NHL executive and other Latino executives discover Latinos on sports platforms | Wilnesh News

When the National Hockey League’s Arizona Coyotes sold their franchise to Utah last month, the league not only lost an Arizona-based team but also its only active Latino executive.

Xavier Gutierrez was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, and became an Arizona player in 2019 after Cuban-American billionaire Alex Meruelo purchased the Coyotes a year ago. Team CEO. Gutierrez, who previously served as a managing director at private equity firm Clearlake Capital Group, knew Meruelo for about a decade before becoming the NHL’s first Latino executive.

Gutierrez explained in an interview that only Latino owners hire Latino CEOs because Latinos are not overrepresented in leadership positions in professional sports.

There are 153 major professional sports teams in the United States and Canada, including the NHL, National Football League, National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer.

Gutierrez is still technically the CEO of the Arizona Coyotes, although the team is no longer active, but he said he is the only Latino CEO who is not an owner. Gutierrez said Jorge Mas, co-owner and CEO of Major League Soccer’s Inter Miami FC, is the equivalent of two Latino CEOs.

Gutierrez vowed to change that. He is a member of the founding team of Latinos in Sports, which brings together Latinos and non-Latinos in professional sports, media and marketing to showcase Latino talent in leadership positions. CNBC is the official media partner of Latino Movement.

“The results speak for themselves, you didn’t have that leadership today,” Gutierrez said. “You look at the commissioners and their offices and they rely on Latino consumers as spectators, as ticket buyers, as jersey buyers. I think you need to have Latino talent in those seats and the goal is just to say, ‘Listen, it’s not because you’re a bad person, it’s not at all because you haven’t met those people who exist.

Gutierrez and Pedro Antonio Guerrero, CEO of executive advancement firm Guerrero Media, spoke about Latino sports at an event in Miami last week.

Vianni Lubus, head of audience and engagement at Guerrero Media, and Mike Valdes-Fauli, chief operating officer at Chemistry Cultura, a digital advertising agency focused on U.S. Latinos, are also involved in the platform.

The four executives share the goal of increasing U.S. Hispanic representation in leadership roles in sports. José Feliciano, co-founder of Clearlake Capital and co-owner of Premier League Chelsea Football Club, also spoke at last week’s Miami event to promote more Latino participation in sports.

“I fervently hope we make more progress on the ownership front,” Feliciano said. “Influential policymakers are beginning to recognize that Latinos can and should be owners in every sense of the word.”

Gutierrez said Latino Sports’ goal is to be the premier place to foster a progressive culture in the Latino sports industry. Executives hope to transform the platform into a business focused on investing in Latino-founded startups, conducting research on U.S. Hispanic trends and bringing together Hispanic and non-Hispanic sports leaders for networking.

“You do business with people you know,” Gutierrez said. “This is really going to be a place for business, talent acquisition, conversation, data and insights.”

The organization also hopes to push Latino sports executives to make smarter decisions about reaching Latino audiences.

Warner Bros. Discovery An alternative broadcast called “Peloteros,” in which former and current Latino baseball players address Hispanic audiences, debuted during last year’s MLB playoffs. The broadcast must be in English because Warner Bros. Discovery Channel does not have Spanish-language broadcast rights.

Luis Silberwasser, chairman and chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery Sports, said having more Latino executives making content decisions could help reach a largely ignored audience.

“This is a great example of our efforts to diversify our content,” Silberwasser said. “The production team needed a diversity of voices to come up with this.”

Gutierrez said it’s critical for the Latino sports community to connect Latinos with non-Latinos because non-Latinos hold the vast majority of leadership positions today.

The organization’s next event will be held at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, during the U.S. Open in September. Gutierrez and Guerrero specifically chose this activity because of its traditional appeal to white Americans.

“It’s important to engage non-Latino decision-makers,” Gutierrez said.

“Latinos need to connect with each other and build partnerships like this in an effort to build our table,” Guerrero said. “Ultimately, that’s the priority for a lot of Latinos who are in power like Xavier (Gutierrez) mission. The key for us is to increase population size.”