At a very early age when Kurt Hunzeker started playing sports, his father taught him the lesson that great teammates become great leaders. As I grew up, he continued to add to that foundational advice with three tenets, or leadership-isms, that form my professional core today, said Hunzeker. With everyone you come in contact with, conduct yourself with accountability, civility, and ethics; plan, organize, direct, and control; and set the vision that leads to strategy and that becomes the plan.
Hunzeker has embraced these three tenets as the executive vice president of commercial operations for the National Lacrosse League (NLL), where he is tasked with heading revenue verticals, including brand strategy, marketing, partnership sales, licensing, gaming and data analytics.
In just over a year at the National Lacrosse League, Kurt championed several new, ground-breaking initiatives in line with the NLLs ambition to become The Next Major League. Under Hunzekers leadership with proven experience and bold ideas, the National Lacrosse League established a new short-term and long-term vision to ascend to join the Big 5 (The National Football League, The National Basketball League, The National Hockey League, Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer) pro sports leagues in North America.
Hunzeker was instrumental in NLL UnBOXed, a new grassroots youth participation and fan engagement initiative designed to bring the NLLs fast-paced lacrosse gameplay to more young boys and girls in more communities across North America. Nine new NLL UnBOXed Lacrosse Communities joined the 15 existing NLL teams for the 2024 launch of the multi-tiered campaign.
Kurt is a titan in his industry because of his proven track record of exceptional leadership, vision, passion and influence in the sports industry, said his staff.
Prior to joining the NLL, Hunzeker oversaw business-driving and revenue-generating functions of MLBs restructured player development system and its 120 MiLB teams since 2021, including national commercial sales and partnership activation, marketing and communications, content strategy and creation, media production and multimedia platforms, community relations and fan engagement, ticketing strategy, licensed consumer products, and e-commerce.
He also authored the initial five-year business strategy and activation plan for MiLBs new centralized business fully integrated within MLB and generated the most commercial revenue in MiLBs 122-year history in 2022.
Hunzeker is guided by a vision as a leader. Everything starts with our vision: our long-term strategy, a thoughtful action plan, and an annual budget ladder up to the vision’s overarching goals and objectives. If something doesn’t align with the vision and its cascading activities, then it’s not adopted, he said.
