Winning the Super Bowl of FP&A – with Cayla Pingel

Cayla Pingel has led FP&A in sports, gaming and entertainment at companies including Warner Bros, Fox Sports and most recently, 2K Games, a global video game company. At Fox Sports she financially quarterbacked the full P&L for the biggest sporting events including the Super Bowl, the World Series, and the NFL Baseball World Cup.
The senior Director, Finance at 2K describes her approach to business partnering as more like a “sports agent” (“like Jerry Maguire but more calm” says Pingel).

Pingel says “I tell my business partners to think of me as your agent. I’m going to go out and negotiate this for you from a financial perspective. Tell me what you need and let me help sell this so that we can make the case and do it.”

In this episode:

• Being at Fox Sports when live sports came screeching to a halt during COVID
• Show me the Money – managing the superbowl of FP&A at Fox Sports, Warner Bros and 2K and the power of ratings for finance
• How blowouts affect financial performance
• Uncovering the differences between Accounting vs FP&A at Fox Sports
• Why I chose the FP&A direction rather than a COO role
• Most important metrics in sports businesses
• Heavy fixed costs and the challenges of live broadcasting
• Huge tech, streaming and viewership changes in media/sports and entertainment – and how to forecast the future of the game for finance pros
• Metrics in game playing: and finance discussions about whether to put new features in a game
• Leading the Los Angeles chapter for women in sports and events
• Flying out to Prague six weeks into a new job at Warner Bros to fix a mess and the strategic resolution 
• March Madness ‘Budget Season’ Challenge at Fox Sports – and why the  loser has to do the waterfall charts

Follow and contact Cayla Pingel on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/cayla-pingel-410a1a73/