Selling Sports in the Multiscreen Age: Natasha Sinagoga, SVP Market Sales for Ampersand

00:01 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

Hey there, this is Natasha Sinagoga, senior Vice President, market Sales at Ampersand, and this is the Sports Business Conversations podcast from ADC Partners.

00:25 - Dave Almy (Host)

Hey, this is Dave Almy of ADC Partners, and thanks for swinging by this episode of the Sports Business Conversations podcast. Glad you're here and I hope you enjoy your stay. The rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. That's not me, I mean. That's a quote that's attributed to Mark Twain, who was the subject of one of the first ever celebrity death hoaxes. It was basically his way of saying come on, slow your roll, people. I'm still around, I'm still producing great work. It's a sentiment that Natasha Sinagoga, senior vice president of market sales at Ampersand, can certainly empathize with.

01:01

Sinagoga and Ampersand are on a mission to dispel the exaggerated rumors about the demise of cable TV. The future of sports television, as they see it, is a multi-screen environment with cable TV providers like Comcast, cox and Spectrum resting at the center, and for sports marketers, that produces a unique ability to reach fans wherever they are, no matter how they're watching. In our conversation, we dive into Natasha's diverse career journey that began with aspirations of sportscasting before finding her niche in advertising sales. We review her experience at Ampersand and the company's role in simplifying media buying and targeting audiences in the dynamic landscape of sports viewership. We also touch on common misconceptions about cord cutting and where the overall consumption of television currently sits. The Baseball Junkie will also fill you in on which hot dogs are the very best in all of Major League Baseball.

02:01

So thanks for listening to my conversation with Natasha Sinagoga, senior Vice President of Market Sales at Ampersand. Hope you enjoy. Natasha, this media thing seemed to have been in your blood from the get-go right. You became a media executive right almost out of college, right. You got your start at Fox. You spent some time at Time Warner, cable and Comcast. What drew you to this to begin with, and can you describe sort of your initial roles in the industry?

02:31 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

You know what's interesting is? I actually wanted to get into sports casting. So, what I went to school for. That's what I wanted to do.

02:39 - Dave Almy (Host)

Did you announce like college basketball games and things like that?

02:41 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

I didn't. I was on a national championship dance team for the. University of Minnesota, golden Gophers.

02:49 - Dave Almy (Host)

Go Golden Gophers.

02:50 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

A legacy now 23 plus national championships.

02:55 - Dave Almy (Host)

Holy smokes. You set the tone.

02:57 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

First team to make it to nationals. We did not do well but we were there, and then I was a cheerleader at California State University at Northridge. So I cheered for sports. Yep Go Matadors Olé.

03:12 - Dave Almy (Host)

Olé.

03:13 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

Olé. So I want to be a sportscaster and, what's interesting, in the era of when I went to college that wasn't a popular opinion. It wasn't a popular opinion by adults, people giving you career advice, peers. My parents were very supportive of me following my passion, but I was really discouraged and there weren't a lot of women in sportscasting at that time.

03:35 - Dave Almy (Host)

It was later time then.

03:37 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

Yeah, just a few people. So I got into the next best thing. I got into advertising sales, where we were selling and talking about sports and bringing big games to small advertisers, big advertisers and medium advertisers.

03:52 - Dave Almy (Host)

Did you seek that out? Was it something that was to sort of arrive to you, like it's in media let me see if I can start here and be adjacent or did you get into it and just like oh my God, this is awesome.

04:02 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

Yeah, candidly, I just kind of fell in it. I started as an AE at a newspaper. We sold free employment ads Again before Craigslist, before the internet.

04:13 - Dave Almy (Host)

Like people would pick up the paper and look for a job For the younger people on the podcast listening to the podcast. Right now they're listening and going. There was a time before Craigslist, that was a thing. Exactly. How did that happen?

