Role Alert: Head of Sports & Entertainment

Or head of Premier League Mornings, Movie Nights & Comedy Shows

The TL;DR: We’re hiring for a Head of Sports & Entertainment Partnerships, apply here. As always, membership applications are here.

When we first started Maxwell we had a saying — Entertaining, not Entertainment. The idea was that your entertainment for the evening SHOULD be the person sitting next to you at the dinner table instead of some panel discussion — you shouldn’t show up to hear ONE interesting person speak, EVERYONE should be interesting was the goal.

While that still underpins much of our programming and ethos, and is core to the Head of Bookclubs and Discussions role, we recognized that music, film and sports, things you certainly sit and listen/watch and often DON’T engage with people as much during the event, are obviously huge cultural organizers and not having an intentional strategy around them would be a huge loss.

Sports can give you something to cheer for, rally around and break the ice, and whether you show up for SEC football, Premier League soccer or an F1 Watch Party is linked to your identity. Music and Film enthusiasts can have deeper things in common than just liking top 40 pop songs or Marvel films (no offense) that lead to deeper cultural and intellectual resonance.

And we realized there was an opening to do these types of events intentionally.

I’m a huge Arsenal fan but on most morning I like a more tranquil environment where I can actually sit comfortably to watch, with perhaps not as much yelling as at a bar, but still social — something between my living room couch and the Arsenal supporters pub.

I don’t LOVE live music but again, mostly due to the packed-like-sardines nature of most concerts. But more curated concerts in a more Sofar Sounds vibe?

So we’ve started organizing soccer watch parties with various groups including NYCFooty, the first of which was a Gotham FC NWSL watch party for the Championship game (which they won!) and we did an amazing U.S. Open Watch party with Chase Travel and Andy Roddick.

We’re working on amazing partnerships in film with studios and production houses to do intentional programming and working directly with artists to do the same.

Ultimately while we realized the point of Maxwell wasn’t entertainment, entertainment with an intellectual, more personal angle could be a core part of the community flywheel that deserved special attention.

So we’re hiring someone to do this full-time and amp this up — if you want to help us come up with the next cool partnership idea, apply here, and as always, membership is open here.

Cheers,

David, Kyle & Joelle