The Graeme Roustan Show: Jim Van Stone

The Hockey News' Money and Power 2025 hockey business annual is available at THN.com/free, featuring the annual 100 people of power and influence list.

W. Graeme Roustan, owner and publisher of The Hockey News, sat down with special guests for peer-to-peer conversations also featured in the issue, including Monumental Sports and Entertainment’s president of business operations and chief commercial officer, Jim Van Stone.

Here's their full conversation in The Graeme Roustan Show:

Read along with an excerpt from their discussion:

W. GRAEME ROUSTAN: I want to start with you. Where do you come from? What sports did you play? Where’d you go to college?

JIM VAN STONE: I grew up in the Philly area, so I basically had a passion for sports all of my life. I majored in communications at a small New Jersey state college called William Paterson. I learned a lot of different interpersonal skills and really got an interest in sales. After graduating, I spent two years selling telephone systems, and then I found out about a great sports-management program at Temple University in Philadelphia. All these great sports-management programs required you to do internships, and I got my foot in the door at my first internship with the Philadelphia 76ers.

I’ve been on the sales-and-marketing side ever since that internship turned into a full-time job. I started my career selling tickets, and what I love about tickets is you’re doing every type of job. You’re doing sales. You’re doing marketing. You’re doing customer service. PR. It’s just a great entry-level opportunity, and I was fortunate. I had some great mentors along the way. I’ve worked for some outstanding organizations, and this year, my 18th season with the Washington Capitals and Monumental Sports and Entertainment, I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.

WGR: I’ve got to believe that winning a Stanley Cup helps business, even though it’s been a couple of years since you have won. It’s still part of the whole experience, isn’t it?

JVS: It really is. Certainly, we’ve been very fortunate from a franchise standpoint. We had an incredible decade in the 2010s. One of the things that really is important, and what I find so dynamic about hockey, is everyone wants to root for a great team, but hockey players both on the ice and off the ice are the most engaging people and represent this sport really, really well. We’ve been fortunate that our star players have been the best players on the ice, and, off the ice, are willing to give back to the community and really want to be a part of the community. Winning helps set the table, but it is really the way you represent yourself in the community. And I think our team has done an outstanding job from that standpoint, and it’s something that we’re really proud of from an organizational end.

WGR: Your team and your organization are a little different from others because you have an NBA team, an NHL team, a WNBA team, the concert business, and you own the building that you’re in. Then, of course, you’ve got practice facilities and community facilities. And then, you go and you buy the regional sports network, and now, you’re in the media business. How’s that going?

JVS: It’s been phenomenal. We really have the ability, from an end-to-end-solution standpoint, to really control our messaging. It really is a 360-degree engagement opportunity. Having the network, owning the content and doing the broadcast really allows us to just build a better connection to the viewing audience. What’s incredible is that 80-plus percent of the marketplace is an unduplicated audience. What I mean by that is that 20 percent is coming to games, but there’s 80 percent of the people that are in the marketplace that are really consuming our hockey brand and our basketball brand, so we feel really strongly about the value of regional sports networks. We think our rights are one of the most important pieces, and I think having control of the venue and the live-events piece, the IP and the media side, really allows us to tell a message. It’s not only the game-production piece of it, but we’re really producing a story and content to help grow the game.

For this conversation, more interviews and a deep look into the world of the hockey business, check out The Hockey News' Money and Power 2025 issue, available at THN.com/free.