It was four days before the World Cup final. Greg Kahn had a hotel to point to.
“Spain is staying in my hometown right now in Montclair — they took all of the MC Hotel,” Kahn said.
It was a small, specific data point, but it was the case he’d spent the day making from the stage last week at the Prudential Center — that the business of soccer has quietly parked itself in New Jersey for the summer, and most of the state doesn’t fully realize it yet.
Kahn is the founder and CEO of GK Digital Ventures and the creator of the Global Game Summit, which brought FIFA, Major League Soccer, LALIGA, IBM, Lenovo, Fanatics Advertising and GEICO executives to Newark last Wednesday for its second edition — an executive-only counterprogram to the fan festivals surrounding the tournament.
BINJE caught up with Kahn to talk about what happens to the platform — and to New Jersey’s case as a sports business hub — once the World Cup leaves town.
BINJE: Year Two of the Global Game is in the books. How did this one go, and what’s it about at this point?
Kahn: The timing worked in the summit’s favor — the tournament had spent weeks moving across three continents, and this past week it landed squarely in the New York/New Jersey region, alongside a crowded slate of other sports-business gatherings: the ESPYS, Fanatics Fest, Wall Street Journal Sports and Time Sports among them.
This was the only summit built exclusively around soccer. It deserves its own platform. It shouldn’t be one of the many sports that are here. Soccer’s rise to the No. 3 spot in U.S. sports popularity isn’t an accident. The open question now is whether MLS and the NWSL can convert that momentum into something lasting.
BINJE: Last year you were here talking about an event that was still a year away. This year it’s four days away. How do you keep this growing after the World Cup leaves?
Kahn: Change the agenda and change the map. Future editions need to move beyond this year’s topics into areas the summit didn’t have room for — prediction markets, artificial intelligence, real estate among them.
We need to prove the concept in New Jersey and then take it elsewhere, to reach executives, investors and brands who won’t necessarily come to Newark. This Summit had five chief marketing officers on a single panel this year — that’s a level of access the sport needs more of, not less.
BINJE: How should the Red Bulls, and the region generally, capitalize on the moment?
Kahn: First, lean into the personality-driven marketing that’s defined the sport’s growth over the last decade — get individual players known, through social media and other cross-promotion, not just the club.
Second, build a fan experience tailored to the region’s different communities rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, something he said this World Cup has done well by recognizing different ethnicities and backgrounds among fans.
Third, make the region — and Newark specifically — into an actual destination rather than a drive-in, drive-out stop. A lot of people have never been to Newark. You have to make it amenable for people to come here and see: ‘Wow, this is 25 minutes from the city. Could be easier to get to than Queens or Brooklyn.’ That’s a case this year’s summit is starting to make.
BINJE: What’s the biggest thing soccer, as a sport, can do?
KAHN: The biggest missed opportunity is player access. In 1994, several members of the World Cup team were New Jersey natives. They showed up personally at local businesses during that tournament.
The current moment calls for the same instinct on a bigger scale. There needs to be more local activation around teams already in the region. The fans need to have a chance to get to know the players, not just see them on match day.
