Kristen Glass Photography
Ben Mathan never necessarily envisioned a career in sports. Safe to say, it’s worked out.
Mathan spent the fledgling part of his career on the private equity side. That included stops at Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley and Tenex Capital. But after a move to Atairos, which purchased Learfield in 2020, Mathan moved to Learfield’s C-suite.
“It was just going to be a six-month thing,” he said of his initial dealings with Learfield. “I was going to help go through some merger analysis between Learfield and IMG College. Fast-forward to today and I’m full time here as the chief strategy officer 4½ years later.”
Mathan now oversees many of Learfield’s key cogs, including ticketing platform Paciolan, athletic department website software company Sidearm Sports, Learfield Studios’ original content team and the technology and data/analytics teams.
Over his brief time at Learfield, Mathan helped lead the strategy for the company’s recapitalization last year, aided in launching Learfield College Rodeo and oversaw a significant growth in the company’s multimedia rights business. Under his leadership, Mathan’s strategy team also developed key partnerships and provided support to Learfield divisions that executed nearly 570 sponsorships integrated with a name, image and likeness component and provided opportunities for student-athlete NIL participation at nearly 100 participating schools.
Mathan, too, has been crucial in helping build out the company’s data operation in recent years, which has continued to become an increasingly crucial focal point.
“We have to be more analytical and thoughtful about what the future of the industry is going to be, and we’ve got a lot to catch up on data and insight [as an industry],” Mathan said. “The biggest thing that I’ve hopefully tried to bring to our company, and I imagine others in my situation in the industry as well, is much stronger commitment to data-informed and data-driven decision-making and data as a way to make decisions for the future.” — Ben Portnoy
Ben Mathan
Chief Strategy Officer, Learfield
Age: 34
Born: New York, N.Y.
Education: New York University, B.A., economics
Family: Spouse, Katie
What my friends/family think I do all day: I think my parents would proudly just describe my job as “business.” My friends would say I work in a hybrid strategy and operations role. They would all probably say I work too much.
Cause supported: Board member of Brooklyn Youth Sports Club.
App I use most: Google Maps. Like many “under 40s,” I have grown embarrassingly reliant on assisted navigation.
First social media platform I signed up for: Myspace.
Social media platform I use/follow most today: Instagram.
Person in sports business I’d most like to meet: Bob Iger.
Most pressing issue facing my generation is … : Social media negatively affecting mental health, personal relationships and and creating polarization.
Back to the Forty Under 40 home page
