The ROAR Podcast: Mike Carney

Most sports real estate conversations start the same way: the venue anchors the district, and the district delivers the return. Mike Carney is building from the opposite direction.

Mike is the head of On Deck Partners, the minor league baseball platform established inside Avenue Capital Group's sports fund, which came to market in December with its first two club acquisitions in Visalia and Montgomery and has since added Wilmington. He's explicit that On Deck is not a real estate developer. The thesis is that in a small or mid-sized market, the ballpark already functions as the community's central entertainment hub and anything built around it should be designed to reinforce that hub, not compete with it. Residential is the early area of interest, including player housing, a recurring ask from both municipalities and major league affiliates.

Before On Deck, Mike spent ten years with the Washington Nationals, arriving in 2015 from a data engineering and consulting background and eventually leading business operations. He walks Adam through what actually changed on the data side across that decade: a club that started with ticketing data used only to run a ticketing business, a centralized platform MLB built in partnership with Google, and the customer data and marketing automation work that mostly landed post-pandemic. He also gets specific about what worked with fans targeted surprise-and-delight credits, a Kids Eat Free program he's now looking at for the minor league clubs and his read on the trade fans will make: they'll share data when they feel they're getting value back.

The conversation covers the harder parts too. Managing the business through a rebuild with no control over the on-field product. Planning around winning streaks and quiet stretches rather than projected win totals. Zip-tying seats and re-manifesting the ballpark coming out of the shutdown, which Mike names as one of his fondest memories with his team. And on leadership, a position he returns to repeatedly: transparency up and down, and no surprises in either direction.

On AI, Mike draws a sharp line. Because minor league front offices are already running lean, he argues this is a growth play rather than a headcount play — which means AI has to eventually touch fans, and that's exactly where he's slowing down. On Deck is leaning in on internal workflows and creative production, and holding back on anything that puts a non-human between the club and a customer in communities built on relationships.

00:00 Welcome and introductions

00:40 On Deck Partners, and ten years with the Nationals

01:59 NASA, consulting, and the move into sports data

03:57 What data looked like at the Nationals in 2015

06:21 How fans actually want to be marketed to

08:19 Winning on the field vs. working the business side

10:27 COVID: revenue to zero, and the return

12:32 Zip-tying seats and working the concessions register

12:57 Managing the business through a rebuild

15:29 Getting alignment up and down the organization

17:12 Leadership: the decisions get harder

18:58 A decade of change in data and technology

20:42 Leaving the Nationals for On Deck Partners

23:44 Avenue Capital, the sports fund, and the thesis

26:02 Why multi-club ownership changes the math

28:38 The real estate and mixed-use thesis

30:59 Real estate that feeds the ballpark, not the reverse

33:02 Programming mix, residential, and player housing

34:10 Institutional capital in minor league baseball

36:01 AI as a growth play, not a headcount play

38:55 Where On Deck is using AI today

40:31 What AI-powered growth looks like at the ballpark

42:06 Closing thoughts