Success seems to follow Jason Booker. In 2014, when he left the athletics department at his alma mater — the University of Kansas — for a front office position with the Kansas City Royals, his favorite team growing up went to the World Series for the first time in nearly three decades, then won it in five games the following year. Upon returning to Lawrence in 2021, the Jayhawks promptly won the 2022 NCAA men’s basketball championship. These are dream scenarios for someone whose job it is to generate revenue, which has been Booker’s charge since 2000, with stops at Wichita State, Texas Christian, Oklahoma and South Carolina along the way. And while making money may not be the goal in opening KU’s athletics facilities to the Algerian national soccer team during the 2026 World Cup this summer, Booker has been heavily involved in that mission, too — and for years. AB senior editor Paul Steinbach spoke with the Jayhawks’ deputy athletics director for external affairs and revenue generation March 2 about preparing for World Cup visitors, as well as bringing a professional sports mindset to back Kansas, which is currently in the middle of its phased Gateway District facilities project.
What does creating a home for the Algerian entourage actually entail for you and others at Kansas?
We have a working group with our city leaders — everyone from police, fire and medical to our city manager and Explore Lawrence, which is our tourism group here — and we have a two-hour call every other Friday to make sure that we’re planning for everything that could come at us this summer. We’re excited. It’s been probably five years in the making, back to when the United States, Canada and Mexico — North America — got the bid. Then we started having visits from FIFA about two and a half, three years ago, just to kind of pre-approve the facility and the pitch, by sort of putting themselves in a team’s shoes. Does this meet FIFA standards? And then a little over a year ago, we started getting some visits from countries just kind of checking things out, people who knew that they were going to qualify or had already qualified, trying to get a head start on what base camp opportunities they were really interested in. Definitely a lot of work, a lot of people behind the scenes, putting in time and effort to make it a reality.
How long have you been holding the every-other-Friday meetings?
It’s been over a year, and that was in anticipation, whether we were going to get a base camp team or not, because there was a chance we weren’t. But being in the Kansas City region, we knew that it was going to impact Lawrence regardless. So, it was just preparing city officials to understand all the things that they needed, to make sure the infrastructure was here to put our best foot forward.
How many different countries visited Lawrence?
We had a total of seven. Typically they would come and visit Kansas City, because there are three other base camp sites in Kansas City, plus us, so they would just come and hit all of the Kansas City area base camps.
What are the other base camps?
Sporting Kansas City is hosting, the Kansas City Current is hosting, and Sporting Kansas City II plays out at Swope Park, which is also going to be a base camp.
Did you choose Algeria or did Algeria choose you?
It’s really the Federation or the country that selects the base camp site. They’re working with FIFA behind the scenes on what a location might give them. Algeria has two matches in Kansas City, so it made sense for them and their fans to be close by, to kind of have a central location. It’s kind of a mutual thing, but it goes off of FIFA rankings. If you’re ranked No. 1, you get your first choice of base camps in the United States, and it goes down the list from there.
Algeria plays two of its three pool-play matches at Arrowhead Stadium. Where is the third?
San Francisco, so the other benefit of being centrally located in the United States is that we’re a three-hour flight to pretty much anywhere. If they were on the East Coast, it would be a little bit more difficult.
And it’s a fairly short drive from Lawrence to Arrowhead.
We’re about 30 to 35 minutes from downtown Kansas City. We’re really a suburb of Kansas City.
What are some of the details in your preparation for Algeria?
