Hidden Gems: Meet Josh Finn, Ben Stack, and Ritom Sen of JBR Sports

Today we’d like to introduce you to Josh Finn, Ben Stack, and Ritom Sen.  

Hi Josh, Ben, & Ritom, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
The three of us, Josh Finn, Ben Stack, and Ritom Sen, are all friends from high school. We started with just an idea to do a summer basketball league for college-aged kids in our town. There was a rec league through community education that we all loved playing in throughout high school, but we realized that once we graduated, we didn’t have a league to play in. So, in the summer we thought it was the perfect time to host a league in the community. Our mission? Make recreational sports better. We added a lot of cool features that you wouldn’t see in a normal rec league, such as weekly video mixtapes of games, an all-star weekend, weekly write-ups, player cards, stat keeping, and more. We also included larger prizes for winners of the league, MVP, and DPOY. This upgraded rec experience helped grow our social media presence and helped us retain/grow our audience. Since our first basketball league, we have held multiple basketball tournaments, online video game tournaments, volleyball tournaments, and more. In the future, we are already planning more leagues and are partnering with the city of Saline to host a kid’s field day during Summer Fest on August 14th! We hope to expand JBR Sports into the college scene at the University of Michigan and continue to diversify the sports we offer while creating unique experiences for our participants. 

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Our main struggles pertain to growing our audiences and outreach, getting sponsorships for our events, and maintaining a good profit margin without having our own facilities. This being said, one unique problem that we had to face was that we started our company during the COVID pandemic. This was an interesting problem to face because many people did not want to rent our facilities or play in our leagues at the risk of spreading the virus. We worked through this problem by negotiating and enforcing policies to ensure the protection of people throughout the league. If we had not persevered through this problem, we would not be where we are today. We have taken what we learned through COVID and have applied it to everything we have done to ensure a better customer experience. Whether it is technical problems, disagreements among the three of us, or problems stopping us from running our tournaments/leagues smoothly, we always problem-solve and figure everything out to ensure the best experience for our participants. We have had to cancel/delay events, cold call people, go door to door to market our events, and more. These experiences have helped us learn to stay calm in stressful situations and have developed our problem-solving skills in real-world applications. 

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
To start, we are an event management company that specializes in hosting sporting events. We offer events in Basketball, Volleyball, and Esports as of now, but are quickly expanding into Soccer, Pickleball, Spike ball, and more. Our biggest event is our summer basketball league, the JBR Champions League, which is a recreational basketball league for high school and college students. What separates JBR Sports from other organizations is the ‘luxury’ and ‘professional’ aspects of our events: we offer photography, videography, social media coverage, and much more at every event that we host. This really puts the spotlight on the participants and creates a memorable experience. We are inclusive of everyone to participate in our events and create a diverse, equitable, yet competitive environment that is unlike any other recreational event. By creating this high-quality recreational experience, our participants are more likely to return and talk about us with their friends, which has helped us grow over the last year! 

We love surprises, fun facts, and unexpected stories. Is there something you can share that might surprise us?
All three of us are all still in college! Ben is a baseball player for Emerson College in Boston. Ritom has played the piano since he was 3 and his favorite artist is Chopin. Josh is an avid golfer; he was going to play golf in college but later decided not to. 

Contact Info:

• Website: www.jbrsports.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jbrsports/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jbrsportsorg/

Image Credits
JBR Sports