APM Music’s Matthew Gutknecht Reflects on the intersection of music and sports

The Newhouse Sports Media Center welcomed APM Music’s Senior Director of Sports Entertainment, Matthew Gutknecht, to speak with students about his career in sports entertainment and the role music plays in sports, live broadcasts and social media. Professor Jordan Kligerman of the Sports Media Center and the Television, Radio and Film department moderated the discussion.

To set the tone, Gutknecht played Darth Vader’s famous theme music as his “walk up music”. The point of this was to show students how music can set the tone of a conversation or situation. He went on to show students several examples of music used by professional sports teams in promo videos and the path from idea to completion from a music perspective.

Gutknecht spoke about how APM Music supports partners with their production music library, original music created in collaboration and clearing popular music rights. Although there are many paths from idea to execution, some processes include user self search in the library, contacting APM Music and working with a music director to help identify and audition music and the direct collaboration for custom music.

Gutknecht discussed the financial commitment that production makes to use the library versus clearing rights on existing popular or custom tracks.

To show students an example of performance rights in action, Gutknecht shared the story of how the Cincinnati Bengals used “Sweet Victory”, a song made popular by the popular Nickelodeon show “SpongeBob SquarePants” and part of the APM Music library. The Bengals paired the beloved song with a highlight reel and graphics from the show for a video that played on the stadium screens after a win.

Gutknecht stressed to students the importance of doing things legally. He shared that one client reached out to him asking if he knew of any tools to “scrub” the past seven years of their social media. He explained that the reason for this is likely that their had content on their account that contained music they no longer had the rights to use.

Gutknecht emphasized that music and sports go hand-in-hand. There aren’t sports broadcasts that don’t contain music and music is what often tells us how to feel before we realize it visually. Music can be almost instantly recognizable and iconic, like the Monday Night Football theme, but then also reimagined like APM Music did this Fall with partner ESPN. Gutknecht advised students to pay special attention to the music the next time they attend or watch a game.

Matthew Gutknecht has been with APM Music since 2007. He previously worked in online advertising for Ticketmaster.