Best of The ROAR Podcast: Mike Carney

No new episode this week. We’re bringing back a conversation worth a second listen.

Almost every sports real estate conversation starts from the same premise: the venue anchors the district, and the district delivers the return. Mike Carney builds from the opposite direction — and that inversion is why this episode keeps coming back up for us.

Mike leads On Deck Partners, the minor league baseball platform established inside Avenue Capital Group’s sports fund, which came to market with club acquisitions in Visalia and Montgomery and has since added Wilmington. He’s direct with Adam about what 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 reinforce that hub rather than compete with it. The return comes from attendance and engagement, not the ground lease. 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 through what actually changed across that decade: a club that began 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 largely landed post-pandemic. He’s specific about what worked with fans — targeted surprise-and-delight credits, a Kids Eat Free program he’s now eyeing for the minor league clubs — and clear about the trade: fans will share data when they feel they’re getting value back.

The harder material holds up too. Running a business through a rebuild with no control over the on-field product. Planning around winning streaks and quiet stretches instead of 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, the line he returns to: transparency up and down, and no surprises in either direction.

On AI, he draws a boundary that’s worth revisiting now. Because minor league front offices already run lean, he argues this is a growth play rather than a headcount play — which means AI eventually has to touch fans, and that’s precisely where he slows 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.

Adam and Caroline are back next week with a new episode.

00:00 Best Of introduction

00:45 Welcome and introductions

01:25 On Deck Partners, and ten years with the Nationals

02:44 NASA, consulting, and the move into sports data

04:42 What data looked like at the Nationals in 2015

07:06 How fans actually want to be marketed to

09:04 Winning on the field vs. working the business side

11:12 COVID: revenue to zero, and the return

13:17 Zip-tying seats and working the concessions register

13:42 Managing the business through a rebuild

16:14 Getting alignment up and down the organization

17:57 Leadership: the decisions get harder

19:43 A decade of change in data and technology

21:27 Leaving the Nationals for On Deck Partners

24:29 Avenue Capital, the sports fund, and the thesis

26:47 Why multi-club ownership changes the math

29:23 The real estate and mixed-use thesis

31:44 Real estate that feeds the ballpark, not the reverse

33:47 Programming mix, residential, and player housing

34:55 Institutional capital in minor league baseball

36:46 AI as a growth play, not a headcount play

39:40 Where On Deck is using AI today

41:16 What AI-powered growth looks like at the ballpark

42:51 Closing thoughts