04:27 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

So I did that and that was you know it was it was. It was a great way to start. I learned a lot of the backbones, I think, of success, of sales Things. Like you know, you have to call a lot of people to make a sale, you have to have some tough skin, you have to find ways to connect with people and, most importantly, you have to have a product that works. Once you get somebody, in the case of the newspaper, they would fill jobs and they would be happy with the results of the newspaper and come back and from there it just kind of fell into, like moving on to Fox and then into cable. So I kind of fell into advertising sales and then, like you said, really fell in love, because selling advertising and selling sports doesn't feel like selling. It feels like helping businesses connect with consumers. It feels like giving consumers content against the big game that's relevant and important to them.

05:12 - Dave Almy (Host)

Can you talk a little bit how you've evolved as a sales leader? If you start selling free newspaper ads, free classifieds, to where you are today, is it the same principles still apply? Have you had to evolve significantly in your own sales as you think about where you are today?

05:33 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

Yeah. So I think I always took the road less traveled, so I always kind of tapped into the new product that other people aren't interested in or the new capability. So I think a funny story is I worked for AOL, time Warner and we acquired so for Time Warner we were acquired, combined with AOL and we had this you know fancy new opportunity to sell banner ads on the internet and you know I really believed in it. I was, you know, younger in my career and using the internet my clients didn't all see the same way I did.

06:07 - Dave Almy (Host)

It's so funny to just think about this as like banner ads being new right. Oh my God.

06:14 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

I'll go off on a little tangent. One of my favorite sales stories is I went to my biggest car dealer and said you can own the AOLcom cars page. I can just have you all over it. And he basically kicked me out of his office saying no one's ever going to buy a car on the internet.

06:29 - Dave Almy (Host)

Never going to happen.

06:31 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

Never. They don't come in with a TV, they don't come in with a computer, they come in with a newspaper and they want to sit in the car and smell it. Fast forward he became, at you know, not long after one of my biggest you know digital. Oh, he became not long after one of my biggest digital banners.

06:46 - Dave Almy (Host)

Oh, he saw the light.

06:47 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

Saw the light, yes, so I think for me it's like I always kind of went on not the easy path, the path less traveled. So, whether it was selling banner ads, I had a stint where I started my own digital app, company data and then it kind of came full circle back to getting like truly in like multi-screen sales leadership.

07:07 - Dave Almy (Host)

So I mean that's about as perfect a segue, I would imagine, into Ampersand to a certain degree as someone who's interested in the new and the different or the maybe less understood. That might apply here, right? So for the last six years you've been leading sales efforts for Ampersand, so can we get some background first on what Ampersand is, Because if you're not in the media industry, if you're not in the sales side of it, you might be less familiar. So for people who are unfamiliar with Ampersand, how do you describe it? And then your role inside it?

07:43 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

Yeah, so Ampersand has been around for 40 years. We were started as a company called NCC Media, which more people know that name, National Cable Communications, and really were stood up as a connector. So truly the name Ampersand, the and connects two things. That's what our company does. So if you think about it, there's 2,200 different syscodes and zones. So zones, there's 210 media DMAs. At a point in time somebody that wanted to put together a media buy could potentially have to call 100 plus people to put that media buy together.

08:16 - Dave Almy (Host)

A bloody nightmare.

08:18 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

Yes, a bloody nightmare. So we really tried to simplify the complex. We really tried to simplify the complex. So, being a one-stop shop back then for cable TV sales, that you would come to ampersand at the time. Ncc Media and what's so fitting is we continue to do that and we've evolved to the fact of now we're the connector of putting back together the viewership. So, whether it's on TV or it's on an app, it's being streamed and also aggregating all the data that we have availability to through our ownership groups.

08:49 - Dave Almy (Host)

Data. We're going to talk about that a lot because this is clearly one of the more important parts of what Ampersand is bringing to the table the ability to understand viewership and metrics and things like that. But I noticed that one of the things about Ampersand that kind of grabbed me is the idea of moving TV forward. It's in the tagline and I think we all fundamentally understand, maybe at a basic level, why that must be the case. But I'm wondering if you can make that point really cogently for me from the standpoint of why. What is it about this moment now or the last 10 years or so that TV needs to be moved forward? What's happened to the landscape and what makes it necessary?

09:33 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

So TV is still a small question.

09:34

I'm sorry, no it's TV, the TV currency that we use, that transacts billions of dollars, has not changed in you know decades.

