How The Women Of Rocket Arena Help Put On Nearly 200 Ticketed Annual Events 

With National Girls & Women in Sports Day falling on Feb. 4, we thought it was the perfect excuse to highlight a few of the team members at Rocket Arena, which includes seven women making up the Booking and Events team. The staff at the Cleveland venue – which includes an additional four women working in marketing, communications and security – help put on nearly 200 ticketed events each year, with the booking and events’ team’s responsibilities including building the home schedules for the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers and AHL’s Cleveland Monsters. 

The team of women drive both the live event calendar and the digital presence of the 18,073-capacity arena, which hosts 50 concerts annually and is home to the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers, as well as special events. Plus, the team oversees approximately 1,400 private events per year including corporate gatherings, community celebrations and more.

Brooke Lowery serves as Senior Vice President of Booking and Events and oversees the following women: Genna Capasso, Manager of Booking Events; Joy Zoccola, Event Scheduling and Service Specialist; Shari Lindenbaum, Director of Private Events; Allie Hippler,  Manager of Event Development; Meghan Shank, Senior Director of Special Events; and Morgan Ewert, Senior Manager, Event Services.

Carrie Samek is the Vice President of Event and Arena Marketing and oversees Olivia Christiansen, Manager of Arena Marketing, with the team at Rocket Arena also including Katie Priefer, Venue Communications Coordinator, and Jenn Pfeister, Vice President, Security.

Pollstar caught up with Lowery and Samek to learn more.

Pollstar: Can you share how you got your start in your career and how you made your way to Rocket Arena and working with the Cavs?  

Carrie Samek: I’ve been with the Cavaliers for 10 years. I came over in 2015. Before I worked for the Cavs, I worked for Live Nation as their marketing director. I worked for Michael Belkin in the Cleveland office, but I worked on shows all over Ohio and Pennsylvania. I worked there for 10 years and I was just looking for something more in the sports world and to be able to work in one place. I’m also a big fan of LeBron James, being a Cleveland Cavs fan [and] when he came home it was a big deal for us. When this opportunity came up, they were like, “Do you want to maybe come over to the Cavs side?” I was like, “That would be amazing.” And then the year I came over, we won the championship.

I really got thrown into the fire. Starting with the Cavs, I was just supposed to be doing the marketing for the events, but then once they learned my media buying background, they had me do both Cavs and events. So my job is really 50/50 split between arena events and the Cavs. And then Olivia Christensen is my assistant. She handles all of our social media for the arena as well.

Brooke Lowery: I went to school at the Ohio State University and literally walked up to a table at a student involvement fair and found the kids that were bringing the musical artists and concerts to the campus and joined that club. That club was called the Ohio Union Activities Board. Through that specific extracurricular activity, I was able to bring a ton of talent to the university campus and I received an internship at the Schottenstein Center, which is the arena on the campus of Ohio State, in their booking department. So really, that was the first time I realized, oh, “This is a real life job (laughs) and adults can do this. It’s not just for fun.”

I really kind of made my way professionally via that internship. I did leave the industry for a couple of years. I actually taught sixth grade English in California for two years … but I made my way back to live events. And I actually worked for eight years in booking and production for Nationwide Arena, the home of the [NHL] Columbus Blue Jackets as well as the Schottenstein Center. And while I was in Columbus, I booked the Schottenstein Center, Nationwide Arena, and Ohio Stadium. We opened the stadium back up to concerts as well. 

Much like Carrie, I was called to Cleveland. I’ve been a Cleveland sports fan my whole life and a huge Cavs fan as well. And so when this job opportunity came open, I was really excited about the opportunity to move to Cleveland and work for a team and an organization that I love. I’ve been here six years and my team is pretty robust. I think it’s pretty unique in the booking world and that we are really all-encompassing. So, we’re not just focused on concerts and special events. We do all the scheduling for the Cavs via the NBA. We also do all the scheduling for the Cleveland Monsters, which is our American Hockey League team. And we do over 1,400 private events in our banquet spaces in the arena throughout the course of the year. As of Tuesday, there are nine of us strong on our booking and events team.

How do you approach booking all those events?

Brooke Lowery: It’s really a puzzle and [though] I love rock music and I like to think that I’m not a big nerd, really I’m a big nerd so a puzzle [makes me] excited. So, it’s really  calendaring; being super organized. Obviously from a kind of priority standpoint, the team tenants get the first run of dates and they’re really planning pretty far in advance as it relates to future game schedules. So, we work with both teams and both leagues and ensure that we don’t have 50 double headers. The Cavs get some dates; the Monsters get some dates. We can do double headers. We usually have maybe three to five per season and we have to work closely with the operations team to ensure that all the timing of those things work out. It really is filling in the schedule from there with our promoter partners and community partners and folks that really enjoy having their events at Rocket Arena.

Carrie, what’s your philosophy as far as marketing goes?

