Earlier this year, OneTeam Partners, the US-based licensing firm, and one of its founders, the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA), launched a new international business venture to expand the company’s footprint.

The venture, titled OneTeam International, focuses on expanding OneTeam’s existing business verticals internationally and growing its player association partner network globally and across sports.

Created in November 2019, OneTeam represents the commercial interests of more than 20,000 players in baseball’s MLB, American football’s NFL, soccer’s MLS and women’s NWSL, the US Women’s national team, women’s basketball’s WNBA, and US Rugby, as well as college athletes.

Last week, the Japanese Baseball Players Association (JPBPA) was unveiled as the first officially announced partner of OneTeam International as part of plans to strengthen the position of baseball players in Japan and the US.

Jonas Baer-Hoffmann, who developed the business concept with the MLBPA and OneTeam, will lead internationalization efforts as OneTeam’s senior vice president of global business affairs and head of OneTeam International, based in Germany.

Baer-Hoffmann has nearly two decades of experience in the global player association movement and before his role with OneTeam, he most recently served as general secretary of FIFPRO, the international soccer players’ union.

He was also previously the first vice president of the World Players Association.

Baer-Hoffmann spoke to Sportcal (GlobalData Sport) about the launch of OneTeam International, why it chose to have a presence in the international market, how OneTeam differs from a regular player agency due to it being a player association (PA) owned business, and how he views the future of the internationalization of individual athletes.

What does OneTeam Partners do?

“OneTeam was founded originally by the NFL and MLB players' associations to collaborate around the entirety of the commercial programs that the PAs are running. The backbone is group licensing across gaming and trading cards and other hard goods.

“But in the meantime, OneTeam has built up capability across sponsorship content, venture, etc. With this step (internationalization), now we're following the path that it's been on for the last few years and starting with NFLPA and MLBPA, then adding the Analyst Players Association, the NWSL Players Association, the US Women's National Team PA, WNBPA, etc. So we’ve been expanding the partnerships of the PAs and now we're trying to provide that model to more PAs internationally.”

Why have you launched an international business now and what do you hope to achieve?

“I've been in the player association world for almost two decades, working across different sports on an international level and in different European setups. It’s the same trend that is playing out in US sports, it’s what we refer to as entering the athlete era, in which sometimes the name on the back of the jerseys is more important than the badge on the front. We believe the same thing is happening across the world.

“More player associations are looking to find the right partners in the right setups to help their athletes maximize the value that they have as a collective, not just individually, and with everything that the PAs and OneTeam have done over here, we're ideally suited to find those networks and those opportunities and support the PAs to uncover that value.

“From a PA background, having worked on the union side of things, I'm convinced that there's a fundamental amount of untapped potential not just from a business perspective, but also to really empower the athletes to get into the position that they should be in, in terms of how the game is run, who's benefiting from the success of the game, and to push the boundaries that other competition organizers have not been willing to push.

“We definitely see chances to innovate on our model and to find new opportunities, and one of them could very well be around player data rights, which given European privacy laws or Australian Privacy laws are just differently protected in the interests of athletes than in the United States.

“We very much also want to look at how we explore those new opportunities. How do we innovate on the model that we have? Is there an opportunity in markets that are not as developed at the moment?

“It's about focusing on really finding these new PA partnerships and supporting more of the athletes internationally. At the same time, it's also about bringing more international opportunities to our existing partners from a US perspective.”

What sets OneTeam apart from its competition?

“I’d look at the starting point for us really as a PA-owned business, it’s that we want the athletes to be successful on their journey.

“But what sets OneTeam apart is that it's an established company. It has had success in what it does across all these verticals of business for several years now.

“Secondly, the PA partnerships behind it, which is what really attracted me to work this out with OneTeam. Both the executive and the board leadership (of the PAs) were sitting on the board and we formed this company really understanding the opportunity this provided, but also the shared responsibility towards the athlete collective. That puts us in a unique position to succeed.

