Sales Disruptors: How San Jose Sharks President Jonathan Becher Is Innovating the Fan Experience Despite the COVID-19 Pandemic

 

Jonathan Becher, President of the San Jose Sharks, likes to say he isn’t the president of the San Jose Sharks.

It’s not a tactic to avoid getting recognized at Starbucks. For Becher, it’s just the truth. His true title is President of Sharks Sports and Entertainment, with his purview extending past the National Hockey League team to the minor league franchise, facilities, a non-profit and other wings of the business.

Still, men skating and using sticks in an attempt to get a rubber disk past a man with a glove drives most of their business. So, when the actual hockey stops, as it has during the coronavirus pandemic, what do you do to keep fans connected? If you’re Becher, you adapt.

“I don’t think we’re in the business of putting on a hockey game,” he said. “What we’re actually in the business of is making memories.”

Of course, that can be watching Evander Kane light the lamp in the third period, but Becher and his team are thinking of different ways for fans to make memories. It’s meant diving in to areas the team previously eschewed, like simulated games using a video game platform.

The team has given some fans the opportunity to create an avatar and “suit up” next to their favorite Sharks players during the games the team puts out on its Twitch channel.

“They’ve been surprisingly, to me anyway, because I’m not a gamer, popular,” Becher said. “Partly, I think it’s because we did some cool stuff.”

One fan, after his digital alter ego scored the winning goal, posted on social that it was the best experience of his life. Another memory made thanks to the Sharks – without the team even taking to the physical ice. Those moments are just one of the innovations Becher believes will be “sticky” and carry over once the team is able to play games again.

“Here’s a new line of business that didn’t occur to us before, that was born out of necessity because of this disruption, and which we will continue even long after live games are back, because not everyone can be in our building in one night,” he said.

Xactly is proud to live on the leading edge of sales performance management, and our podcasts give us a way to share that insight with you directly. For more thought-leading episodes of Sales Disruptors by Xactly, check us out on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Follow us on social media for the latest updates in B2B!
Twitter – @MarketScale
Facebook – facebook.com/marketscale
LinkedIn – linkedin.com/company/marketscale

Follow us on social media for the latest updates in B2B!

Image

Latest

grain storage
Revolutionizing Grain Storage: A Peek into MKC and Producer Ag’s Innovative Facilities
June 12, 2025

Embrace the future of grain storage as Jon Brown, Director of Facilities for MKC Properties and Producer Ag, guides you through their state-of-the-art, automation-driven facilities. Discover how they truly set industry standards for efficiency in loading, unloading, and handling grain. What You’ll Learn — The Evolution of MKC and Producer Ag’s Grain Facilities —…

Read More
Advancing Rehabilitative Care Through Global Practice Standards and Credentialing | Andrea Christie and Karlene Miller | EP#2 - Live from ICN
Advancing Rehabilitative Care Through Global Practice Standards and Credentialing – Live from ICN
June 12, 2025

Broadcasting from the 2025 International Council of Nurses Congress in Helsinki, host Lea Sims welcomes two inspiring Jamaican nurses—Andrea Christie, MSc, BSN, ENLAC, RM, RN, JP, and Karlene Miller, RN—to discuss the vital but often overlooked specialty of rehabilitative nursing. With decades of combined experience in rehabilitation and midwifery, both guests offer an impassioned…

Read More
career resilience
Asking Questions Works: Career Resilience, Mentorship, and Real Growth in Real Estate and Beyond
June 11, 2025

In this inspiring episode of PQ: Conversations That Build Equity, host Jason Winningham sits down with Rosanna Hudson—affectionately known as “RoRo”—to explore how career resilience fuels the development of professional equity through trust, adaptability, and the courage to ask better questions. Rosanna is a seasoned real estate broker licensed in both Texas and California,…

Read More
Build the Why, Not Just the What
June 11, 2025

There comes a point where you stop asking what you’re building and start asking why you’re building it. That shift is where high-impact work begins. It’s when you move from shipping features to shaping purpose. Anyone can launch a roadmap, spec out a feature, or refine a UI. But the heartbeat of the product lives…

Read More