HIRING SPREE
This week, we're looking at how front offices across women's sports are scaling at a pace that makes great hires a near-daily occurrence and how their data infrastructure has to keep up.
We're also gearing up for NACDA in Las Vegas next month and would love to grab a coffee with you while there. Also, check out the Monitoring Dashboard highlight and see how easy it is to monitor your data feeds with Equipe.
- Aaron
🏀 FRONT OFFICE BOOM
WNBA HIRING NEEDS INFRASTRUCTURE TO MATCH
The WNBA enters its 30th season with star players newly minted as millionaires, team valuations at record highs, and a long-term media rights deal locked in. None of which would matter much if the front offices couldn't keep up.
Per Sportico's reporting, the Las Vegas Aces and Atlanta Dream have both gone from seven full-time staff in 2021 to 70 and 65 today, respectively. The New York Liberty grew from 12 staffers in 2019 to more than 30 by 2021, and they're still hiring, including a newly created vice president of commercial development for Ellie, their popular elephant mascot. Seattle Storm co-owner Lisa Brummel told Sportico the team brought on two full-time recruiters two years ago because, as she put it, the volume of applicants is off the charts.
STEPPING STONE NO MORE
Front office work in the W has flipped from a launching pad into a destination. New York Liberty CEO Keia Clarke told Sportico, "I have four people on my staff alone who came from the NFL, who literally said, 'I want to work for the Liberty.'" Chicago Sky president and CEO Adam Fox observed that today's applicants come ready with specific skill sets, a shift from the days when "I just love basketball" was the dominant cover letter.
This rapid growth comes with friction. Clarke described salary calibration as a jigsaw puzzle, balancing New York's cost of living, regional sports competition, and pay parity with the Brooklyn Nets, all while WNBA player salaries climb under the new CBA. Standardizing basketball ops staffing was a point of emphasis in CBA negotiations, according to Sky veteran Elizabeth Williams, who said the league's medical and performance staffing today bears no resemblance to what existed when she came into the league in 2015.
OUR POV: HIRING IS HALF THE JOB
Doubling your headcount in three years is one thing. Activating that talent is another. When a Liberty marketer needs to know which Brooklyn season ticket holders also bought Ellie merch, or when a Dream marketer wants to find Atlanta fans who attended at least four home games, the answer should arrive in minutes. In most rapidly scaling front offices, it takes days. Sometimes weeks. Sometimes a CSV pulled from one system gets cross-referenced against another CSV from a different system, and by the time the answer arrives, the campaign window has already closed.
That gap between the talent in the building and the data they can actually access is where the real bottleneck lives. The franchises that turn the W's hiring boom into a competitive advantage will be the ones whose data infrastructure scales as fast as their org chart.
The W is the most visible version of this story, but it's hardly alone. NWSL franchises, MLS expansion clubs, and PWHL teams are running the same playbook, hiring fast and figuring out the systems on the fly. The teams that get to a well-oiled machine first will be the ones whose new hires walk in on day one and find the data already waiting for them.
💡 PRODUCT HIGHLIGHT
THE MONITORING DASHBOARD
The Monitoring Dashboard is the central view for operational health across Equipe.
Surface status and failure signals for scheduled queries, post-processing, segment refreshes, and upload workflows, so you can quickly see when something is broken, delayed, or failing.
- Scheduled queries: shows execution status and alerts on failures or broken jobs.
- Post-processing: track collection-level counts like PROCESSING and FAILED.
- Segments and upload workflows: highlights failed refreshes and workflow states such as broken, failed, canceled, or paused.
Anytime you need a fast "is everything running?" your data team can give you an instant check. Empower your data team while keeping the behind-the-scenes out of view of day-to-day users with permissions.
Common use cases include spotting a stuck query chain before it impacts reporting, finding failed post-processing records that need repair, catching automatic segment refresh errors before audiences go stale, and reviewing workflow health during data ingestion.
Easily monitor the situation, with Equipe.
🏢 FROM EQUIPE HQ
WE'RE GOING TO NACDA
Equipe is heading to NACDA, June 7–10 at Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.
Nick Benson, Sajan Gutta, Aaron Glidden, and Cameron Korb will be on the ground in Las Vegas and would love to connect with anyone who's thinking about what better data infrastructure could mean for their program.
Space is filling up quick. Please reach out soon if you're interested in a free 30-minute data conversation over some coffee while at NACDA.
Reach out to us directly if you're interested!
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🗞️ WHAT ELSE WE'RE READING
TRAVEL, TED, T-SHIRTS
Three stories caught our attention last week: smaller Texas programs forced to recalibrate as Spirit shuts down and Southwest sheds its budget perks, sports as part of Ted Turner's legacy, and a women's-sports investment firm building a custom retail stack for the Atlanta Dream.