“But we're not here to necessarily own the space exclusively, if there are opportunities for athletes to follow this path of maximizing this value and putting themselves in the best position then we want them to be successful with that. There are plenty of monopolies in sport, we don't necessarily need to build another one.”

Why are we seeing more companies emerging in this space?

“It plays into macro trends in society, the fact that I think we identify with human beings, at this stage, maybe a little bit more than institutions.

“It's also part of the internationalization of sport. It makes it easier for people who maybe don't have the experience or the family relationship that associates you with a certain club in the same way that you do if you grow up in England or Germany, your local club means something more than just what it is as a TV product.

“But as these fan bases internationalize, building these connections with an individual is a little bit easier and more natural. And on top of that, the athletes are getting more intelligent in terms of how to use the platforms that they have, both for business and social purposes.

“At the same time, the PAs are developing more sophistication in this space, and are venturing into these new territories which, at least internationally, oftentimes in the past, they have not. So there's a number of these trends that are playing out, which I find very exciting given what I've done professionally for my entire career.”

How does a company like One Team Partners differ from a regular player agency?

“The power for us is always associated with the collective union that founded the company originally. Our entire work and ethos and the reason for our existence is that there is no purpose other than to support the players as a collective, which covers the superstar to the rookie.

“That spirit of collectiveness shapes the business model in that our core has always been group licensing that underpins computer games and trading card products, much more than individual athlete opportunities, which we support, but we know that there are other players like agencies, etc. who are already doing a great job in that space.”

What are your internationalization plans moving forward?

“There are different ways to connect with an international fan base than in the past. There’s been the evolution of social media as platforms for athletes to market themselves, the challenging journey of NFTs blossoming and then unfortunately becoming challenged recently, but somebody's going to probably crack the code on that as well in the future. All of that provides new opportunities.

“We see a lot of opportunity in just improving the storytelling, the narratives, and as incubators for other business opportunities and to make athletes who don't have the same kind of visibility as those in the major leagues, across the different sports more visible and to tell the fans the stories of what's behind them.

“Especially when you combine that with the power of international competitions, which is a focus of what we're trying to look at, how do we aggregate and provide value around international events? Why is it interesting, how the journey of a team from New Zealand looked like to get to a World Cup in that particular moment, and how we can facilitate those opportunities better.”

How might the opening up of college athlete restrictions in the US affect the wider licensing industry?

“We think of it in general as very exciting. Again, looking at it from a union perspective, the traditional system of college athletes, which was incredibly prohibitive for athletes to exploit the undoubtedly available value that they created to this entire ecosystem that's starting to open up, and athletes being treated the same way as other citizens.

“It's something we greatly support, and ultimately college sports will figure out the way that it builds a sustainable system with the athletes around it.

“From the business perspective, we had success around a few products like the new college football game, helping to aggregate player rights around that and then putting value back to the athletes to launch that product. Those are exciting opportunities, so there's certainly more to come there.”

Why is there a lack of union-based stakeholders in this market, and what was prohibiting this development until recently?

“Leagues will ultimately represent their teams, who employ the athletes. But ultimately, they are there to generate value for the teams and the teams are generally there to generate value for their owners if it's an ownership model, and if it's not an ownership model more from a European perspective, maybe to put value back into the club.

“But the athlete is the employee. It's a different relationship. You've got your federations, who have a different mandate, who have the self-interest to promote their own operations and their events and to put money back to their members domestically.

“So there's just all of these entities playing different roles in ecosystems. Player unions were created to make sure that the players had an independent, powerful voice to make sure that their interest in that ecosystem is represented fairly and in the way that they deserve both as the central piece to making sport work, but also obviously as employees and workers of these clubs, who have the rights to be representative of certain questions.

“There is also clearly a desire from more athletes internationally for the unions to figure out how they can play more of a role in this space. The unions have no other purpose other than to support their athletes. And we're probably the only stakeholder in the entirety of sport who can say that. There are no other ulterior motives here other than to put them in the best position to succeed throughout their careers.”