Dan Migala: Former Legends Co-President & CRO on Turning Creativity into Commercial Wins in Sport

Interviewed by Linnéa Jungnelius

From first pitch at 7:11 to an 85-foot TaylorMade driver and a record-breaking sell-out at the Women’s Cricket World Cup, Dan Migala has built a career turning imagination into measurable impact. He’s redefining how sports and entertainment leaders create growth by blending creative storytelling, commercial acumen, and cultural insight into a playbook for modern revenue generation.

Dan Migala has never followed a traditional path. He started his career in the low minors making $600 a month. That leap of faith became the first of many moments when he chose curiosity over comfort, a decision that shaped everything that came next.

From there, Migala helped build the Chicago Bears’ first website, authored Selling Sports on the Web, co-founded the global consultancy 4FRONT, and later served as Co-President and Chief Revenue Officer at Legends. Along the way, he’s advised some of the world’s most iconic franchises—the Chicago Bears, Real Madrid, Oklahoma City Thunder, and ICC Cricket—helping them reimagine fan experience, sponsorship, and revenue creation for a digital age.

Today, Migala operates at the intersection of sports, entertainment, and investment, guiding leaders to think like creators, sell like strategists, and operate like owners. His lessons resonate as deeply with private equity investors and commercial officers as they do with team presidents and CROs looking to unlock new forms of value creation.

Art, Heart, Science: Creativity that Compounds

For Migala, commercial success begins where imagination meets rigor. Every great idea, he says, must clear a three-part test:

Art: Is this the most creative concept in the room?
Heart: Does it form an emotional thread between brand, fan, and franchise?
Science: Can we model, measure, and scale the outcome?

This framework has powered some of the most iconic activations in modern sports marketing. The Chicago White Sox’s 7-Eleven partnership turned a simple first pitch time change—from 7:05 to 7:11—into a cultural talking point. Later, Migala transformed a foul pole into an 85-foot TaylorMade driver, generating an estimated $350 million in earned media in just one week.

When creativity, emotion, and data meet, you don't have to sell the idea, it sells itself.

Curiosity as a Leadership Advantage

In 1999, Migala attended the NFL’s first meeting on the “internet.” When no one asked questions, an owner quietly pulled him aside in the hallway to whisper: “What does the E in email stand for?”

Two decades later, Migala sees the same fear around AI—leaders hesitant to admit what they don’t know. The real edge, he argues, belongs to those who create space for curiosity.

The dumbest question is the one nobody asks. Everybody’s thinking it—be the one with the courage to say it.

The best leaders build curiosity channels where people can ask anything without judgment. Humility from the top accelerates learning from the ground up.

Innovation doesn’t start in a brainstorming room, it starts when someone feels safe enough to say, “I don’t get it yet.”

The Blueprint for Demand Creation

When Cricket Australia planned to host the Women’s Cricket World Cup Final at Melbourne Cricket Ground, skeptics said the 86,000 seat venue was too ambitious. Migala reframed the challenge: don’t sell 86,000 tickets, sell 13 audiences of 5,000 each.

When you break it down into audiences and emotion, the impossible becomes inevitable.

His team layered segmentation with cultural relevance, aligning the event with International Women’s Day and booking Katy Perry after discovering her audience over-indexed with key fan groups. The outcome: a record-breaking sell-out, a watershed moment for women’s sport, and a new commercial template built on data-driven storytelling.

Lead Like an Owner: The Me-We-Go Model

Migala’s leadership philosophy is rooted in a principle he learned from the New Zealand All Blacks: Me-We-Go.

Me: Everyone defines their role and contribution.
We: The team aligns on shared goals and dependencies.
Go: Execute with clarity, trust, and speed.

When applied to revenue teams, this structure builds alignment and autonomy simultaneously, turning CROs from department heads into system builders who think like owners.

When Me-We-Go is working, teams move at the speed of trust.

Building the Future of Sports

For Migala, the future of sports isn’t about the next season, it’s about the next system. As sports, technology, real estate, and private capital converge, what used to be a game-day business has become a year-round ecosystem, a platform for commerce, culture, and community.

Everybody wants to be first, and nobody wants to be first. The opportunity belongs to the ones who have the courage to go first and the patience to see it through.

He’s seen it up close: advising team owners and PE investors, shaping global moments like the Women’s Cricket World Cup, and helping leaders make mixed-use developments, digital fan engagement, and data-powered operations the new core. The executives who win will think in 1–3–5 horizons and operate like portfolio builders, connecting fan experience, commercial innovation, and community impact into one integrated model.

The Takeaway for Sports & Entertainment Leaders

Make the idea the asset: Creativity becomes strategy when backed by data.
Foster curiosity: Psychological safety fuels innovation.
Design demand: Segment intelligently and sell emotionally.
Lead like an owner: Align people, process, and purpose to compound growth.
Build for the long game: Connect creativity, culture, and capital to design systems of growth that endure beyond a single season.

Commercial creativity.
Tune in to Episode 28.

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Lightning Round with Dan Migala

	Purpose is...	doing remarkable things with remarkable people.
	Leadership is...	inspiring others to achieve more than they thought they could.
	Success is...	getting together with friends and calling it work.
	Brilliant leaders are...	vulnerable, accountable, and fearless.
	I perform at my best when...	I have the space to be me.