09:45

t's around age and gender men: 2554

10:01

While we still transact against Nielsen for the majority of our advertising buys, we have the ability to look at audiences so, like in the market for a new truck, owns a home, interested in luxury goods, eats out X amount of times, and are able to take that viewership data and again that ampersand, connect it back to viewership and show you where and how they're watching TV. So at this point in time, the bulk of our business starts with looking at an audience and then transacting it on Nielsen currency. But we're beginning to develop and deploy the ability to actually use viewership data as a currency, both to plan, execute and measure on the backend. So again, you're looking for someone in the market for a new truck. You want to buy a million impressions on TV and across multi-screen. We can show you how to find them, we can run it there and then we can say, hey, you hit it and it's your true advanced audience versus a group of people that maybe aren't interested in your product or service.

11:01 - Dave Almy (Host)

All right. So if you've got to say I don't know a 50, 35 to 55 year old podcast host who needs a new set of headphones, I'm not saying I do, but if anybody wants to send them, that's the kind of thing that you're able to do to be able to drill down into the audience when purchasing is paramount.

11:20 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

Right, and so people make assumptions, right they may your favorite brand of headsets that's hopefully going to be on the way after they hear this. They may make the assumption that everyone's a young blogger right, Like we should be targeting 18 to 25 year olds. That's not the case. Like they should be targeting anyone who has a podcast, anyone who listens to a lot of music, potentially anyone who travels a lot and wants noise canceling headphones. So flipping the script from like just making assumptions on who your consumer is, to spending your dollars efficiently and effectively reaching your actual consumer.

11:52 - Dave Almy (Host)

Now, live sports are obviously a huge part of this. Right, they're an important part of the media environment. I think it counts for something like I don't know like 35, 40% of the ad spend in the US. But the nature of viewership in sports is changing, right People? The second, screening bite-sized content. How does Ampersand take that data that you have and combine that with the changing nature of viewership to make it useful and utilitarian for advertisers today?

12:24 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

Yeah, so 90% of all live sports are available through Ampersand, so have tons, tons of access to content and live sports, but sports are getting harder to buy and to watch, I mean. So I think that's like a two-part question, right? So the consumer experience and then the advertiser experience. So for us there's still the demand to buy live, highly engaged, big audience sports. We also can find sports viewers not when they're watching sports. So what other networks and day parts do they watch and try to follow them to those other areas? And again, that's based on viewership data that we have.

13:03 - Dave Almy (Host)

Right, track them around in their viewing habits.

13:06 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

Yep, and you know they show some of those assumptions we make that a sport might be male dominated, when it's not. I think you know there's all these factors at play. I love to talk about the, like the Taylor Swift effect on the NFL. Like think about dads and daughters and young girls watching football that weren't watching it before and then now it's going to be part of their past time and are going to continue to be fans of it. I also I love things like how Nickelodeon, you know, has has has come up with a second viewing of the NFL with the slime and making it more fun for younger viewers. So I think the biggest thing with sports right now is like how can we be more creative to continue to get a wide, wide group of viewers versus just your traditional? You know we'll call them super fans?

13:52 - Dave Almy (Host)

Do you think that there's a certain chicken and an egg quality here to? When you bring up examples like Nickelodeon and Slime and creating those second broadcasts? Is that the attempt to create new audiences or is it responding to demands from those audiences? I don't even know if that's an answerable question, but it's kind of interesting to sort of play that one out and see how that market evolved.

14:20 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

Yeah, I mean, like you said, I don't know that there's there's probably opinion. This is you and I have an opinion.

14:27 - Dave Almy (Host)

I feel like we're going to, we're going to crack open the beers here. Here's where we, here's where we get deep into it.

14:31 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

Exactly. I feel like with some of it it came from, like wanting additional content and additional people to watch the sport. So they're tapping into like how can I get the family around the TV watching football? Oh, it's more fun for the kids to watch it with the slime factor and the Nickelodeon factor. Or, oh, it's more fun to watch it with the Payton brothers.

14:53 - Dave Almy (Host)

Right.

14:55 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

And then I think from that, I think those people led with it as like another viewing source to drive consumer viewing to another channel, network fandom. We'll say I think we're seeing more now, people probably trying to take that for the other way.

