laughed. But the Golden Knights have been one of the best marketed teams in the history of sports marketing, and this community has embraced them.

Now, all of a sudden, there’s a brand new stadium and a football team. The truth of the matter is, Las Vegas has morphed from being a tourist destination to being a center of sports in America. It’s going to continue to expand. I have no doubt there will eventually be a baseball team here and an NBA franchise.

This has always been a glamour city, but it now has a whole set of teams for the residents who have made this their home. I think it just gets more and more vibrant and exciting.

RJ: What do you think this market does specifically for the NFL when fans can attend games?

Steinberg: I think that it’ll be an immense profit center. Here, like Los Angeles, people will vie for the most expensive and quality ways of seeing games. They’ll have no problem selling out luxury boxes and suites.

As the pandemic eases up, there already was a packed arena for the Knights, but there will be a packed stadium for the Raiders. It adds a major metropolitan area that has enthusiastic sports fans.

Contact reporter Sam Gordon at sgordon@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BySamGordon on Twitter.