Alumna Seeks Lion’s Share of Fans Worldwide for Detroit
The gridiron heroes of Michigan’s favorite professional football team didn’t reach the Super Bowl as they had hoped this year, but a Kalamazoo College alumna will remain a key figure in helping the franchise improve its National Football League standing in the offseason and beyond.
Amanda Moss ’19 is the head of international strategy for the Detroit Lions. As such, she uses business analytics and research to calculate where the team might have international appeal to grow its fanbase in the NFL’s Global Markets Program. By better informing the Lions’ business decisions, she creates actionable insights so the franchise can market itself abroad, thereby making it more popular around the world.
The NFL initiated its Global Markets Program in 2022, and the Lions have been a part of it for less than a year. In that short period of time, however, Moss’ research has found opportunities for the Lions in countries including Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Canada.
“My boss and I had been working continually on market research to evaluate a large portion of the countries in the world—potential markets that we think we’d be a good fit for,” Moss said. “We pulled together a number of metrics spanning from macroeconomic factors like gross domestic product, population growth rates, tourism rates, and trade with the state of Michigan and the city of Detroit. We ended up building a model that spit out a Lions Global Markets Program score for each of the countries, allowing us to rank each of the countries based off the things we prioritized. Once we got their scores, we looked at the top 20 to 30 countries and started giving a more qualitative analysis.”
Take Germany, for example.
“Amon-Ra St. Brown is a star wide receiver for us, and his mother is German,” Moss said. “He fluently speaks German so he provided a very natural tie for us. Also, the automotive industry has ties between Germany and Detroit, not only with car manufacturers, but also parts suppliers. There were cultural overlaps, too. Within Germany, there’s a history of grittiness and a blue-collar class that Detroit has seen. And there’s a fun similarity as some say Detroit is the birthplace for techno music in the U.S., and Berlin is the birthplace for techno music in Europe.”
That’s not to say that other teams won’t also target some of the countries the Lions are. In fact, Moss said, Germany has 10 teams interested in it, tied with Mexico for the most in the league. However, as the Lions charge beyond the borders of Michigan and the U.S., “My No. 1 priority definitely is to expand the fanbase abroad in all of those markets I listed,” she said. “In the long term, I also want to form commercial partnerships that will drive revenue for the Lions abroad.”
Moss has been developing a career in the sports industry since she was a teenager. At 15, while staying with her dad in the Detroit suburb of Huntington Woods, she was shooting hoops in a gym she visited often when she met a man who asked her to leave because he had the gym reserved for an event. Upon agreeing, she started packing up her bag, but noticed he was setting up for the event by himself. As a result, she offered her assistance.
“He took me up on the offer, so I helped him set up some tables and chairs,” Moss said. “And then he told me that one of his staff members bailed out at the last second, so I offered to help out because it was a basketball tournament. I offered to keep the score. I had nothing better to do. Then at the end of the day, we were cleaning up and he formally introduced himself as the director of fan development for the Detroit Pistons.”
That chance interaction connected Moss with the Pistons’ basketball camps for the next four years, an internship with the NBA team during the summer after her sophomore year at K, and an internship at the NBA league office as a junior. She also played women’s basketball and lacrosse at K and co-founded the Sports Business Club, a student organization that connects students with alumni in the field.
The stars were aligning with her love of basketball and career ambitions—or so it seemed. When Moss began applying for jobs during her senior year at K, both the NFL and NBA had recent-college-graduate programs that connected young professionals with opportunities on the business side of sports. She applied to both, and the NFL accepted her into its program first.
Moss was grateful for her opportunities that stretched across multiple departments in the league, starting with its International Media Group and finishing in the Data & Analytics and Corporate Strategy Group.
“The last group is when I started diving into the data and analytics realm,” Moss said. “They’re focused first on supporting all 32 NFL teams from a data standpoint. They also supported different departments internally at the league office, helping the sponsorship team, for example, build models to assign dollar values to different assets that the league sells for sponsorship purposes like the Super Bowl halftime show.”
Eventually, Moss decided New York was too far from home to continue working for the NFL. That prompted a return to Michigan, where she temporarily moved away from sports to work with Google in Ann Arbor, and Dapper Labs, which then was the official nonfungible token (NFT) licenser for the NFL and NBA.
Still, she desired a return to the sports industry. That’s when she saw the Lions posted an available role in its business strategy and analytics department.
“When I was at the NFL, I had met the Lions’ VP of business strategy and analytics because the league works with so many different people across all 32 NFL teams,” Moss said. “I reached out to my contact, and the rest is history. I interviewed and got the role, and I’ve been with the Lions now for three seasons. I started in 2022 when the team started 1-6 and ended just above .500. I work on the business side, but the team’s success on the field since has made an impact for us.”
When it comes to building and advancing a career in the sports industry, Moss has advice to offer K students.
“No. 1, I would advise that students find passion projects,” Moss said. “In other words, take the initiative to find some of the many resources that are free to learn new technical skills, and understand different teams and their marketing strategies. It sounds really simple, but go to a team’s Instagram and pick up on their strategies.”
While K doesn’t have a traditional sports management program among its academic offerings, Moss notes that there are plenty of other ways to make connections and gain experience.
“K is such a small school that you can work in the athletics department. Help market some of the programs that are less attended and analyze some of the playing data the teams generate. And always try to network. K alums are so responsive; reach out and set up coffee chats. I also searched on LinkedIn for people that worked in the sports industry who graduated from MIAA schools. Just find some sort of commonality or similar overlap when you reach out and make a good connection to find your way.”