What’ll ya have? A cold margarita or hot takes on the latest industry trends? As six of the longest-tenured Athletic Business staff members gathered at The Cooper’s Tavern on the Capitol Square in Madison, Wis., the table saw both delivered in equal measure — as is often the case.
“Can we order drinks first?” one asked — only half joking — as the audio recorder was flipped to “on,” and the crew prepared to reminisce on their decades spent as representatives of the leading resource for the athletics, fitness and recreation industries.
Senior editor Paul Steinbach, the last assembled veteran to join the AB ranks, was a mere three weeks on the job when he jetted to Orlando for the Athletic Business Conference & Expo, as it was known in 1999. It was there that current advertising director Diane Ebner first invited Steinbach to join coworkers on the dance floor at the headquarter hotel’s in-house nightclub, then called The Backstage. Neither of them — nor Jodi Chamberlain, Steve Statsick, Marj Schultz or Shawn Gahagan — could have foreseen that they would one day represent 196 combined years of experience writing, marketing and shepherding Athletic Business magazine and AB Show.
“Everyone sitting here has been at AB for more than half of its existence,” Steinbach said, as raised glasses clinked.
Athletic Business, in all its forms, has shaped the athletics, fitness and recreation industries for 50 years, and in the process the people behind the brand. “The reason why you see nearly 200 years of experience here, it’s not what we do, it’s who we do it with,” said Gahagan, president of AB Media Inc. “Our people have been the lifeblood of AB. That longevity, that legacy, is what drives a lot of what we do.”
The day-to-day processes may look different now for all six, but their guiding lights remain: content and connection.
Steinbach has spent the entirety of his tenure with AB immersed in content creation. From some of his most prideful stories — scooping Sports Illustrated on the glut of golf course development of the early 2000s or covering athletics facilities’ roles in natural disaster recovery post-Hurricane Katrina — to winning a Jesse H. Neal Award for his column (in 2006) covering college sports, his voice has documented decades of industry developments in the pages of AB.
Ebner, who was the first among the group to begin working at AB when she was just 26 years old, has long played the crucial role of connecting readers and advertisers.
“Better interactions between advertisers and customers” is how Ebner described her goal spanning several decades as her colleagues nodded in agreement. No longer are readers returning the magazine’s so-called circle cards in search of additional information from vendors; today, that information is digital and available at the click of a button. She and Chamberlain chuckled when recalling the old methods of collecting ads from sponsors — sometimes hand-drawn — as the waiter approached.
“Can I replenish anything for you?” he asked.
The resounding answer from the table: Absolutely.
From AB’s original newsletter — delivered via fax — to the launch of athleticbusiness.com in 1997, an ever-increasing presence of technology has defined the evolution of AB.
As magazine production tediously grew from wax paste-up boards and galley proofs to film and beyond, digital production manager Schultz proved herself to be the wizard of it all, learning with each new advancement. “We started bringing everything in house,” she said. “I learned how to do the scanning, putting things together. I learned Quark.”
That digitization transformed AB. Overnight, the brand’s popular Buyer’s Guide — which at one point in print was as thick and dense as the Yellow Pages — became an online asset.
“Remember when the internet came? The information super highway,” Statsick joked.
“The World Wide Web,” Steinbach added.
“Back then, media wasn’t as fragmented as it is now,” said Gahagan. “There was one way to connect with people, and that was through print. We were the best at it. We’re still the best at it. It’s just now there are so many other things vying for someone’s attention.”
Just as AB evolved over 50 years, so did the industry. When many of the long-time staff members were in college, rec centers featured a few basketball courts with strength equipment lining the walls.
“There were no windows. There were only cinder block walls,” said Steinbach, recalling his student days on the University of Wisconsin campus, where the Facilities of Merit™-winning Bakke Recreation & Wellbeing Center opened in 2023. “That’s like a high-end resort.”
“Even on the parks and rec side,” Ebner said, “I toured rec facilities in Colorado and they had started to upgrade their pools and add climbing walls, too.””
As a facilities arms race revved up, the industry’s leading resource kept pace.
Also central to the coworkers’ connection has been AB Show and its industry party, a favorite among staff and loyal AB readers alike.
“What was your favorite party?” asked Chamberlain, sales coordinator.
Without hesitation, Steinbach called out, “Hold the phone, Joan,” and the table erupted in laughter at the memory of exhibits director Statsick announcing the extension — by popular demand — of the last live music set at a recent AB Show industry party.
Every year at AB Show attendees, exhibitors and staff gather to celebrate another successful year of conquering challenges and introducing innovations. From Orlando to San Antonio, Chicago to New Orleans, everyone at the table leaned forward with another story from another year to suggest a night as the best they ever had among friends and colleagues.
“We’re a fun brand,” Statsick concluded.
“We’ve had a lot of great parties,” added Ebner.
But conversation turned from strictly after-hours memories to the impact of keynote speakers whose messages still resonate — industry stalwarts and household names, from Olympics documentarian Bud Greenspan to college football coaching icon Lou Holtz, and NBA legend Magic Johnson to professional baseball showman Jesse Cole of the barnstorming Savannah Bananas.
As the sun set behind the facade of AB’s current headquarters, and the last sips disappeared from glasses around the table, the group pivoted from reminiscing to dreaming. What could happen in the next several decades? What kind of company, culture and industry were they developing for the next generation?
“I’m confident for the future, mostly because of the people we have at AB,” Gahagan said, referring to both seasoned staff and AB newbies.
The conversation returned, as it often did that afternoon, to the Rosen Plaza’s Backstage bar. Recalling the takeaway from his inaugural night out with the AB crew nearly 27 years ago, Steinbach said he knew instantly that he was “going to be alright in this place.”
That place is not one specific location but rather a certainty that when the cover is closed on each new issue of Athletic Business magazine, its shepherds — writers, designers and sales professionals — will share a laugh, a few good memories and maybe a drink or two as they prepare to do it all over again.
“We are only as good as the content we produce,” said Gahagan. “Our content enhances everything else we give our advertisers.”
