Here Kavanagh never imagined working in sport, although it always sounded like fun.”I really never thought it would be possible for me,” she says. “I think you must have been in sports or sports management and you had great training.”But in 2018, when the Philadelphia Eagles organization was looking for a new chief marketing officer, “they wanted someone with media DNA,” he says, someone who understood content development, community development and effective use of technology platforms.Kavanagh, who has worked in digital media and branding for a decade and a half, mostly in reality TV,
was finally a good fit: andquot;It’s not so important that the person in the role came from sports, and more importantly, they realized that the nature of the environment in which we worked.”Because of her unusual career in the world of sport, Kavanagh encourages women looking to find a similar role to remain open and flexible.”Not all careers. paths are linear! There are all kinds of doors and paths to your dream job,” he says, adding that he sees more and more directly the benefits of staff with diverse work experience: “Because their backgrounds are different, they can really make an interesting contribution right away. .”.As head of marketing and media,
Kavanagh manages e.g. developing the Eagles brand; monitors original content such as streaming series and podcasts; and maintain the team and digital platforms. She also leads the Community Relations Department responsible for launching Eagles Girls Flag Football. A league dedicated to lowering the barriers to entry for girls soccer.In the spring of 2022, the Eagles started the league with 16 teams and just two years later will return with 92 teams this season. As part of a growing league, Kavanagh and her team are helping to remove another barrier to entry for girls in the sport. According to research, girls without access to sports bras were more likely to drop out of sports or not join a team, so the organization provides free sports bras to all athletes.Below, Kavanagh talks to PEOPLE about the growing soccer league, her advice for young women who want to join the field, and how the sport is actually similar to reality TV.
What does your job actually involve? Sounds like a lot of moving parts.Yes, but they all work together and that’s good. The different groups that I oversee work together to achieve our ultimate goal of growing our fan base and deepening our fan base — not just here in Philadelphia, not just on game day, but around the world.One is the Eagles entertainment team – they comprise all of our content,
production and social activities. So they’re the ones who create the original series that you see on YouTube and that people fall in love with because we bring [the fans] into the team and into the locker room and into the meetings and give them all the access that they. wants feel as connected as possible.I think sometimes people tend to look at sports and see one dimension of it,
which is that the goal of sports teams is to win championships. But the product must protect something other than the endpoints. So your values, your commitment to winning a championship is almost as important.And so whether it’s supporting girls and their athletic endeavors, or taking care of the environment through our Go Green program, or dedicating your efforts to the autism community, all of these things matter because people are not one-dimensional. We are sports fans and our fans, andquot;fill in the blank”.
That’s why we use the opportunity to connect with people around their values and other common interests as much as we do in football; we really want to be as multidimensional as possible.And speaking of [my background] in reality TV, sports is reality TV in a lot of ways, right? It’s about competition. It’s about passion. It’s about creating memories and building connections between generations. It’s entertainment. It’s about relationships and music and fashion and food..
