Every offer arrives with a number attached, and that number is the easiest part to compare. It is also the part that tells you the least about whether you will still be in the seat, and glad you took it, three years from now. People in the business of sports have gotten very good at comparing numbers and a little out of practice at reading everything around them.
Salary is one data point, not the decision
The strongest career decision you can make is to treat salary as one data point on the scorecard, not the scorecard itself.
Think about it the way a front office builds a roster. No one wins by signing whoever costs the most. They weigh fit, role, the system around the player, and how that player will be developed and used. You deserve that same diligence when the player being evaluated is you.
Read the system, not just the seat
Three things predict whether a role outlasts the honeymoon: the culture you are walking into, the leader you will actually report to, and whether there is a real path forward. None of them show up on the offer letter, so you have to go get them.
For culture, stop asking whether a place “has a good culture” and start asking what happens when pressure hits. In sports, that pressure is built into the calendar: game days, a losing streak, a sponsor renewal that slips, a budget cut after a down season. Ask, “Walk me through how this group handled the last tough stretch.” Then ask the people who would be your peers, not just the person extending the offer. Whether their story matches leadership’s tells you more than any values page.
For the growth path, get specific. Ask what the last two people in this role went on to do, and how long it took them. A clear answer signals a real ladder. A vague one signals a seat, not a path. That read on the person you’ll report to is its own skill, and the natural starting point before you weigh the package. Read the person, not the package.
If there is commission, read the OTE like a scout, not a fan
A lot of business-of-sports roles, ticketing, premium, sponsorship, partnerships, come with on-target earnings rather than a flat salary. OTE is the total you would make if you hit 100 percent of quota. It is a target, not a guarantee, and the headline figure is built to be attractive. Read it the way a scout reads a highlight reel: useful, but not the whole tape.
Three questions cut through it.
- First, what is the split between guaranteed base and variable pay? A heavier variable mix means more upside and more risk.
- Second, what share of the team actually hit target last year, and how did the newest hires do? If only a couple of veterans clear OTE, the number is aspirational.
- Third, ask how the quota was set. As a rough benchmark, targets often land somewhere around three to eight times OTE, so if the math sits far outside that, it is fair to ask why.
Ask whether the expectations match the resources
This is the question most people skip, and it is the one that quietly ends tenures. A target only means something next to the resources you are handed to hit it. “Uncapped commission” is just a phrase if the lead flow, the inventory, and the support behind it are not real.
So read the resource side as carefully as the revenue side. If you are selling, ask what you are working with: how many seats, suites, or sponsorship assets, and how much of the number is renewal versus net-new business you have to create from scratch. What is the ramp before you are expected to produce? Who hands you qualified leads, and what do the CRM and analytics support look like?
If you are being asked to build the function rather than run it, that is not a red flag by itself, but the target should be discounted unless the authority, budget, and timeline are credible. A big number attached to a role designed to fail is not a good offer.
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The Peak Scouts read
The people who build long careers in this industry evaluate an offer the way a sharp front office evaluates talent: fit first, system second, number in context. That is the difference between a 40-day job search and a 40-year career. The biggest number in the room is rarely what you remember three years in. The environment that let you do your best work, or the one that wore you down, is.
If you are weighing an offer right now and want a second set of eyes from people who do this for a living across all 50 states, start a conversation.
