Corey Galloway has been the head of MTV studio operations, the director of global production at Sesame Workshop, a financial adviser to pro athletes, and the founder of a private equity firm, Legacy Growth Partners. His latest challenge is ownership of an expansion arena football franchise, the New York Streets, which begin play in the National Arena League in April.
The Streets will play home games at the Westchester County Center in White Plains, the same home venue as the WNBA’s New York Liberty and the G-League’s Westchester Knicks, with the possibility of also hosting a game at Madison Square Garden.
Galloway sees arena football as viable contender for the second-tier football market. While European soccer leagues have lower divisions, the NFL doesn’t. The Alliance of American Football launched earlier this month and the XFL will follow suit next year, but, even so, there remains a void in late spring and summer.
“You’re seeing a lot of capital being pushed around innovation,” Galloway said. “The opportunity that we see when it comes to spring/summer arena football is, we can get to the fans and figure out what works best.”
That starts with ensuring the team is as good as it can be. Galloway, the first African-American majority owner in New York sports history, has acquired a majority stake in PacPlex, a 73,000-square-foot sports facility in Canarsie, Brooklyn, where a new turf field has been installed for practices. A physical therapy facility is also planned.
The franchise is using technology at the field level. The Streets have partnered with SportTesting for combine-style timing devices. SportTesting offers precise split times on 40-yard dashes and shuttle runs. Players can wear a motion-activated bracelet that can time movement. The Streets are using the tech for granular measurements, too.
“We want to see how fast guys get in and out of breaks,” said Wayne Morgan, a former Syracuse cornerback now serving as the Streets’ player personnel manager.
Those component times indicate how fast a player’s “game speed” is, Galloway said. He added that routes can be timed and compared to the duration of pass protection. If a five-yard out pattern requires 1.2 seconds to run, the offense can play blocking schemes accordingly.
“They haven’t said it, but that’s kind of the methodology that the Patriots use,” said Galloway, who was a part of operations for another indoor football team, the Harrisburg Stampede, from 2012 to 2015. “If you look at their inside routes, they’re unstoppable because you can never beat math.”
The Streets’ first head coach is Rick Marsilio, a former college quarterback with extensive indoor football coaching experience. The team’s director of player personnel is former NFL receiver Devale Ellis. Sports performance and speed development coach Ric Donaldson oversees strength and conditioning. David Legree, a former Syracuse quarterback who later starred at Hampton, signed on as the team’s first recruit.
The team’s nickname hails from the city’s iconic thoroughfares, like Broadway, Wall Street, Madison Avenue, Fifth Ave, and so on. “The essence of New York are the streets,” Galloway said, adding his hope that the brand can “live beyond the arena football walls.”
As a 10-year veteran of the venture capital and angel investment world, Galloway said he saw Occulus in its early days at Facebook and Waze at a conference before Google acquired the startup. He hopes the Streets can utilize emerging tech for the fan experience. He hinted that halftime shows would be a spectacle, and that technology can play a role. Galloway mused about fans having the option to wear SoundSight headphones, which come with a built-in video camera, as a way to give viewers at home the chance “to experience the game from a POV.”
“How do you put those into play in real time in real life?” Galloway said. “I think that’s our advantage of having an arena team and really being able to control the innovation experience.”