Carrie Samek: I think Cleveland is a unique market where we, I feel, really have to roll [our] sleeves up to sell every single ticket. The shows here don’t sell out right away. An old boss of mine used to say it’s never a bad booking [it’s] bad marketing. … Working even with all of our promoter partners like AEG, Live Nation, Black Promoters Collective, I’m here to support whatever they really need for all the concert side of things … all the different assets that we can provide at this arena, especially on the Cavs broadcast side. So myself and Olivia, we handle all of the scheduling for the broadcast. So we get to insert concert TV spots, radio spots, [etc.]. So that’s a huge asset for us from promoters. And just being able to kind of utilize the budget to make sure all these events are doing the best that they can. It’s nice to be able to have the Cavs media buying side too, just to see what we can do on that side to support all the events that come through. But it’s fun. I like doing both sides just because they are very different. It keeps us busy and it’s never boring.

Can you talk about what’s special about having all these women working together on your team?

Brooke Lowery:  I would say I think it is fairly unique to have this many women in leadership roles that touch all the different parts of the event booking, planning and executing process. Don’t get me wrong, we work with a ton of fabulous men and folks in our industry and in our building and venue that are tremendous allies and tremendous mentors. But what I think is really unique and positive about having a team that’s majority women is we’re super collaborative. It’s not, you know, crazy competition. Everybody’s looking out for one another. It’s like a real sisterhood, I would say. Everyone wants the client to have a great experience, the artist to have a great experience, the promoter to have a great experience, the fan to have a ton of fun at the event. And so, everyone’s really rowing the boat in the same direction, so to speak. We all want the same end result. And so whatever it takes to get there, we’re going to help each other to to do.

Carrie Samek: I would just say especially on the booking side, I think it is so unique to have that many women working on all these events. Just looking at other venues or just the industry in general, it’s great to have so many women even on the production side with Morgan; Katie working on all these stories for us on the comm side. It is really a great network of women that we work with at this arena.

Brooke Lowery: I would add, every woman that works on the team is pretty unique and their skill set is pretty unique so everyone has kind of a different niche and so that’s really helpful to be able to learn from each other but also we can can lean on each other if we need some support in a certain area where we maybe don’t have all the answers or need some additional questions to be answered to make each event a success.

Since you have been working in the industry, have you seen things changing for the better as far as more women working in live and sports?

Carrie Samek: I think from my perspective, I’ve been doing this now for 20 years, I think more women are in these leadership roles which I haven’t seen. I would say in the last even like five years I just feel that so many more women are really taking on these incredible positions, not just with the Cavs or Rocket Arena but just in the industry in general. It’s just really inspiring to see all these women in these positions, which I look up to a lot of the women and [looking to the] future, coming in we have a lot of seasonal positions which I love having more people come in right out of college. It’s a great experience for them.

Brooke Lowery: I would agree with everything Carrie said and I would add, we here in Cleveland have some really fabulous organizations that support women and support bringing up women in sports and events specifically. We have a really active WISE chapter. WISE is Women in Sports and Events. We have a team member resource group [at Rocket Arena] called Empower Her. The vast majority of the women in the organization are a part of Empower Her. We have formalized mentorship programs, informal mentorship programs, book clubs. It’s really been a great program that’s gotten off the ground … especially some of the younger women that are entering the workforce in this industry to support them and give them some additional assets and folks to talk to.  I’m also inspired by the growth of women’s sports in general. We hosted the women’s Final Four just a few years back and it was the most watched women’s college game of all time, Caitlin Clark’s senior year at Iowa. And really seeing the growth of the WNBA, we’re going to have a WNBA team here in Cleveland in 2028. That to me has just been astronomical in growth from the standpoint of not just women working in the industry but people being excited about the growth of women in sport.

Any upcoming events in the venue that you’re especially excited about? 

Carrie Samek: I’m excited for ASAP Rocky that we just announced. We haven’t had him [before]. That’s in May.

Brooke Lowery: I’m actually really excited for New Edition with Toni Braxton and Boyz II Men. That’s in February. A great Valentine’s Day show. Can’t wait for that one.  I really enjoy the city-wide events as well. We’re hosting the NCAA Division 1 Wrestling Championships in March. It’s a huge event for our city. It’s a huge event for our arena. There’ll be a lot of wrestling fans throughout downtown Cleveland and it’s going to make downtown packed. It’s going to fill the hotels. And so when we do those large scale events like that that take over the whole city, I really love those because you can truly see the economic impact that the arena has on a city like Cleveland.

Any advice that you’d give to women wanting to work in sports or the live industry?   

Brooke Lowery: I am a firm believer that people love to talk about themselves. You know, send that LinkedIn request, send that LinkedIn message. Ask for the informational interview. What’s the worst thing that’s going to happen is your message gets ignored. The best thing that’s going to happen is they say, “Yeah, send me some dates and times you’re available.”  So being curious and being bold enough to reach out to your heroes and your idols and the folks that you want to learn from.

Carrie Samek: I would just say too, just try to go to as many networking events that you can, even if you can’t travel outside of the city that you’re at, like Brooke said there’s these WISE events or even just coming to games and understanding who is here on site to meet with I think makes a huge difference. Just expanding your network is really how you can get your foot in the door.

Brooke Lowery: It’s always crazy to me how small our industry actually is. Everyone knows one another. If I don’t know that person,  I know someone that knows that person.