15:10 - Dave Almy (Host)

It's so interesting too, right From this, just from the standpoint, like I think, fans kind of demand, particularly in today's consumer, just watching the game itself sometimes isn't even enough, it's what's the ancillary thing. So here we brought up the Manning brothers. They have that sitting in the living room watching the TV and just sort of making the offhand remarks and the things like that that veer away from the quote unquote traditional announcer, color sideline reporter kind of things. And it does create those additional lines of content that can appeal to different advertisers. Because I'm assuming that from your perspective someone who's going to want to advertise on the traditional game is probably a lot different than someone who's going to advertise on the Nickelodeon game or the Manning cast or something along those lines. So for you it probably expands the advertising portfolio pretty significantly from what you can offer.

16:07 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

Yeah, and we only have a certain amount of breaks. So that's the other thing. When you think about it, it's a high demand program. So this also allows for different outlets, different advertisers.

16:31 - Dave Almy (Host)

I think the biggest thing that we want to tap into is building the viewership back, so tapping into the second screen and having advertisers be on both screens, not just one or the other. But the thought of, like youiser is not just running that traditional 30-second spot but also showing up digitally on the phone slash, tablet, as they're doing their back and forth between the two. So it's a seamless experience for that brand and or advertiser.

16:48

Yes in women's sports for you, because this has clearly been a growth industry for Ampersand. I think it's no surprise. We've had guests on this show who've talked at length about the explosion in popularity in women's sports. How are you experiencing that in Ampersand and how has that changed or shifted the way you go to market with different advertisers?

17:19 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

So I think there's like what's said in the press and then there's a reality.

17:23

So, still a huge inequality of dollars spent on women's sports and this is actually something I'm very passionate about. Going back from, like someone, some people people in my own house might argue that I was a, an athlete, a student athlete, because of women's sports or, again like some of the opinions that people may infer against, like college dance teams. So I'm very passionate about women's sports on the fact that it gets a lot of press, that it's growing rapidly and the dollars are growing rapidly. But when you're growing from pennies at 100%, you're still significantly lower than the male dollars that are coming in. So a lot of brands talk about investment in women's sports and we are seeing more. There definitely is a huge trajectory. You know, depending on the sport, it could be 100% increases, but that's off a small number.

18:11

So I think there's plenty of headroom yes, plenty of headroom, and the viewership's there. I mean, that's the thing that we need to account for is that people are watching women's sports, and women's sports in certain areas are outbeating their male counterparts. So I speak often of this as, like I put out, you know, I guess, a marching order to brands of like how do you build a better strategy around supporting women's sports at any level? So is that stadium sponsorships, tv sponsorships, radio sponsorships, athletic sponsorships, like you name it? But I think we need to do better.

18:47 - Dave Almy (Host)

Do you feel like you're still? You know, I'm, I'm, I'm, john, I have a jaundiced view here. Right being in the industry, we, we do a lot of reading about it and it's like, oh my gosh, look at, women's sports is blowing up. Do you feel like you still are selling that idea to brands, or are they more receptive to the idea that this is a smart investment?

19:06 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

I think some have put it into their strategic plan and they're coming to us saying this is a part of my media mix. I think others were still trying to sell them the value of the viewership and the audience and the loyalty and the value.

19:21 - Dave Almy (Host)

Okay, Well, I mean, that's like the car dealer. No, trust me, this digital thing is going to be huge. Yeah, I'm not so sure. Sometimes you just have early adopters. It's the way it works.

19:33 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

Who would have known then? That's like my soundbite for my whole career.

19:39 - Dave Almy (Host)

It's not a terrible soundbite if we're going to be honest.

19:42 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

Yeah.

19:42 - Dave Almy (Host)

Let's talk about cord cutting. I know it's probably one of your favorite topics, right? Again, same thing, kind of, with women's sports. When you read about it online and in the industry news, it's like everybody's cord cutting, everybody's cord cutting, everybody's cord cutting. You have a different opinion or different insight into this idea, right? I just saw a video you made that you said that this is just not the case, so can you dive into that a little bit and offer some perspective on why this misconception exists?