A lot of details. Think of laundry and weight training facilities. What are they doing in their downtime? “They are interested in playing golf.” “Can you guys help set up visits to the zoo for members of the team and their families?” They’re going to be living in our city for six or seven weeks, so it’s making sure that we’ve got resources and things for them to do to make sure they have an awesome experience. So, there’s kind of the personal side of it, and then they’ll bring their own chef with them. Obviously, it’s a heavily Muslim culture, and they eat Halal meat. That didn’t really hit me until three weeks ago when they were here visiting. I took them to a restaurant downtown, and the owner of the restaurant was talking about a butcher in Lenexa — another suburb of Kansas City — that only prepares Halal meat. So, making those connections for them to get food delivered to them, understanding what restaurants would be able to accommodate those dietary restrictions. A lot of cultural things are starting to come to light. How do we host and make sure that not just the team but their fans feel at home in Lawrence?
Is KU actually putting the team in campus housing?
No. They’ll stay in a hotel in Lawrence. That’s why there’s collaboration with the city and Visit Lawrence. We’re making sure that their athletic piece — their training and everything they need for soccer — is taken care of, but we can’t manage their entire trip. Their base camp will be out at Rock Chalk Park, and they’ll utilize those facilities mostly. But there may be times when they want to utilize our indoor football facility, if there’s bad weather and they still want to train. We talked about potentially hosting them in our new conference center for like a video game day, where they could just come and hang out and enjoy that part of the Gateway District. We really want to be able to showcase some of those new assets that are part of the football stadium, as well.
Are there tangible benefits to KU for doing this? Are you paid for access to your facilities?
There are rental fees involved, but I would not say that it’s a huge money-maker by any means, when you think about the amount of time, energy and effort. But a lot of it’s just for us to be able to showcase our campus and think about international student recruitment opportunities. We want to be able to say, “Hey, come over, get a tour and see the original rules of basketball that are here” — things that we’re marketing to those other countries in Kansas City to come over Lawrence for a day. There’s a multitude of reasons, but ultimately it’s about impacting the economy of Lawrence. It’s pretty sleepy here in the summer. The students are gone. Now we have a chance to have more people here in Lawrence than we probably do even during the school year. We’re excited about that and what it means for a lot of our Lawrence businesses.
When Algeria is actually on the field practicing, will that be open to the public?
We’ll have one open practice at a minimum. That’s kind of a fan event that you’re required to host, per FIFA. We’re working through those details. Algeria is actually going to be back in town later this week, so we’ll start to map out who they want to invite. We certainly want to have some of our donors to have opportunities to go to the open practice, as well as local sports and youth club soccer teams. We’ll work through a lot of those details here in the coming months.
They’re not here for good — for the World Cup already — are they?
No, they don’t come back until the first week of June, but they have FIFA meetings in Dallas that, I believe, all the countries go to for preparation. Then they’re going to come up here and spend a few days, because their coaching staff has not been to Lawrence yet. They’ve had the pre-visit people come, but now they’re going to be able to bring their coaching staff and everybody to showcase the facility.
You’ve been in college athletics a long time. How has your skill set as an administrator had to change as the business of college athletics has changed?
I think you really have to learn how to adapt, and if you don’t adapt, then you probably aren’t going to make it in this business very long in today’s day and age. I think a part of that is having a diverse background. Working in professional sports, and having spent a fair bit of time in college sports, has prepared me for this moment of change in college athletics. I’ve seen the professional side. That’s probably why there was some interest in [athletic director] Travis [Goff] hiring me back to KU. Having that experience of working with player endorsements now in the NIL world, premium seating, how to manage and price concessions, corporate partnerships — all the things that we’re doing on the professional sports level that I think I probably really didn’t understand at the time but was preparing me for this new world of college athletics.
What drew you to the big leagues and back again?
At the time, I really hadn’t planned on leaving Kansas. To be honest, I had one of the people who was on my staff here go work for the Royals, and about a year later, he called me and said, “Hey, our senior director position overseeing our department is open. I don’t know if you’d be interested.” So, I went to visit with ownership and the leadership at the Royals, and was really just sold on their vision for where the franchise was going. I grew up a huge Royals fan in the middle of Kansas, so getting to work for one of your childhood teams was pretty special. Obviously, going to back-to-back World Series in ’14 and ’15, winning in ’15, and planning the World Series parade and being a part of all of that was pretty special. I probably didn’t know it at the time, but there was, again, probably a reason for me to go and do that and learn something, and then I could come back to my alma mater and make an impact here.
