11. Jill Geer, Chief MarCom Officer, USA Gymnastics – The Rebound of an Olympic Sport NGB
Farrell Sports Business Podcast
Interviews with unicorns from sports business and their unique stories, dreams, ideas, insights, innovations, flops and career paths. Get a unique perspective of the inner workings of jobs working in sports beyond just pro sports leagues. Hosted by 30-year sports business veteran Matt Farrell, President of Farrell Sports and CEO of Bat Around.
Watch it on YouTube - www.youtube.com/@farrellsportsww
Listen in Podcasty Places - Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio and more
Farrell Sports Business (00:00)
On this week's Farrell Sports Business podcast, we're going to talk and tell a story of what I feel is one of the biggest and best turnarounds of an organization, certainly in the Olympic world, maybe in sports with USA Gymnastics, of what they've gone through to where they are today is just nothing short of remarkable. The guest is very special to me because we went to school together. We worked together as students at the University of Arkansas.
And she has just become one of the preeminent and most respected marketing and communications leaders in the Olympic and sports world. I just can't say enough good things about her. Just phenomenal person, funny, and probably one of the most candid, open interviews you could imagine talking about the goods and bads of where USA Gymnastics has been. So I think you'll enjoy this, and you'll really enjoy her. She's the chief of communications and marketing at USA Gymnastics.
Jill Geer
Farrell Sports Business (01:13)
Jill, welcome to the podcast.
Jill (01:15)
Thank you for having me, Matt.
Farrell Sports Business (01:17)
You are in like this incredibly exciting time, Paris on the horizon. Just tell me a little bit about your
Jill (01:27)
So at USA Gymnastics, I'm Chief Communications and Marketing Officer. Mostly communications. For us in my marketing role, it's largely brand. We have another staff person who handles event marketing and we work very closely in collaboration. But my team oversees everything from creative content to streaming to media relations to PR strategy, overall organizational strategy as a whole as well. So it's...
Like every other job I've had in this space, it's never boring. We got to do a rebrand about two years ago. So it's, you know, it's a constantly flowing river and we love
Farrell Sports Business (02:07)
So you came to this, there's one interim stop which we'll hit later, but you spent 18 years with USA Track and Field in a, I'll call it a similar title. What was that job and what are the differences outside of the obvious of the sport on the field of play?
Jill (02:24)
Well, that job evolved over the course of almost 19 years because I came in as director of communications back in 2000 when it was almost like an SID role. And then in about 2011, I took on sponsorship, which in the governing body world, marketing usually means partnerships and sponsorships. So my role from 2011 onward was a combination of revenue generation, partner relationships, international affairs is always part of the communications role as
But it was it was basically two people's roles in one So when I came to gymnastics Most of so the partnership and the revenue responsibility is split off Which is great because that is a full -time job when I took that on it took over like most of my duties as you well know like that is Everything everywhere all at once So the the job from the comms and every side is about the same the jobs probably are about 90 % lift and shift
but the sports themselves are different. I think one way to think of it is it's kind of like moving to a new house that's like three houses down the block. your immediate neighbors are different, but everyone on the block is the same and then the mail still gets delivered on the same day and the garbage is still picked up on the same day. But gymnastics is both much smaller. So we have a team, for instance, our Olympic team in Paris is 13 athletes across three disciplines.
Track and field has a team of 129 athletes. So when you start talking about competition, just the scale and scope is different, but the level of busyness is not. And certainly the level of attention and fixation that the American public has on the gymnastics teams, especially the men's and women's artistic team, kind of like next level. Because with track and field, you got 129 athletes that the public is looking at. In gymnastics, it's a couple.
It's dealing with, if anything, even more consistently dealing with the highest level of media in the country and the world because the level of interest is so high. So it's the New York Times at every event instead of just at a couple of events. So it's great. It's been a great ride so
Farrell Sports Business (04:39)
So anything at track and field in particular, like you said, almost 19 years there, where, and I would say as a background, you are one of the absolute, if not the most pro in the Olympic world in comms and marketing. And so, but anything like 18 years track and field, I've got this. I know how to do this. And you get to gymnastics and you go, whoa, that it's going to be a little bit different
Jill (05:05)
Yep. The sport cultures are definitely different. And my last boss at track and field, Max Siegel, used to always say, you gotta know what you don't know. So for the first, it took me probably 18 months to really get up to speed on the specifics of both mechanics of the sport and kind of like the technical stuff of the sport. So you'll never hear me talking about or analyzing an athlete's floor routine and talking about the skills that
doing okay. I know you're a Chenko double pike, but that's a vault, right? But it took me about 18 months really to feel comfortable even doing an interview as a spokesperson to feel like I wouldn't mess something up unknowingly. So that was a little bit of a learning curve. But in the meantime, we made sure if anyone needed to talk to say local TV, I got someone from our programs department to do it. So I think they're very grateful now that they don't have to get up at 5 a .m. to do those morning shows.