20:13 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

Yes, so cord cutting is another one of those. Like you, love to see the headline in the news right.

20:19

Nobody has cable, no one has TV. That's false. Actually, people are watching more TV than ever. It's that they're watching it on different ways, different screens, and they're watching it across multiple devices and you know, multiple really like subscriptions. Yeah. So a real life example is this past weekend, to watch our favorite baseball team Every day, my husband had a different device he was streaming it off of and you know what? He has a membership, he has access. He's getting it through that. Yeah, um all, while we still pay our cable bill, because that's the the bulk of what we watch. So it gets a lot of headlines. Yes, people are cutting the cord, right, that is happening like that.

21:03

there is court it's a thing, but the biggest thing is that the cable companies run the pipe into your home. People aren't cutting their broadband.

21:10 - Dave Almy (Host)

No.

21:10 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

They may be moving from cable subscription to broadband and in many cases you're getting access to programming then through your broadband subscription. So we love to say no one has cord cutting. I ask people often how they watch TV and a lot of times people say, oh, I have my mom and dad's password, or oh, I have that. Well, you didn't cut the cord then.

21:33 - Dave Almy (Host)

You're just using someone else's. You're mooching is what you're doing.

21:36 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

I think that's a good question, especially, like you know, for when people say that is like how do you watch TV? So, like David, how do you watch TV? Like how many subscriptions do you have? Can you even count them Like subscriptions do you have? Can you even count them like do you still have?

21:49 - Dave Almy (Host)

cable? Do you have satellite? Weird, you know, natasha. I ask the questions here. I am the podcast host. We are not diving into the enormous number of subscriptions that I have, which is embarrassing, and we're not going to talk about it because I'm now red with shame this podcast has officially gone off the rails I mean I the other day found out I had two Hulu subscriptions.

22:11 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

Who knew?

22:14 - Dave Almy (Host)

There are a bunch of people right now probably nodding going. You two Hulus.

22:18 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

Because you get Hulu free when you have Disney Prime. So I was paying Disney Prime or Disney Plus and for Hulu. So just there's a note for your listeners.

22:28 - Dave Almy (Host)

I mean it's ironic I mean I don't want to sidebar too much of this it's ironic that everybody was talking about, oh, we've bundled all these things into cable and we want to try to simplify it a little bit, and then it just atomized and it just becomes a different form of bundling. All right, so the editorial commentary we don't really need to go into that, but yeah. So basically the answer is yes, is cord cutting a thing? Yes, but nobody's getting rid of their broadband. People are still watching TV. They still have the Sunday afternoons, the NBA playoffs, where they're watching in the traditional fashion that they are, and the data backs it up.

23:08 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

Exactly, and especially when you think of sports. You know sports is watched. The preference is to watch it on a big screen, whether it's in your home or you're at a bar or restaurant, but the smaller screen is used if you can't get access. So you think about sports like in before we would stream it on. I'm holding up my phone, yeah, and you went out to dinner. You would miss the game potentially. Now you see people I mean I've seen people streaming games at weddings, at graduations that you insert it where someone, some, some super fan is like I'm not gonna miss my tigers baseball and I'm not talking about my husband as I wink there's a lot of people being called out on this podcast.

23:49 - Dave Almy (Host)

Your husband's Tiger baseball affection my 300 subscriptions that I probably have. This is a dis-challenging podcast. You wait till we get to the lightning round. Syn sports viewer, your company is extremely data-driven. I feel like and certainly a lot of data backs this up that a sports viewer is probably one of the more attractive populations for advertisers to pursue. What makes that the case from what you've seen? Why is a sports viewer different than a typical viewer and what makes them so compelling to advertisers?

24:35 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

So sports is like a must buy now, like that is, the top of any media mix plan is sports.

24:41 - Dave Almy (Host)

Yeah, it is.

24:42 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

So a couple of things are there. It's watch live, so you're watching it live. You're seeing the commercials. You're engaged. You're not passively watching sports, you're engaged in the game. They're loyalists. So if they're watching, you know, continued the same sports, they're seeing the ads. Their reach and frequency is high, so you're reaching them over and over again in an engaged environment. So that's the best you think about consumer for an advertiser, live Right.

