It’s been an incredible career for famed agent Leigh Steinberg.
Steinberg began his career in this realm in 1974, representing quarterback Steve Bartkowski (who was on the floor of the UC-Berkeley dorms where Steinberg worked as a resident assistant and who went on to become the No. 1 pick in the 1975 NFL Draft). Since then, he’s represented everyone from Warren Moon to Patrick Mahomes, has often been cited as a key inspiration for the titular Tom Cruise character in Cameron Crowe’s 1996 film Jerry Maguire (where he served as a consultant), and has established himself as a prominent speaker and author as well.
A lot has changed for Steinberg and the business of athlete representation over those decades. He reflected on that in a recent interview with Awful Announcing, saying the current state of the sports world was unimaginable to him when he first started.
“If Rip Van Winkle had gone to sleep back in 1975 when I started with my first client, Steve Bartkowski, and he awoke today, he’d be in total cultural shock,” Steinberg said. “There was no internet. There were no cell phones. None of those things existed when I started. The whole way in which information is shared and passed on has dramatically changed from a world where it was, you know, a daily newspaper and network TV to what we see now when you turn on the TV dial and to where the information flows through the cloud.
“It’s completely different, and today’s athletes are so tech-savvy. And now you have NIL, which means that a 15-year-old high school quarterback wants to market themself and hire a marketing agent. And just in the last years, the introduction of gambling into sports, the conference realignment, which destroys all the traditional rivalries, it’s a completely changed tableau.”
One thing that hasn’t changed as much over all those years is Steinberg’s annual Super Bowl party, though. That party has been running for almost 40 years, and will take place at the historic New Orleans Jazz Museum this Saturday. Steinberg said he launched the party to connect athletes with key figures in sports, business, politics, and health while also promoting charitable efforts.
“It became clear that the Super Bowl had transcended just being another sports event but became a convention of Americana, so a meeting place for big business, politics, sports, and the rest. I thought there was a place for a daytime party, which wasn’t overcrowded and dark and noisy and boozy, to accomplish a number of goals. One was to bring our players, former players, executives in sports together, political figures. But the other was to have a charitable platform.”
On the connection front, part of that is getting athletes looking to work in the media space connected to media and tech executives and potential sponsors. And Steinberg said that’s become even more important in this era.
From one-off endorsements to long-running brand partnerships to creating their own podcasts and shows to working for traditional media companies, either before or after their playing careers, there are a lot of content opportunities for sports figures now that didn’t exist when Steinberg started as an agent. And he said he discusses the idea of media work with new clients right at the start of working with them.
“You take a young athlete, you start about the topic of second career from the very beginning. You talk about the concept of ‘What are the skills and talents you have?’ The currency today for marketability becomes ‘How many followers do you have on TikTok and multiple platforms?'”
Steinberg said that connecting with figures in the media space is important for athletes’ media goals beyond raw follower metrics, and his party can help facilitate that.
“Having interaction with people who run those platforms, whether it’s broadcast TV or or the internet, can be really critical for any type of plans. It’s the currency of marketability now. And this generation of athletes are so much more tuned in on how to brand themselves, how to create content. And it’s the athletes who share concepts about their lifestyle or about the games themselves that tend to be more popular.”
Steinberg said that in addition to driving those connections, the party has evolved to add even more of the charity component he envisioned. That component involves different partners each time, including Champions for the Homeless in the past and the National Urban League this year. The party also presents the Steinberg DiNicola Humanitarian Awards and holds a brain health summit to discuss concussions.
“Two years ago, we raised money for the homeless. This year will be the National Urban League and putting families into the first home they’ll ever own. We give out humanitarian awards to a owner, a general manager or director of player personnel, a retired player, for philanthropic things they’ve done off the field. We have a brain health summit that talks about the issue of concussions. So there are a lot of different fun modalities and we can entertain people, but at the same time educate them.”
Concussions and their long-term effects are a huge issue around football in particular. On that front, this year will mark the 12th time Steinberg’s party has held a brain health summit. That’s part of a long-running partnership with Dr. Nicole F. Roberts, author and founder of health care and human rights-focused advising firm Health & Human Rights Strategies, who will lead the summit and has written about the NFL and concussions as part of her health coverage at Forbes. Steinberg said those conversations around concussions are vital to have, both for athletes and for the wider public, and he’s recently launched a concussion foundation to further help with awareness and research.
“Any collision sport is going to have concussions. And we found that three or more concussions occasion an exponentially higher risk of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, premature senility, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and depression. So it’s important to bring awareness to contemporary athletes and to the general public about prevention, awareness, and cure.
“And so we explore. It turns out right now that the concept of neuroplasticity means that somebody who suffered multiple concussions can actually have their brain in essence, rewired, to recover and not have the cognitive problems. It’s neurofeedback, a process called TMS. And we think it’s important that athletes understand that and that the general public does. So I’ve just formed a concussion foundation which will deal with each of those areas, raise money for research, and then help at-risk kids that suffer them.”
Steinberg said he emphasizes the importance of charity and giving back to the athletes he works with as well.
“I think that sports, and athletes particularly, serve as role models and they can model the concept of being involved in the community. So I ask each of the athletes to go back to the high school community and set up a scholarship fund of some sort, or work with the church, or the Boys and Girls Clubs.
“We just think it’s important, if they go to the pro level, to set up a charitable foundation. It’s the power of football: 130 million people watch the Super Bowl, more than 70 of the top 100 shows last year were NFL football. So it gives you a powerful platform to do good and make a difference in the world.”
And Steinberg said that the concept of using sports for good is why he’s still passionate about working in the sports field at the age of 75.
“It’s exciting to try to make a difference in the world. And I love sports. So there are two real aspects: one is making a difference in the lives of clients, stimulating the best of them, and then seeing together how we can tackle every problem in the world. Whether it’s domestic violence or sex trafficking or the environment or racism, all of them can be addressed through the field of sports.”