But yeah, there was a learning curve and you know, when you come into a new role, a lot of times the good thing is you see things from the outside so you can bring a new perspective and you think you can change a lot of different things. Then you get on the inside and you realize, okay, these couple of things actually can't change and here's why. So that took a minute, but we are fully, fully, fully integrated now.
Farrell Sports Business (06:18)
That's so good. Fortunately, during my time at USA Swimming, was never the spokesperson, but I learned the ambiguous response to questions when I didn't really understand the question with swimming. Like a coach would come up and I'm like, wow, did you see that split? And I'd be like, whoa, yeah. I'm like, is it good? Is it bad? But when you came into gymnastics,
Jill (06:35)
Yeah.
Just smile and nod. That's a tip for life.
Farrell Sports Business (06:47)
it well, let's maybe jump to the end first. Gymnastics, think USA Gymnastics in particular is in a phenomenal place right now. And it's just come a long way. It was not when you came in, you came in, I would think, pretty eyes wide open of some challenges. And what made you raise your hand for that type of a role at the
Jill (07:12)
You know, well, it's interesting because USA Gymnastics was looking for this role a couple of years earlier, but at the time it was not of interest to me. I had just left USA track and field. But fundamentally what attracted me to it is the opportunity to make a difference, period. Like that's just, I'm not interested in advancing my career. I'm not interested in making a name for myself. I was interested in helping a sport that America loved be where it should be.
first and foremost, you do that by doing the right thing. And so I had seen opportunities where USA Gymnastics perhaps could do better on the comm side in terms of when do you speak, when do you not speak, what are you speaking about? And so it was just to say these athletes have a right to have a federation that does right by them. And when I went through the interview process, every single person I spoke with, I was so impressed by them. It was obvious that the team was in place.
So it was kind of like, I literally was the final piece to the puzzle. In fact, in that I was the last executive team member to come on board. And the team had been doing incredible work dating back to about 2018, 2019. And so they had done all the legwork. It was my job to come in and help mold and shape it and wait for the right time to really tell the story because it was really getting.
athletes to trust the federation and then getting the public to trust the federation and partners and everyone else. But it started with getting our own house in order, getting things right by the athletes and then taking it from there. So it was it was all opportunity as as one person said, you can't fall off the floor. So, you know, all opportunity.
Farrell Sports Business (08:50)
I haven't heard that one. So again, jumping to the end, the AP did an article right before your Olympic trials that I think was just really a positive glowing piece. And say, not a perfect organization, but man, look where they've come. But some of the words in there were harsh of how they described USA Gymnastics, like house of fire, radioactive.
All those things that you mentioned though, this type of a turnaround has to be one of the best in Olympic sports, if not sports to
Jill (09:30)
First of all, all those criticisms were absolutely valid in terms of where this organization was in the past. And I would honestly agree in terms of the turnaround and where we are and when we are here. I don't know that even Li Li, who is our CEO, anticipated that the turnaround would happen this rapidly, but I know she and certainly I, when I took the job, I saw the pathway
the turnaround kind of like really taking shape and it had to do with third party validators. It is, as I said, first the athletes, then the public, and then partners will come. And then once partners come, then everyone knows it's safe. Because it's really is USA Gymnastics and the sport of gymnastics a safe place. That's really what it's about. So the fact that that work was done so quickly was tremendous from a media coverage perspective. I always say like, I don't work in PR.
I am a communicator of truth. My goal is always to have the media report things accurately. And the challenge that this organization had from 2018 up until probably last year is that we were doing lots of good, lots of really hard work, but no one wanted to hear that. Like no one wants to hear about what the villain down the street is doing, right? So it took all of that time of hard work and even reporters said to me off on background that
they saw the things that we were doing, but they couldn't report it because if they said anything good about USA Gymnastics, they would be attacked. So there were a couple of things happening there with that article. And we had, we also had a set of good articles in 2023 after we signed our Nike deal. was like, first you have to do the work, then it has to be safe to actually talk about it. And because athletes had started saying, because athletes had started us just describing us as something other than a dumpster fire. So like it became,
safe and I think you saw people dipping their toe on the water when you see the temperature of social media among fans from like 2018, 2019, even 2021 to now it is night and day. So the analogy that I always give is when I first took this job in 2021, social media, was like have no voice. We even had to ask athletes if we were going to tag them or even mention them, ask their permission because people did not want to associate with us. My analogy is I would say we could post
the Easter Bunny is white and fluffy and cute and the response would be you all are going to hell, you're terrible, you should be in jail. Again, like not saying, you know, that it was harsh but that's the way it was. Now we have people saying, my god, USA Gymnastics, your social media is the greatest thing ever, this is so great, I love this athlete. We can post about an athlete and it's about the athlete. you know, that was always my goal to ramble just a little bit more. When I came on board, I explained
Li Li and also to our board of directors, the first goal was to have USA Gymnastics not be the story. Like, I would love to see no stories written about USA Gymnastics. We're not going to talk about the good we're doing. It's like, let's just be quiet and work, which we did. Then focus on the athletes. Then it's the competition. Then and only then can a story be written or reported about the work that we have done. So right now, that's where we are. And we're so pleased to be there. First and foremost,
The athletes are free and happy and we're actually a team again. And that means the world.
