Pete Bevacqua ’93, Chairman, NBC Sports Group, and Jack Swarbrick

Presented by Industry Insights

Pete Bevacqua, Chairman, NBC Sports Group, sits down with Jack Swarbrick, to discuss the future of Media and Sports. Indi Jackson will make a special guest appearance during the show to discuss her new podcast, Brave Voices.

Pete Bevacqua

Pete Bevacqua is Chairman, NBC Sports Group. He was promoted in September 2020, becoming the third Chairman in the history of NBC Sports. In this role, he oversees NBC Sports Group’s unprecedented collection of assets and platforms, which includes NBC Sports, NBC Olympics, NBCSN, Golf Channel, Olympic Channel: Home of Team USA, NBC Sports Regional Networks, NBC Sports Digital, and two transactional sports businesses, GolfNow and SportsEngine. He reports to Mark Lazarus, Chairman, NBCUniversal Television and Streaming.

Together with his team, Bevacqua completed a number of key rights agreements. NBCUniversal re-acquired the complete U.S. media rights for all United States Golf Association championships, including the U.S. Open and U.S. Women’s Open, through 2026; agreed to a nine-year extension of the company’s PGA TOUR rights; secured a new Sunday night NFL Wild Card playoff game, which will be presented live across NBC, Telemundo, and Peacock in January 2021; and established NBCUniversal’s multi-year partnership with PointsBet, making PointsBet the official sports betting partner of NBC Sports.

Bevacqua joined NBCUniversal in September 2018 as President, NBC Sports Group, overseeing programming, marketing, digital, the NBC Sports Regional Networks, and all Golf businesses. In February 2019, Bevacqua assumed oversight of the entire sports division.

Previously, Bevacqua served as CEO of the PGA of America from 2012-2018. In this role, Bevacqua guided the business and overall strategy of one of the world’s largest sports organizations, serving the Association’s nearly 29,000 PGA Professionals.

Prior to the PGA of America, Bevacqua served as Global Head of Golf at Creative Artists Agency (CAA Sports). He was also Chief Business Officer for the USGA and served as the first Managing Director of the U.S. Open Championship.

Additional roles Bevacqua has had include World Golf Foundation Board of Directors’ Chairperson; a PGA World Alliance leadership team member; Chairperson of the International Golf Federation, a group that was instrumental in golf’s return to the Olympics; special advisor to the Captains Club for The Memorial Tournament; and a board member for RISE, an alliance of sports organizations that promote racial equality. A former SportsBusiness Journal “Forty Under 40” honoree, Bevacqua also received the 2016 March of Dimes Sports Leadership Award.

Bevacqua graduated from the University of Notre Dame magna cum laude (1993), with a B.A. in English. He earned a Juris Doctorate from Georgetown University Law Center, where he graduated cum laude (1997). He began his career as a legal associate at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP in New York City. Bevacqua and his wife, Tiffany, have three children.

Jack Swarbrick

John B. “Jack” Swarbrick Jr., a University of Notre Dame graduate now in his 13th year in 2020-21 as Vice President and James E. Rohr Director of Athletics at his alma mater, has attached his signature to a variety of new initiatives during his tenure:

Creating the STAND TOGETHER movement in conjunction with Notre Dame student-athletes, an equality initiative developed to create change locally and to be a catalyst for change nationally as it relates to social justice. Promoted Angie Torain to the newly created position of Senior Associate Athletics Director for Culture, Diversity and Engagement to lead the department in these initiatives.
Launching of Fighting Irish Media — a major enterprise that delivers better information about and access to Notre Dame and its athletic programs via expanded production and distribution of programming.
Developing a plan for expanding Notre Dame Stadium in order to make it a year-round asset for the University, while also improving the gameday experience for student-athletes and fans.
That initiative became reality with the 2014 announcement of the Campus Crossroads Project that added new structures to three sides of Notre Dame’s home football facility— creating new homes for student activities and recreation, career services, digital media, as well as academic disciplines anthropology, psychology, music and sacred music.
Hosting of major events to generate revenue for the campus and community. Since 2018 Notre Dame has hosted a Garth Brooks’ concert in Notre Dame Stadium (October 2018), the NHL Winter Classic in Notre Dame Stadium (January 2019), the 2019 U.S. Senior Open at the Warren Golf Course (June 2019) and an international soccer match between Liverpool and Dortmund in Notre Dame Stadium (July 2019).
Building of student-athlete programs to develop leadership skills, increase community service and provide mentoring and career services resources.
Meeting the performance needs of Notre Dame student-athletes through the establishment of a sports performance division to support and improve athletic performance through the application of science, medicine and technology.
Creating systems and structures to maximize the impact of technical expertise, environments, technology and service delivery on an athlete’s ability to optimize performance.

Born in Yonkers, New York, and raised in Yonkers and Bloomington, Indiana, Swarbrick is a 1976 magna cum laude graduate of Notre Dame, with a bachelor’s degree in economics. Upon graduating from Stanford University Law School in 1980, he accepted a position as an associate in the Indianapolis law firm Baker & Daniels. He was made partner in 1987 and spent 28 years with the firm. Swarbrick became Notre Dame’s 12th athletics director on July 16, 2008. He and his wife, Kimberly, are the parents of four children: Kate, a 2010 graduate of Saint Louis University; Connor, a 2011 graduate of Wake Forest University; Cal, a 2014 graduate of TCU; and Christopher, a 2015 graduate of Notre Dame.

Indi Jackson

Indi Jackson comes from Pontiac, MI, and graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2017. As a track and field record-breaking student-athlete, she minored in Computer Digital Technologies and majored in Film, Theatre, and Television. During undergrad, she created “Breaking the Cycle” an award-winning documentary about her family that appeared in film festivals across the country. After internships with NFL Films and the Detroit Lions, she returned to Notre Dame where she currently works as an Associate Producer for Men’s and Women’s Basketball. Throughout this role, she has won 2 Chicago Emmys, an SVG award, and created as well as host, “Brave Voices as ND”. The podcast is centered around the black student-athlete voice and aims to ease the tension around talking about race.