25:08 - Dave Almy (Host)

And paying attention, and paying attention. Yeah, so that being able to translate that and just make sure that the messages that advertisers get across are actually being consumed in their own right. Is there an advice that we have for advertisers, like how they go about reaching the sports viewer? Is that you think about the content that they're trying to produce? Has that changed in any way, shape or form that you've seen over the last 10 years, and what sports viewers are most receptive to?

25:37 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

So you think about the Super Bowl, right, like all the custom commercials that are made at the Super Bowl, and part of the reason that they're memorable is because they've made them specifically. So I think with any sort of creative, you always want to tie it to what your consumer is Like. If it doesn't relate to the person watching it, they're not going to remember it. So the more you can build in let's say, if you're advertising to baseball fans, like some sort of theme around baseball, getting a local celebrity or a local player on there, that is going to tie you back to that fandom and that super fan for them to remember. So creative is extremely important. I do feel like, with budgets being tighter, it's sometimes hard to do custom creative that's tied back to, let's say, a certain audience, and it's more important to have creative that can transcend any sort of advertising you're doing. But if you can do it, it's the most optimal way to connect with that fan and be memorable.

26:31 - Dave Almy (Host)

And it's only going to change to connect with that fan and be memorable. And it's only going to change more with the advent of artificial intelligence and what people can do with video capabilities. In that regard, probably 15 minute turnarounds coming up from new content. It's going to change the industry almost entirely. Speaking of changing the industry almost entirely, particularly as we look at the sports media landscape. Streamers have obviously gotten into sports rights Amazon and the NFL, Apple and Major League Soccer and so on and so forth. So how does Ampersand work within this new sports domain when you have all these alternative entrants into the sports media landscape? Is there added pressure? Sports domain when you have all these alternative entrants into the sports media landscape, Is there added pressure? Is it benefit to just say, hey, this just makes the popularity of the pieces more exciting for the advertisers? How does that respond? How does that hammer an ampersand in this regard?

27:23 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

So I think for us, we still have 90% of all sports. So while the streamers are picking up sports, they're not picking up all of them Now. It's changing In a year if we sat down and. So while the streamers are picking up sports, they're not picking up all of them Now. It's changing in a year. If we sat down and had this conversation, see what that number looked like. It's probably not going to be 90% anymore, but we still have the bulk of all the bulk.

27:39

Oh for yeah. So for Ampersand, we're a one-stop shop. We're here open for business to reach sports enthusiasts, on anything from the NFL, which is our biggest property, down to. You know, we saw in COVID things like you know, gaming, watching gaming pickleball is a new one that we're seeing viewership around. So whether it's the largest tentacle event or it's a niche sport, we can help, I think, for sports fans. You know, going back to the example of three different three weekend series, three different streamers, three different platforms the fans frustrated.

28:15

The fans like where do I find my?

28:16 - Dave Almy (Host)

game. Where do I find the game?

28:19 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

So you know, I think if we talk in a year, if we talk in five years, that there's going to have to be a better consumer experience, because if the consumer is not following the sport, there's no value for the streamer to pay that high ticket item to have the rights. So I actually think the pendulum switched too far, one way of too many people playing in the sports industry, and it's going to have to come back, maybe not as far as it was before, but more in the middle.

28:45 - Dave Almy (Host)

Just writing on my calendar, make an appointment in one year and five years to follow up. Just make sure we have this conversation. So let's look at the five-year window here, because I know I'm going to ask you to get your crystal ball out. So obviously, cable companies have invested and support a lot of what Ampersand is trying to do. What does success look like for the group five years from now? It's close to impossible, given how quickly this landscape changes. But what does success look like here? What are the battles that need to be fought and won for Ampersand to continue to thrive?

29:21 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

So first would be using audience, advanced audiences. So how do we continue to deploy the capabilities and the tactics that we have that allow advertisers to reach an audience, not just a broad group of people?