Farrell Sports Business (12:58)
That's awesome. We lived similar experiences, different ways. USA Swimming went through some really, really tough times, a similar topic. And there are times that you wake up every day thinking, I don't think I work for a terrible organization. We're doing these good things. But sometimes that reality of what you were doing, of these 10 items on the checklist didn't matter until you kind of
overcame the perception piece. And that's hard to do. And I feel like you guys have, maybe you're not ready to plant a mission accomplished flag yet, but you're on the
Jill (13:31)
Mm -hmm.
No. Having a thick skin is so essential to it. And Li Li as a leader, as a CEO, I cannot believe how thick her skin is, especially given the things, literally death threats to her on social media, literally does not bother her at all. And then she hired people accordingly who were just focused on the work. Because if you know that you're working with the right people and you know that you're doing the good work, if you can keep that noise out, then you can
So, I mean, for me, having spent almost 19 years at Track and Field, when I came in, I said, look, the hard parts of this job are actually easy for me. like, oh, everybody hates you and your organization? No problem. Talking garbage about us on social media happens every day. So that actually served me very well in this role. But now, all the great things are better being said. It's a little crazy. It's like, you're talking about us? OK, we got you.
Farrell Sports Business (14:34)
That's a harder thing to capture on your LinkedIn and your resume, but it's a great skill. I'll call it subtle, maybe to the rest of the world, to the gymnastics world, probably not. But the mere fact that Aly Raisman was at the Olympic trials, to me, to people that I've talked to in the gymnastics community, huge.
Jill (14:40)
Yeah, it is,
Yeah, yeah, not subtle at all. Very, very, very huge. Allie as a survivor and as someone who was very, very vocal throughout the process and who is beloved by the gymnastics community. To say that her relationship with USA Gymnastics is toxic, was toxic, I mean, at minimum. But we have had over the last, again, three years, past athletes, even some survivors who had come to our events.
and seen the difference. And I think Allie had friends within the sport who had started interacting with USA Gymnastics again. She had started doing work with broadcasting and then also with the Olympic Channel as well. And so it's one of those things where it's just, again, we put our heads down and did the work and you wait for the right time. We never forced any interaction with her or any survivor.
And so when her agent reached out saying, that she would like tickets to the trials, which absolutely she gets as a member of our hall of fame, you know, we said, absolutely, you know, here are the tickets. And then we said, hey, would you like to be part of our opening? And she said, yes. And to see the moment when she walked out and I get tears and chills just thinking about it, the roar from the crowd that went up for her and how moved she was by
that's really, you know, what it's all about. And for her to be welcomed, on that stage and to feel all of that love both ways was, I'm still like goosebumping right now. So it was, was immense. And, and those, as you said, those in the gymnastics community definitely understood the enormity of
Farrell Sports Business (16:39)
Yeah, your Olympic trials, as you know, I had the pleasure to attend as a plus one. My wife is an Olympic silver medalist in gymnastics in 84. So I'm a little bit biased, but I thought the event tied in the history of the sport well. It was a first class production. I would think by all metrics, TV, ticket sales, merchandise sales were crazy from what I saw.
Were you able to sit back and kind of enjoy that moment a little bit of how significant that was in the history of USA Gymnastics?
