With the 2026 World Cup bringing matches to the Bay Area and Los Angeles gearing up to host the 2028 Olympics, sport is about to take over this region’s calendar in a way it hasn’t in decades. For the Irish Network Bay Area, that felt like the right moment to ask a bigger question: what does sport actually look like from the inside, and what does the Irish and Irish-American experience bring to it?
That question was the starting point for The Business of Sport, our panel event held last night. It turned into one of the most engaging conversations we’ve hosted this year.
The Panel
We brought together three people who’ve lived sport at very different levels.
Joey Nevin, Vice President of Giants Enterprises for the San Francisco Giants, oversees the business ventures that sit alongside the baseball team itself, from Oracle Park’s other uses to the organization’s broader entertainment footprint. A San Francisco native with three Irish grandparents, Joey has spent nearly two decades building out that side of the business.
Aisling Blake was Ireland’s #1 ranked squash player before becoming the owner of Squash Zone. She’s coached teenagers in the sport and now runs her own business, bringing a competitor’s instincts to a very different kind of pressure.
Barry John Walsh played county football for Kerry before coming to the US on a J1 visa and working in hospitality. He’s now the owner-operator of Highfield Hospitality and owns 2 bars in San Francisco.
The conversation was moderated by journalist Yvonne Judge, who kept the panel moving between the personal, the competitive, and the commercial throughout the evening.
What We Talked About
The evening opened with a reminder from Consul General Marianne Bolger of Ireland’s commitment to sports diplomacy.
From there, the panel dug into how competitive sport shapes the way people operate later in life. Barry John raised self-criticism as a recurring theme, not the harsh kind, but the habit elite athletes develop of honestly assessing their own performance in order to improve it. Aisling talked about how directly she draws on her playing days when running her business today, describing a mindset of staying relaxed but alert, and of increasingly just relaxing into who she is rather than who she thinks she should be. Joey framed it in terms of standards and habits: keep those right, he said, and the score takes care of itself.
There was also a clear sense of pride in the Bay Area itself as a sports town: a genuinely diverse fan base willing to turn out for teams and countries well beyond the obvious. There is a feeling, as more than one panelist put it, that the region’s sports energy is back.
Some of the best moments were the most personal. Aisling, on the fear of failure: “What’s the worst that could happen? You could go home and live in Sligo. That’s grand.” Barry John, on what he looks for in people, in business as much as in sport: he’d rather work with people he enjoys than people who are simply good. Joey spoke about his own sense of purpose in bringing the best of Ireland to America.
Aisling closed with a line that got one of the biggest laughs of the night, on how she wants to leave it all behind one day: in a cloud of smoke.
Thank You
Thank you to Joey, Aisling, and Barry John for such a candid conversation, to Yvonne for guiding it, and to everyone who came out to be part of it. If this is any indication of how the Bay Area’s Irish community shows up for sport, the next few years are going to be a lot of fun.
Supported by Members
Making it in America is a members-only panel series. Membership is open to all, and for only $50 a year, a bargain for those looking to build community.