29:34

Multiscreen so getting more inventory across more screens to build back that audience. So those are the two things we're doing and we're going to continue to do, and we're going to be that solution in five years. What needs to happen, though, from the advertising standpoint, is we have to break down the silos of TV buyers. You have audio buyers, you have out of home buyers, you have streaming buyers, and putting together a can actually build their audience back their true TV audience back on TV and on multi screen through, you know, phones, apps, connected TVs.

30:28 - Dave Almy (Host)

Yeah, buying has to do its own evolution to match what the market is currently doing.

30:33 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

Yes, yeah. So some of it we can do some of it the community needs to do.

30:38 - Dave Almy (Host)

I'm with Natasha Sinagoga. She is the Senior Vice President of Market Sales at Ampersand. Natasha, thanks so much for the time today, but before I let you go, we're going to throw you in the lightning round, as promised. This is, you know the questions you were firing at me earlier. This is where you pay the piper, as it were.

30:57 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

Are you ready? Okay, I think I'm ready.

30:59 - Dave Almy (Host)

You think you're ready, you're not ready.

31:00 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

Do I get to phone a friend?

31:01 - Dave Almy (Host)

e, but not now. Here we go In: 2024

31:16 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

Oh, I think time travel oh. Right, we talked about where I'm going to be in one year and five years. Good answer.

31:23 - Dave Almy (Host)

But would you go forward or backward? You'd go forward.

31:26 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

I'd go forward.

31:29 - Dave Almy (Host)

What amazing successes have I had. All right Time travel, good one. You and I both enjoy skiing. What is your preferred apres ski libation?

31:41 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

Oh well, you see the well. The viewers can't see my office.

31:45 - Dave Almy (Host)

Describe the background because it is as we talked about at the top of this. It is top notch background.

31:52 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

So there's a node to france and champagne. So that would be a pre-ski and I would say that miss synagoga I'm gonna get to europe one year to ski. I have not skied in the in europe yet oh, I'll make a quick, quick recommendation.

32:06 - Dave Almy (Host)

Austria, saint anton went years ago. We'll have a separate chat about it. It's pretty amazing. Um, what is your current major league baseball stadium count and which ones are left to visit?

32:20 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

Uh, this is a fitting question, cause I just checked off Houston, so I have two stadiums left. I have Kansas city, which I will be visiting on June 12th oh, it's getting close, it's getting close and then I have only Seattle left.

32:35 - Dave Almy (Host)

The last stadium you have to visit will be Seattle's Major League of the 30 Major League Baseball stadiums and, ironically, I'm going to be there in Seattle to see a baseball game. You can't do it by proxy, obviously, but that will be it. You will. You will get to Seattle and you have gone to all 30.

32:55 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

All 30, all 30 open ones. So the I will continue to go as new stadiums open.

33:00 - Dave Almy (Host)

All right, so follow-up question best and worst of the bunch so far. Oh, I always feel bad calling any of the bad ones out because it's less enjoyable. Okay, I mean oakland, no, I mean it's a terrible stadium, yampa bay uh, metrodome uh oh the old metrodome, but what about the best?

33:25 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

I mean I love the, the stadiums that you can feel like the history of baseball, so Wrigley Fenway. I love ballparks on the water, so San Francisco, pittsburgh. And then I'm from Minnesota, so I love my twins.

33:41 - Dave Almy (Host)

Got to have the hometown feel there.

33:42 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

Target Field yeah, very good. The best hot dog is Cleveland, though that's another thing.

33:47 - Dave Almy (Host)

The hot dog in Cleveland is the best dog.

33:50 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

Yeah, Sugardale dog.

33:52 - Dave Almy (Host)

Noted. We'll be bringing that up on a future podcast for comparison's sake. Natasha Senagoga, Senior Vice President of Market Sales at Airpersan. Thanks so much for the time today.

34:01 - Natasha Sinagoga (Guest)

Thank you, david, thank you so much.

34:03 - Dave Almy (Host)

Thanks for listening to this episode of the One-on-One Sports Business Conversations podcast. If you enjoyed it, we always appreciate a subscribe, share, comment or like. And don't forget, you can always find past episodes at abcpartnerscom slash podcast. This podcast is written, produced, edited and hosted by Dave Elmey and the music was composed by Scott Holmes.