Xavier Gutierrez, CEO of the Arizona Coyotes and CEO of ImpactX Sports Group (L), and Pedro Guerrero, CEO of Guerrero Media.
Courtesy: Guerrero Media
When the National Hockey League’s Arizona Coyotes sold their Utah franchise last month, the league didn’t just lose an Arizona-based team — it also lost its only active Latino general manager.
Born in Guadalajara, Mexico, Xavier Gutierrez became the Arizona team’s CEO in 2019 after Alex Meruelo, a Cuban-American billionaire, bought the Coyotes a year earlier. Gutierrez was previously a managing director at private equity firm Clearlake Capital Group and knew Meruelo for about a decade before he became the NHL’s first Latino CEO.
It took a Latino owner to hire a Latino CEO, Gutierrez explained in an interview, because Hispanics are not well represented in leadership positions in professional sports.
There are 153 major professional sports franchises in the US and Canada across the NHL, National Football League, National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer.
Gutierrez, who is still technically CEO of the Arizona Coyotes even though the franchise is defunct, says he is the only non-owner Latino CEO. Jorge Mas, co-owner of MLS side Inter Miami CF, who is also CEO, makes two Latino CEOs, according to Gutierrez.
That’s something Gutierrez promises to change. He is part of the founding team behind Latinos in Sports, a platform dedicated to bringing 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 Latinos in Sports.
“The results speak for themselves that you don’t have that leadership today,” Gutierrez said. “Look at the commissioners and their offices that rely on Latino consumers to be the spectators, the ticket buyers, the jersey buyers. I think you have to have Latino talent in those positions. Our goal is just to say, ‘Listen, This it’s not because you’re bad people, that’s not it at all.
Gutierrez and Pedro Antonio Guerrero, the CEO of executive development company Guerrero Media, introduced Latinos in sports at an event in Miami last week.
Vianni Lubus, head of audience and engagement at Guerrero Media, and Mike Valdes-Fauli, managing director at Chemistry Cultura, a digital advertising agency focused on Latinos in the US, also join the platform.
The four executives share a goal of increasing US Hispanic representation in leadership positions in sports. José Feliciano, the co-founder of Clearlake Capital and co-owner of the Premier League’s Chelsea Football Club, also spoke at last week’s Miami event to promote more Latino ownership in sports.
José E. Feliciano speaks on stage during the 2021 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Ripple of Hope Award Gala in New York on December 9, 2021.
Slaven Vlasic | Getty Images
“My fervent hope is that we make more progress on the property front,” Feliciano said. “Decision makers in places of influence are beginning to recognize that Latinos can and should be owners in every sense of the word.”
The goal of Latinos in Sports is to be the ideal place to foster a culture of Hispanic advancement in the sports industry, Gutierrez said. Executives hope to turn the platform into a business focused on investing in startups founded by Hispanics, conducting research on U.S. Hispanic trends and bringing Latino and non-Latino sports leaders together for networking.
“You do business with people you know,” Gutierrez said. “It will truly be a place for commerce, for talent acquisition, for conversation, data and knowledge.”
The organization also hopes to push Latino sports executives to make more informed decisions about appealing to Latino audiences.
Warner Bros. Discovery debuted an alternate broadcast during last year’s MLB playoffs called “Peloteros,” which featured former and current Latino baseball players speaking to a Spanish-speaking audience. The broadcast had to be in English because Warner Bros. Discovery does not have the rights to broadcast in the Spanish language.
Having more Latino executives making content decisions can help attract audiences that have been largely ignored, said Luis Silberwasser, chairman and CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery Sports.
“It was a good example of what we’re trying to do in terms of diversifying content,” Silberwasser said. “You need diversity of voice in the production team to pull that off.”
It’s important for Latinos in sports to connect Latinos with non-Latinos, Gutierrez said, because non-Latinos are overwhelmingly in leadership positions today.
The event’s next event will be at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York in September during the US Open tennis tournament. Gutierrez and Guerrero chose this event specifically because it traditionally appeals to white Americans.
“It’s important to have non-Latino decision makers in the room,” Gutierrez said.
“Latinos need to connect with each other to create partnerships like this in an effort to fix our table,” Guerrero said. “At the end of the day, it’s the priority of many Latinos in positions of power like Xavier. [Gutierrez]. The key for us is to increase our population size.”