In the moments before the kickoff of the first NFL conference championship game last Sunday, while players stretched and went over plays, Chantal Govashiri was on her couch in Los Angeles — with a laptop open and phone ready — reviewing her own game plan.
The Philadelphia Eagles, an explosive team with some of the league’s wildest fans, were facing the Washington Commanders, a squad led by a rookie quarterback and having an improbably successful season. Later that day, the Kansas City Chiefs were chasing history, trying to win an unprecedented third Super Bowl in a row, but first, they had to overcome the revenge-seeking Buffalo Bills.
Those narratives, coupled with the winners of each game facing off in New Orleans, set the stage for one of the most exciting Super Bowls to attend, and Govashiri made sure she was ready for it.
Govashiri, the founder of Privée Odyssey, is a private broker of many things for the ultra-wealthy and often engages with their family offices. She helps people buy and sell one-of-a-kind goods and unique services or experiences that are legal but still require discretion and a distinct network. Like a lot of family offices, she also has a limited presence online and her company’s website is a single, ambiguous contact page. Govashiri has grown the business almost entirely through referrals, she said.
Unlike other opportunities for Privée Odyssey, the Super Bowl comes annually, allowing it to put a refined system in place.
For weeks before the conference championship games, Govashiri messaged her network of clients to gauge their interest in the biggest football game of the year and communicated with her partners who could provide tickets. Using the information she gathered, she sat with her 70-client matrix to methodically start dealing as the games progressed.
“I try to prepare as much as possible on both ends to make a transaction as efficient as possible because the pricing and availability are crazy once the teams are determined. Everything fluctuates,” Govashiri told Modus.
Some clients only want to attend the Super Bowl if the team they are rooting for makes it there, and others only want to go if two specific teams are playing. To some clients, the teams aren’t as important; they like football, and the spectacle and special events related to the game, where they can brush shoulders with celebrities and former players.
As of this email, many tickets were available through Ticketmaster for less than $4,000 and up to $55,000 (excluding fees). Bargain hunters might be willing to sit at their computers during the two weeks before the game and mash the refresh button, hoping a deal will appear, but that strategy has risks. Significant discounting is not guaranteed and the tickets could sell out.
“That's fine, but I'm not for that person. I’m the person for someone who wants to have the whole thing wrapped in a bow, speak to one person, have one point of contact that can take care of all the things that they're looking for,” Govashiri said.
Bargain hunting is also part of her job. She partners with official resellers to help them move tickets, often at better prices than online ones. However, clients with huge budgets care less about saving a few thousand dollars. They seek out Govashiri because they are ready to spend their way to something special, and she can help them. Through other relationships she’s established over the years (and can't speak about publicly), she can get tickets and line up experiences that are difficult for any sum of money to buy.
Last Sunday, during the conference championship games, one of Govashiri’s clients contacted her with some major enthusiasm and wanted to know what she could offer.
“Front row, 50-yard line, all the bells and whistles; you get on the field after the game to celebrate with them. You get to go to the winners' afterparty as well, and that's a personal add-on from me. I quoted them $95,000 per seat yesterday,” Govashiri said earlier this week. “And that was before the [Super Bowl] teams were even decided.”
That quote includes Privée Odyssey’s fee, usually 10 to 15 percent. Fees scale based on what the company agrees to broker and the purchase price. Unlike similar services, the company doesn’t charge clients for a membership.
If it wasn’t obvious already, the Super Bowl can’t be done on a budget. The outsized cost will not be worth it to many people, even if they can afford it.
“It's not for someone who's just looking to go. You have to be committed to go to this thing and spend the money…lose your voice, yell and have the opportunity to have your heart crushed. It's a dramatic story, and you're living in it,” Govashiri said.
“It's like a real-life movie set because you're going to see people, you're going to have weird interactions. You're going to talk about this event for the rest of your life. You want to feel like, ‘I'm the shit. This is so cool,’” she added.
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LEARN MOREWhat's your complexity score?
Last week, leafplanner, a company that helps family offices organize and communicate critical information to its stakeholders, added a “complexity calculator” to its suite of free assessment tools.
The new tool uses information from a five-minute questionnaire to score users and tell them where they land on a scale between simple and migraine-inducing complicatedness. Josh Kantor, the founder and CEO at leafplanner and a consultant to family offices, told Modus that his company had built the tool because people often underestimate how elaborate their lives are.
I tried it and scored a "30" — am I a good candidate for leafplanner?
“I’d say that’s more of a value judgment. I’d argue that everyone would benefit from having a leafplan. If you came in and said, ‘Hey, I’m only a 30’ (that’s low), we’d come up with a price to make it worthwhile,” Kantor said. “Since it’s brand new, I can’t tell you where most people will fall but I believe we’ll see most ultra-high-net-worth and family-office participants in the calculator being well over 100 and upward of 150.”
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Jobs
- Inside the conglomerate Cox Enterprises, the Cox Family Office seeks a financial analysis senior manager in Atlanta. Base salary is $181,000 and there’s other comp.
- If spending your days with a microscope over asset managers at Yale Investments sounds like your thing, you could be their new operational due diligence associate.
- Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, aka CIBC, is hiring a family office associate (err administrator) in Atlanta to support the local executives and relationship managers. It pays $70,000 plus a discretionary bonus.
Where I'll be...
- Back in New York City.
- Calgary next week.
- Miami for Future Proof Citywide in March, where I’ll moderate a panel about family office governance.
I’m still interested in adding another person to the panel. Who is the wealthy person, family office executive, attorney or other professional in South Florida I should reach out to?
Housekeeping
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- Cowards. That’s all I have to say about Modus opinion essays this week.
