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For the love of sport

Ryerson University Magazine spoke to four alumni who are working in sport marketing, media, scouting and community building, about how they landed their dream jobs and the impact of technology.

MARIA PAPADAKIS (Sport Media ’18)
From soccer fan to TV host for the Toronto
Football Club (Toronto FC)

Maria Papadakis grew up playing soccer and watching it every Saturday with her dad. She remembers being in her family’s living room in Aurora, Ont., watching SportsCentre and telling her mom, “Man, I want to do that.” After learning about Ryerson’s Sport Media program at a university fair, she joined its first cohort and in her fourth year landed an internship in media relations with the Toronto FC and saw the team win its first championship. During her internship, Papadakis took the initiative to create online content for their feeder team TFC2, something no other team had done. Today, she is the Toronto FC’s TV and in-stadium host and a junior producer, creating content for the professional soccer club, the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Toronto Raptors, as well as corporate sponsors.

On technology: “Sport teams are always focused on building fan engagement but technology is taking it to another level. I have a show called “Red Alert” that started as a one-video format and was on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. Because people are always on their phones, no one is going to YouTube and watching a three-minute video. This year we moved the show to Instagram Stories. Now we do one video format for YouTube but our live show is posted on Instagram every Tuesday. We use green screens so we can superimpose graphics and have videos playing in the background because people want a lot of content, fast.”

JUSTIN BOBB (Sociology ’12)
From the basketball court to helping kids reach their full potential

Justin Bobb credits his time playing on Ryerson’s varsity men’s basketball team with preparing him to be flexible and agile, and to use time productively. Now, he uses these skills in his work as director of sport programming at MLSE LaunchPad, a living lab piloting new innovations to help youth who face barriers. “Sport gave me the opportunity to build those competencies,” he says. “I was also a part-time student-staff member in the Tri-Mentoring program, doing a lot of community work to provide greater access for non-traditional university participants, primarily young Black males, like myself. This helped me understand Ryerson’s role as a city-builder. Now that I work at a professional sports company, the double bottom line is important for us. We generate revenue through ticket sales for Raptors and Leafs games but the value system of MLSE is equally built on our commitment to community programs as a strategic pillar of our business.”

On technology: “I work in an industry where sitting is the new smoking. We’re using technology to get young people physically active. Scoreboard is a proprietary app we’re piloting that allows users to see their program schedule, do their evaluation surveys, connect with other members and stay on track. We’re using it to quantify what we’ve been hearing anecdotally for years: You become a better leader and better understand the value of teamwork if you play a sport. This tool will help measure for the sport-for-development sector so we can be iterative in building our programs and refining them to make sure we’re getting to the outcomes we’re after.”

JULIO RAMIREZ (TRSM ’15)
From Toronto’s Christie Pits to international scouting for the Toronto Blue Jays
With parents from baseball-loving Venezuela, it was natural for Julio Ramirez to fall in love with the game. As a kid, he played at Christie Pits Park, was offered scholarships to play at the varsity level and ultimately did play on Ryerson’s men’s team during his third year studying marketing and communications. That same year his professor, Cheri Bradish, introduced Ryerson’s sports management program. “That’s when I crystallized I could have a career in sport,” says Ramirez. Bradish would go on to introduce him to Andrew Tinnish, the Blue Jays vice-president of international scouting and now his boss. Today, Ramirez is assistant of international scouting for his favourite baseball team and travels regularly to Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Colombia, Panama and the U.S. to compile information about prospective future players. “I pinch myself every day.”

Summer 2019 / Ryerson University Magazine 23