I was reminiscing with some colleagues about my NBA days and the early days of TMBO when a thought occurred to me. We were focused on ticket sales, customer retention, partnerships and staffing. At that time (2001-05), we were helping restructure the sales departments into more specialized units (ticket plans, group sales and premium sales) and creating customer retention specialists who renewed the ticket plan buyers. Later, this hunter/farmer mentality would be applied to partnership sellers and activators.

We were in the infancy of analytics, which has evolved into true business intelligence, and sharing information between teams was coming into acceptance. In other words, the “octopus” (aka the organization or the franchise) was very simple in its focus: generate money through the traditional sources. In 2026, the octopus has evolved and continues to grow, having in most cases 10 or more arms (revenue streams) that must be managed and developed.

This list of possible arms is a good illustration and starting point for our octopus analogy:

Linear and cable/satellite broadcasts

Domestic partnerships

Ancillary facility-related opportunities

Grassroots initiatives

International revenue opportunities

Licensing and merchandising

This partial list conveys the point that the octopus has many ways of being fed, and the types of food (aka revenue) are growing exponentially and only limited by the vision and needs of the........

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