A jersey patch sponsor. More premium seating at the football stadium. Ringside-style wrestling seats. Concerts booked into a 53,000-seat stadium that sits empty most weekends. A database of every Rutgers alum running a company in America.
There’s a reason that sounds like the to-do list of a professional sports organization. It is — and it’s exactly the next mindset that Rutgers had in mind when it hired longtime industry leader Fred Mangione to be the inaugural CEO of Scarlet Knight Enterprises.
Mangione, fresh off his role as chief business officer for the 2026 World Cup’s New York New Jersey Host Committee, has spent nearly 30 years working for the Jets, Nets and Islanders.
He has sold teams and arenas — tickets, sponsorships, unique branding opportunities and, in the case of the Nets, sold an old team into a new era. When the team moved from East Rutherford to Brooklyn in 2012 (after a brief stop in Newark), Mangione became the chief operating officer of Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment, overseeing business operations for the Nets, the Islanders and Barclays Center.
Mangione seemingly was just who Rutgers Athletic Director Keli Zinn had in mind when she introduced Scarlet Knight Enterprises back in March. At the time, she said the department needed to modernize its business operations, diversify its revenue and compete more aggressively in the marketplace for resources that benefit student-athletes and fans.
Rutgers quickly honed in on Mangione, who had one request in return: Let him finish his World Cup role before starting this one.
Rutgers was more than willing to wait. It knows Mangione offers more than just industry experience; he offers industry experience in the area.
“I know New York and New Jersey,” Mangione said. “I’ve been here 30 years. Jets, Nets, Islanders, two World Cups — you name it; I’ve done it.
“I know the brands, I know the players.”
And they know him.
“As soon as this was announced in this role, I started getting a ton of calls,” he said.
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Under the new structure, Mangione’s purview includes name, image and likeness deals — a relatively new and increasingly central piece of college athletics finance. An NIL specialist hired from Penn State roughly six months ago now reports directly to him.
“The more money we can raise, and the more brands that could get involved in NIL, gives the athletic department and these coaches the chance to go out and get top-tier talent,” Mangione said. “There’s a lot of talent right in New Jersey that we should not be losing.”
Mangione said he’s not promising Rutgers will out-muscle college football’s biggest programs anytime soon, and he draws the comparison from his own NBA experience.
“When I was with the New Jersey Nets, everyone would tell me, ‘We want to beat the Lakers and the Warriors,’” he said. “I’d say, ‘Hey, look, let’s just look ourselves in the mirror and make baby steps.’
“I think if we could put procedures and process in place, it’ll put us in a position to get where the powerhouses in the conference are.”
Mangione said he sees a specific opening in basketball, where he said the state has a void since the Nets left New Jersey for Brooklyn.
“There’s just a basketball deficiency right now, so I think we have a huge opportunity for basketball,” he said. “I feel there’s an opportunity to market this thing like a professional sports team — not only to the alumni, but to people in Central New Jersey, to bring their kids out to Rutgers Athletics.
“That’s how you build the brand up.”
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Mangione said his top priority right now is selling the jersey patch on Rutgers uniforms — inventory that top programs including Ohio State, Notre Dame and Illinois have already sold to sponsors.
“That’s the prime inventory in sports right now, and that is our number one goal,” he said. “We don’t want to just grab any brand. We want to have the right brand.”
Mangione also wants to close the gap on premium seating, starting with the football stadium.
“There’s not enough premium in that football field right now,” he said. “We’re going to bring in some field suites and do some creative things while we get through the interim.”
He’s eyeing wrestling — a sport he said sells out consistently in New Jersey — for a similar upgrade, floating an “NBA approach” with ringside-style seats. And Mangione said he wants to put Rutgers’ 53,000-seat stadium to work beyond football Saturdays.
“That stadium holds 53,000 people,” he said. “Why can’t we book some concerts? Why can’t we do some different things to keep the campus active?”
The RAC is also on his radar, though Mangione said those conversations predate his arrival.
“There’s not enough premium in that building right now,” he said.
Rutgers has been working through RFPs on arena upgrades since before he was hired, Mangione said, and he expects to see concrete plans take shape.
“I think you’ll see some great plans in the future,” he said.
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Everything in the sports marketing sponsorship business is constantly evolving.
Mangione saw that firsthand at the Host Committee. Sponsorship sales started slower than he’d hoped, before the market ultimately ranked as the tournament’s top site — twice over.
“I attribute that to the staff, but I’ll say it again: it was the creativity,” Mangione said.
He pointed to landing sponsors including Bristol Myers Squibb and Sports Illustrated — the latter through a relationship he built consulting on the New York Red Bulls’ stadium naming-rights deal — as evidence of what a scrappier, relationship-driven sales approach can produce.
The Host Committee also had to adapt when it lost Liberty State Park as a planned event site. It led to other options.
Mangione pointed to a watch party at UBS Arena on Long Island, where roughly 15,000 people turned out for a USA match, as a model for how Rutgers might use events to bring new people onto campus.
“I do think there’s a play with amplifying activations,” Mangione said, describing conversations with the Jets and Giants about outdoor gatherings around games. “There’s something with these viewing parties.”
It’s all about Mangione’s greater vision for sponsors: access.
Rutgers’ enrollment has been climbing. That growing, captive population is itself an asset he intends to sell, Mangione said.
“Rutgers is indexing great from an enrollment perspective, even putting kids on wait lists, which hasn’t happened in a while,” he said. “It’s not only about the athletics — it gives these brands the opportunity to get in front of all these students.”
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“Don’t mess it up. Means the world to me.”
That’s what Mangione’s son’s high school basketball coach — a Rutgers alum — texted him the day the hire was announced. It wasn’t an isolated reaction.
“I was shocked by the inbound I got — not only from brands and people, but from friends I didn’t even know went to Rutgers,” Mangione said.
That kind of reaction reinforced an idea he’s pushing internally: identifying every Rutgers alum running a company in America, the same approach he used years earlier chasing arena naming rights.
“When we moved the Nets to Brooklyn and were trying to find a naming-rights partner, the first thing we did was research every CEO born in Brooklyn,” Mangione said. “I’m not saying they’ll all do a deal. But they took the call, because we got them in the heart. I think Rutgers can be the same way.”
It all starts with people, Mangione said.
Finding the right people, wherever they come from — shaped how he built his staff at the World Cup Host Committee, where he deliberately looked past traditional sports-industry résumés when hiring, pulling in colleagues from Excel Sports and Madison Square Garden alongside people with political and legal backgrounds tied to the state.
“A lot of them knew the ins and outs of the state, but they weren’t walking to the right brand,” he said.
The mix, Mangione said, was intentional — people who understood New Jersey’s institutions paired with people who understood how brands think.
Four sponsorship calls were already on his calendar within his first few days on the job. But Mangione said his focus right now is internal, not external.
“It’s all about the people,” he said. “I want to make sure we have the right people, and more importantly, that we’re all aligned.”
