Darren Rovell: CNBC’s Multi-Beat, Multi-Platform Game-Changer

Obviously the big story right now is Melanie Oudin. I found it interesting looking at your Twitter feed – last week so many people were just getting to know her for the first time, and meanwhile you were already there posing questions about endorsements. You got it! 
It shows how you think.

I think one of my strengths is – I get very angry about what other people do. There’s not a tremendous amount of competition, but whether it’s the Wall Street Journal, or the New York Times or anyone, you know, or the local paper – I feel like I read as much as possible, and I get angry when someone beats me to the punch. So I gotta be ahead of it. I always gotta be ahead of it. That’s a hard task! To always know what’s going on. And that’s true for every reporter. I feel like with the speed of how everything comes out and the speed that we’re dealing with right now, reporters are almost expected to know everything on their beat at every second. And — that’s tough! I mean, as someone covering the business of sports I talk to people during these two weeks of the US Open and I don’t talk to them again. I mean I try to reach out to them, but there’s just so many people in your Rolodex and you have to do what’s topical.

How does a sponsor – whether it’s a current sponsor or a potential sponsor – how do they react on their end to someone like Oudin having such an unexpected run on such a big stage?

It depends. I mean, it really depends. I feel like Adidas might be able to do something limited edition with Oudin. They’re not, but you have to give them credit: before the open, before most people even knew her, even though she made it to the 4th round of Wimbledon, they already had her in a campaign, which is pretty cool.

Yeah, with Sam Querrey, who I saw play the other day.

Ugh, I saw Andy Murray play, which was horrrrrrrible. Oh my gosh, it was so bad.

I know, I was so bummed that Roddick lost early too!

Ugh. Yeah, so I think it depends. I think Nike is always best with the quick strike stuff. But you know, there’s a lot involved with Oudin. I think the story with her 26-year-old agent is a cool thing. I feel like I watch a sporting event different than other people. I have to be able to tell the story as businessy as I can, but at the same time my goal has always been that the sports fan needs to hear about the business of sports. They can’t be a complete sports fan if they don’t know their owner’s capacity to spend or certainly know about the collective bargaining agreements coming up for all the sports that are going to have to go through that in the next few years. But my job is: I want to trick people into thinking they’re reading their regular old article and then they happen to learn something. Unfortunately in the sports world, the word “business” has a negative connotation. People going in don’t want to read about it or hear about it. But I feel like I need to present it in a way that it’s just like everything else they’re reading.

The Oudin situation kind of reminds me – did you read that article about the gymnast Nastia Liukin and all of her endorsements that was in the New York Times Magazine back during the Olympics?

Oh yeah, of course.

Oudin kind of reminds me of that – young, almost a blank slate in many ways.

Yeah, but what’s interesting is that I can understand, you know, Olympians sort of coming out of nowhere because that’s just the timing – all the sudden someone appears – but I think in tennis there’s been a radar for so long, you know, for ‘this kid who plays, her name is Sharapova’ or Venus Williams or Serena Williams – or even a Capriati. Oudin I don’t think people knew about, which makes the story that much better: that you can have a star that comes out of nowhere.

>>>NEXT: GAMBLING STORIES ARE AWESOME; MARCH MADNESS, NOT SO MUCH

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.