You arrive, and they go to two World Series.
I became the smartest sales guy in Major League Baseball.
How does a World Series make your job easier? It must be night and day.
Yes. From a sales perspective, I’d be lying to say that it didn’t open a lot of doors for us, but we also had a lot to learn and manage through that process. The franchise hadn’t had a lot of success for 30 years, and then all of a sudden, you’re in the World Series. You win the World Series, and now you’re trying to figure out, How do you monetize it without completely forgetting that there’s a lot of corporate partner season ticket holders who have been with you through the good and bad? So, trying to make sure that you’re finding ways to drive revenue, but also manage it so that it doesn’t feel like we’re disingenuous to the people who had supported us for so long. There was a lot of good, but there were also a lot of challenges. And I also remind people that I was also part of two 100-loss seasons after the World Series.
Then you return to Lawrence, and KU wins a national basketball championship. What was that like for you?
I definitely got thrust into planning the national championship parade because everybody knew that I was involved in the World Series parade. They were like, “Well, you know how to do this.” I do get a lot of flak, because when I came back to KU in 2007 from South Carolina, we won the Orange Bowl and a basketball national championship my first year here. Then I go to the Royals — World Series. I come back here — win another national championship. I guess I just have been very blessed that I haven’t shot a basket or thrown a pitch, but I’ve been part of some pretty special opportunities and teams and things that come with that.
Is a pro championship the pinnacle, or is a championship for your alma mater extra special?
They’re probably hard to compare, to be honest. They’re special in their own right. World Series, you’re winning it for a city. Whether you’re a Jayhawk, a Wildcat or a Missouri Tiger, everybody’s a Royals fan, so you felt like part of something bigger for the city. We say they got to play in the largest party in the history of Kansas City, with the World Series parade, because that was prior to the Chiefs going on their runs. That was really the first professional sports team in quite a while that had any real success in Kansas City, so that was pretty cool, having my family get to be a part of that. We got to be in the parade. The whole front office got to walk in the parade, and it felt like you were like the Beatles coming to America. It was just this weird, surreal moment.
Do you have a favorite moment from the 2022 national championship?
My daughter, who’s actually coming to KU in the fall, was in New Orleans with us, and I vividly remember her seeing 20,000 Jayhawks in the Superdome and looking at me and she’s like, “Okay, I get it, Dad. This is a big deal.” So, that was a pretty special moment of being a part of a family and seeing people from all over the country coming to be a part of that. And she actually was with me when we were planning the parade. She was checking off our student-athletes and staff who were in the parade. She got to be a part of that, which was pretty cool.
When someone drops parade planning on your desk, and you have no parade-planning experience, where do you turn?
While I was heavily involved in it, it was a team effort of 20 to 30 people that were putting it together — our operations team, our marketing team, the city officials — blocking off streets, getting permits from the city. We had to secure cars. That’s one thing people don’t think about. Even after the World Series, we had to go to our Chevy partners, and they helped us aggregate all the cars and label the cars with the players who were going to be in them. So, you think about all the details behind the scenes, and then you don’t know if you’re actually going to win it right, because you’re planning it. You can’t just turn a parade around in a couple days, so you have to be prepared. I remember in 2022, we started meeting during the first round of the NCAA tournament. We were a 1 seed, so we thought, okay, we have to get prepared. You can put a lot of time and energy into it on the front end and have it not pay off, but we were glad that it did on both occasions.
Where did the cars come from for the Jayhawks parade?
We went to a lot of our donors and car sponsors, and just asked them to participate and be involved in it. That was pretty fun to get to do that. We had a lot of donors that had their classic cars that were in the parade, including the one [head coach] Bill [Self] drove in.
