Today we’d like to introduce you to Matt Wray

Hi Matt, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.

Being born and raised right outside of Philadelphia (sports capital of the world), my entire life has been surrounded by sports. I spent all of my early years playing sports, and around the age of 13 is when I started to combine my other passion with sports, which was business. At the time, my older brother Mike was running a travel sports events company in the region. Naturally, he hired me and all of my friends to work for his company. I had always looked older, even at that age, and people use to mistake me for Mike all the time. So, when it was time to expand and we had many different locations going, he was having me run 7K person events by myself at the age of 14 and people didn’t think twice about how old I actually was, so I was exposed to this business really early. As my baseball playing career was coming to an end and it was time to pick college, a company in the region had approached me and said we want you to run our entire events division. I was shocked, but they said I could go to college and still do it, so I thought it was a no brainer. At this company, PBT, I really got to learn the ins and outs of running a division of a small company. We had a small team, but a great one, and for my entire time in college I got to apply the business material I was learning at Saint Joseph’s University, and apply it in real time with PBT. It was there I met my now business partner, Mike Palumbo, and we both had a passion to try and change the travel sports industry as a whole. As PBT grew, even through the pandemic and beyond, Mike and I eventually decided to take a different route with our career once I graduated. Mike and I were so tied into the sports landscape in this area, that we realized we were getting 3 calls a week from parents asking us “we hate where our kid currently is playing, we are looking for x,y,z experience, where should we go play next?”. It took the problem hitting us in the head 100x before we realized, there is no platform for information on these teams for parents to make purchasing decisions. So, that is when mike and I set out to try and change the $40B youth sports industry and we founded the LENZ Sports Group. At the time, we built “yelp for athletes”, in which parents could use our platform to get matched with the perfect team for their son/daughter. At the same time upon my graduation, I had a great mentor of mine, Scott Oneil, who was the President of the 76ers, and he was saying it would benefit me to learn the corporate side of the sports world, and to come try and do sales with them. I started my journey with the 76ers Front office and their ownership group in their sales department, and for 4 seasons learned some invaluable lessons/skills and met some lifelong friends. However, the world of trying to juggle LENZ and 76ers at the same time came to a close in 2024, as Mike and I have now transformed the LENZ Sports Group into a larger company that expanded from the tech focus, to now doing marketing consulting, events, merchandising, and much more. I still try to put as much on my plate as I can as I’m still young, still doing things like Executive Consulting for a fantastic company, Addison Group, I teach business courses at local schools to students who are passionate about the sports world, oh and try to golf as much as possible LOL.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?

The journey has very much been accepting the “beauty in the madness”. There have been aspect of this journey that have been extremely stressful, tiring, disappointing, etc. That’s what comes with the territory of trying to build your own company, and maintain a normal life of a guy in his 20s. I have had a few true “burnouts” where I’ve had to take a step back and reset from everything, and at times the stress can really make you question why you even did it in the first place.

However, there have been so many great things that have come from this. First off, the network and community you get to build by doing this is so awesome. I am so blessed to have some really incredible, smart, and caring humans in my corner who would do anything to help. I wouldn’t be here without them. The feeling of building a company from scratch, and watching your vision come to life is a feeling like no other. It’s a bumpy road, lots of ups and downs, but the highs of it are like no other. Lastly, seeing others around you grow and be successful is really what makes this journey cool.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?

LENZ Sports Group is a travel/youth sports company based out of Philadelphia that offers services within technology, national events, custom merchandising, and marketing consulting. Founded in 2021 by Mike Palumbo (CEO) and Matt Wray (COO), The goal is to have every single aspect of the travel sports experience centralized to a LENZ service. After just 6 months since the launch of our events company, LENZ already works with over 100 sports organizations and 2,000 athletes, with the goal continue to enhance the overall travel sports experience.

What sets LENZ apart in the market is that every single “service” in travel sports is extremely segmented. If you are running a team, you are most likely using 6+ different companies and software’s to manage the team. At LENZ, we want everything to be operated under our roof, in one place, to make it as seamless as possible for your employees and your parents.

LENZ will be expanding in 2025 into new sports, and to new parts of the country as our brand grows out from the Northeast. Our belief, is that only through the power of teamwork, can an organization reach its goals. That’s why the LENZ process is built firmly on the foundation of leveraging trusted partners, built through years of their experience working together with only the best organizations.

Are there any books, apps, podcasts or blogs that help you do your best?

Two of my favorite books, and every founder needs to read: “Zero to One” by Peter Theil & “Be Where Your Feet Are” by Scott O’Neil.

To stay up to date on business of sports, two people to really tune into daily are: Andrew Petcash with Profluence, and Joe Pompliano with Huddle Up.

Top Voices online: Gary Vee, Timm Chuisano,

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.lenzsportsgroup.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/m_wray13/profilecard/?igsh=dm04c3llcDFwZGRp
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-wray-252331172/

Image Credits

All was done in house by our LENZ marketing group – Credit Luke Kania (Head of Marketing, LENZ)