Portland’s new minor league basketball team is leveraging its high-profile owners to launch a young professional group.
The Maine Red Claws Young Leaders Program grew out of many people dealing with the team expressing interest in meeting one or more of the team’s owners, which includes such heavyweights as Bill Ryan, chairman of TD Bank, and Michael Dubyak, CEO of Wright Express, says Jana Spaulding, the team’s director of public and community relations. “It’s kind of a who’s who of businessmen in the state of Maine,” Spaulding says. “These are people that people want to know.”
The program — a partnership with the Portland Press Herald and Propel, the young professionals group affiliated with the Portland chamber — is open to 150 individuals willing to pay $300. Membership brings one season ticket, access to pre-game talks with coaching staff, plus invites to 10 special events, each of which includes one of the team owners or other business person as a guest speaker. Spaulding says the events will offer an “intimate setting” and allow “complete off-the-record exchanges between these individuals and these speakers.”
So far, Spaulding says about 80 people have signed up for the program. Most are young professionals “eager to expand their own horizons,” Spaulding says. “[The program] was designed for up-and-coming business leaders rather than well-established people in the community. They can get out of it as much as they put into it.”
The program is being marketed as an opportunity for young professionals to rub elbows with some well-known businessmen, but the team’s motives are not completely selfless. “These are our future season ticket holders and business partners,” Spaulding says. “It gives us an opportunity to grow those relationships from an early stage over the next several years.”
Also, Spaulding says the team’s owners see the program as an opportunity to scout for young talent. “It’s definitely a give and take,” she says.