How much have you been involved in The Gateway District project?
Pretty heavily involved with that project. Premium seating — so all of the suites, club seats in phase one — I kind of helped lead the charge for that. I oversee our licensing, and we have an in-house agency called Jayhawk Creative Services that rolls up to me, as well, so all of the signage that you see, the storytelling in the building, all flowed through a six-person committee that I was part of. So, yeah, heavy on the sales, the branding and design. And going into phase two, very similar. We’re looking to put an 8,000-square-foot team store into the hotel in the district. I’ve learned a lot about parking garages, hotels and retail space in phase two.
Petty exciting stuff.
Yeah, a lot of good stuff, and being a Jayhawk grad, it’s certainly a passion project. Going back to your question about being prepared for this version of college athletics, Travis is a Kansas grad, as well, and it forces you to dig a little bit deeper and want to get it right for your place. I think that that’s probably our ability to adapt and try — for the long term — to set this place up for success way beyond when Travis and I are here.
As we speak, the White House is gathering a College Sports Roundtable. From where you sit, should we be concerned about college athletics? Do you have concerns about college athletics right now?
Well, I believe that there has to be some additional oversight and resources. We’re in a unique position, being in the Big 12. You read about the Big Ten and SEC white paper that came out. Certainly, those conferences have negotiated their TV deals and have their interest to protect, so you respect their approach. But I do think at some level, unless we have real consequences for people who are skirting the system or are cheating — it makes it really hard to manage it day to day if we’re not being held to the standards that have been set by the College Sports Commission. If that can’t be handled state by state, I think that causes real challenges for us to be able to continue to operate, to try and play under the same rules in the same system. If there continue to be lawsuits in the states, and it appears that there will be, I don’t know what other way you can solve that outside of federal legislation.
Is it fair to call Kansas a basketball school?
Well, I would say we’re a both school, if you look at the investments that we’ve put into the football stadium. There’s no question that historically, in basketball — with six national championships and the second-most all-time wins — there’s a tradition that we have to uphold and continue to maintain. But we also understand that we have to continue to invest in the football side of the ledger, because of the eyeballs that football commands and the revenue opportunities. You really have to find a way to be successful at both, and that’s the challenge in today’s day and age. And, by the way, also supporting our 14 other sports that we have had a lot of success in — volleyball and soccer both went to Sweet 16s this year, and we had a great run in baseball last year. So, we’re also trying to fuel the success of the rest of our programs and not just putting all of our eggs in the football and basketball basket.
I was just curious if you ever feel like your peers at “football schools” have it easier from a revenue-generation standpoint.
I think there’s inherent advantage to SEC and Big Ten schools that have a real head start in their TV rights. When you’re talking north of $30 million, $40 million, and more TV rights revenue in the schools allows them to continue to invest when others are trying to find their way through $20.5 million of revenue sharing and new budget constraints. But I don’t think there’s really anything easy about college athletics for anybody right now. Sure, everybody’s trying to compete at the highest level to win championships. That drives revenue and then supports the rest of your program. It’s a challenge for everybody. Each place is unique. I think we have our own challenges, but we also have our own unique advantages here at KU, as well. Support from our university starts with Chancellor [Douglas] Girod and our athletic director. We have great leadership and support behind us, so we’re in a very good position.
You’ve been about revenue generation your entire career. Is it more critical now than ever?
Absolutely. I lead a revenue group every week that talks about new ideas. What are the next things? Once we have the stadium built, our premium is sold out and we’ve revamped football season tickets pricing and per-seat donation model, we have to start thinking about what’s next. Jersey patches are a hot topic that we’re spending a lot of time on right now. Logos on the court and field, which we were successful at selling the first year that those became available. So, trying to take advantage of every new opportunity that we have with all of our partners, continuing to push the needle on what’s next, and making sure that we’re continuing to overcome some of thwe budgetary challenges that everybody’s facing.