Jill (17:15)
that the Olympic trials is probably the turnaround moment for all of the reasons that you mentioned. You know, for the longest time, our alumni didn't want anything to do with the organization. So not only did they want something to do with us, they came back, they were part of it, they celebrated us. We celebrated them and they were happy to be there. I had one journalist who before competition started was on the concourse and there was a line probably 30 meters long for merchandise and there were two merchandise areas. And he said, man,
I remember a couple of years ago, no one wanted to wear anything with the USA Gymnastics logo on it, or they maybe burst into flames, I don't know. And now you have people literally lined up down the door. From a broadcast perspective, for NBC, it was the highest rated Olympic trials broadcast in any sport since 2016. So it was fundamentally about joy. I even saw that, you know, starting back in 2022, you would just see fans and even athletes happy.
and celebrating and that's this is sports you know we are not curing cancer this is sports if it does not bring joy then you're not doing it right and so it is always gratifying especially when alumni feel that joy because as you know alumni can feel a little bit forgotten sometimes so they were very much part of the show they announced the team like they counted down to start it off it was really really fantastic
Farrell Sports Business (18:40)
it was a chills moment as well. All right. I want to talk about you, Jill, not you at the USA gymnastics. So I'm going to ask you a very leading question. I know you were cross country track athlete. Where were the beginnings of your work in
Jill (18:58)
my gosh. Well, my work in sports.
Farrell Sports Business (19:00)
specifically, specifically maybe a college experience.
Jill (19:03)
Okay. All right. So my work in sports began at the Harvard of the South, the University of Arkansas, where was a track and cross country athlete. Also the alma mater of the other person on this podcast. And yeah, our mutual mentor, Bill Smith, who is the women's sports information director, they had separate departments at Arkansas, really honestly got me started.
Farrell Sports Business (19:18)
Ha ha ha
Jill (19:30)
I joined the campus newspaper when I was a senior, so I kind of got into journalism through the back door. But he tracked me down after I graduated. was waiting, waitressing at a bakery, and he said, hey, do you want to be a graduate assistant in women's sports information? I was like, all right. So I went to grad school, worked in sports information, which in this role is invaluable. And then after a year, the local newspaper was going to hire someone to cover women's sports. So they went to the women's sports director and said, hey, do you know anyone? He was
This one, meaning this one, not that one, suggested me for the role. So I became a sports writer for a local paper that traveled me all over, including to the NCAA track championships, where I met the guy who would become CEO of USA track and field the next year. it's, you know, in sports, it's all connections and having mentors and advocates and things like that. know, with Bill, especially, and I had one of my publishers, George Smith, shout out to George.
people who advocate for you but also have really high standards of excellence. As you know, like Bill is not the guy to say, yeah, that's all right. That'll do. Like those words never come out of that guy's mouth. So it's crazy to think that, you know, if not for Bill Smith, you and I may not be sitting here having this conversation, but here we
Farrell Sports Business (20:39)
Hahaha
I know it's he's like on this short list of two in my life of greatest mentors that you look back at. I'm not sure the structure of the separate women's athletic department today or at the time would work today, but pure selfishly, it was the best thing that could have ever happened to me from a career standpoint, because we got to do everything. And while I got a great education at Arkansas,
What I learned in this business, I learned from Bill Smith and working in the women's athletic department.
Jill (21:21)
Yep. Yep. And, and especially in sports and in this specific field of sports, it's really what you do and your experience. You know, my son is getting ready to go to college and probably wants to work in sports and actually currently majoring in communications. And he's going to Villanova where all of his teammates on the track team, they're all engineering majors. like, yo, get an internship, get the experience and get a job. And it's not about having a job, but it's if you want to work in sports.
meet the people, have the internships, do the work, do as much work as you can, and then the more experience you have, the farther you'll go, the more opportunities you
Farrell Sports Business (22:00)
I love it. So last one for you, I'll just pretty leave it open -ended for you, Jill, because I know you've got with some editing rights left. But no, in all seriousness, as you get ready for Paris and you're gracious enough to spend your time here with me for a few minutes, anything I didn't ask you, anything that you really just want to put on people's radar about gymnastics, Paris, USA gymnastics, shameless plug
Jill (22:08)
I'm so nervous!
I would say when it comes to watching gymnastics, watch what happens when the gymnastics isn't happening. You know, the interaction between coaches and athletes, the interaction between athletes themselves and athletes and the fans. It's different than when I was growing up watching the 1984 Olympics when I was 14 years old and even very much different when I was watching in 1996 and everyone was celebrating an athlete competing when
she had a broken ankle. So much has changed, but it's just, just find the joy in the sport. Cause it's, it's crazy and pay attention to the core strength. have never like, it's like everybody, everybody, most people can like run. It's just a matter of how slow or how fast, but man, only one person can do a Yurchenko double pike And her name is Simone.
Farrell Sports Business (23:13)
Of course you'd.
So well said. So Jill, I can't thank you enough. I appreciate it. was good to meet you at Arkansas and go to school with you and have our careers intersect for the X number of years since. So thank you.
Jill (23:43)
30 something. Always great talking with you, Matt, and I'm sure we're going to talk again real soon.
Farrell Sports Business (23:50)
All right. See you soon. Thanks,
Comments