Tony Fay stakes claim as Dallas' PR power player

Tony Fay has more than a passing interest in the 2025 College Football Playoff National Championship.

The 57-year-old CEO of his namesake PR firm started as an intern with the Dallas Mavericks 37 years ago. He's now the undisputed power forward in local sports, entertainment and nonprofit public relations.

Irving-based College Football Playoff, along with the Dallas Stars, American Airlines Center, Klyde Warren Park, PGA of America, United Way of Metropolitan Dallas and Choctaw Casinos & Resorts are among his marquee clients.

This is the 11th time that CFP has hired Tony Fay Public Relations to spearhead its media, community outreach and buzz for the playoff series that will crown college football's last team standing on Jan. 20 in Atlanta.

Business Briefing

Become a business insider with the latest news.

Or with:

GoogleFacebook

By signing up you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

"We help organize the entire media operation in and around the game and provide the bandwidth needed to host 1,500 credentialed media," said Fay, who lives in Plano. "We help CFP throughout the year, but the championship is where we parachute in and do our most critical work."

CFP is composed of the governing bodies of college football's nine conferences and the University of Notre Dame. The tournament was expanded this season from four teams to 12 -- including SMU's first-round appearance against Penn State this weekend.

Dallas is the best sports market in America, Fay said. "To have SMU and big-time college football being part of it is just a cherry on top."

Brett Daniels, senior director of CFP's communications and branding, first worked with Fay when Daniels was with the Dallas Cowboys and AT&T Stadium hosted Super Bowl XLV in 2011 and the NCAA Men's Final Four three years later.

"From the launch of the College Football Playoff 10 years ago, Tony and his team have led our off-the-field public relations across our host cities through creative planning and expert execution," Daniels said.

Advertisement$5M and counting

Fay's agency brought in $5 million in revenue this year, up from $2 million just four years ago. This year's tally includes a just-signed contract with the Dallas Sports Commission to handle PR for the nine FIFA World Cup matches being played here in 2026.

Last year, Fay partnered with the Goodyear Blimp to have pros play pickleball inside the airship and to provide aerial coverage for the Carvana Professional Pickleball Association Tour finals. PRNews liked it so much that it awarded Fay and his team its highest award for "stunt of the year."

In October, Fay arranged for pro pickleball players to wield their paddles inside the dome of Reunion Tower to hype the 2024 Lapiplasty Pickleball World Championships held last month at Brookhaven Country Club in Farmers Branch.

He's working on the 2027 PGA Championship -- one of golf's Big 4 tournaments -- that will be held in Frisco that May.

AT&T Stadium in Arlington will host the NCAA 2030 Men's Final Four, followed by Dallas and American Airlines Center hosting the 2031 Women's Final Four.

Fay's sights are set on them.

Still virtual and picky

Fay started his company in 2016 without an office, website or any employees. His plan was to only take on clients he liked.

"This is the best sports market in the country," Fay said. "But there wasn't a local signature PR agency focused on it. So I was like, 'What if I put together what I know about sports PR and the nonprofit community? What would that look like?'"

He and his staff of 26 work virtually and only for clients of his choosing.

Fay owns the company with small stakes awarded to Betsy Dixon, the agency's chief media officer, and Amanda Larder, chief operating officer.

"Tony values female leadership," said Dixon, Fay's first employee. "He's a level-headed, humble visionary. His professional instincts are top-notch, always to be trusted. And he sincerely cares about our lives, our children and our futures."

Larder, who came on board after the agency's first year, gets it down to four words: loyal, imaginative, resilient and witty.

Fay's "office" is a table at Mi Cocina on the Park that overlooks the goings on at downtown's popular deck park.

"I have worked with Klyde Warren since it opened in 2012," Fay said. "It feels a little like home. It's a great place to meet folks and eat great Tex-Mex. It's one of the few places in the city where you can sit outside and watch the world go by."

There's also an endless supply of Diet Coke.

Fay can't remember the last time he drank a glass of water. "I feel like Diet Coke is my water, so I'm getting my water that way, right?"

His close friend and football great, Troy Aikman, winces at the thought. "Sodas are one of the worst things you can put in your body. But since Tony doesn't drink alcohol, I'll give him a pass on Diet Coke."

Fay is used to being in the background and not in the forefront.

"So, yeah, this is a little weird to be the one as the focus," he said. "But I'm also aware that I've lived every 10-year-old boy's sports dream, so I don't mind talking about it."

Fay's daughter Katie Fay is a senior at SMU with plans to join him at the agency when she graduates. They love to travel internationally together. They spent her spring break in Iceland to see the Northern Lights. They also visited Switzerland, Northern Italy and France.

Next June, he's getting married to Kate Kyle, a retired sports marketing executive in Austin, at The Speakeasy, a popular local bar and nightclub. "We're designing a kind of a concert experience," Fay said. "We will exchange vows, but it's really going to be more about the music than the ceremony."

Youngest holder ever

In 1984, before Fay's senior year at Plano East High School, he and his buddy, Billy Whistler, decided to buy Mavs season tickets. Fay mowed yards to raise the $328 he needed for 41 games at Reunion Arena.

"We were in section 202, row C, seats 1 and 2," Fay said. "I went to every, single Mavericks game my senior year in high school. That's all I cared about."

Then Whistler decided to go to Texas A&M University in College Station.

"I'm like, 'Nah, I'm not leaving the Mavericks. We're getting really good.' So I bought his tickets off him and gave my extras to friends." Fay went to the University of North Texas in Denton and drove to every game -- 80-plus miles roundtrip.

He heard that there might be a job with the team's game-night crew. He met with Kevin Sullivan, director of PR, who said he didn't need anyone working stats, but could use an intern.

"The whole PR department was essentially me and Tony," Sullivan said. "I could tell he was very capable, and he was also willing to cut classes to help out."

Sullivan hired Fay full time fresh out of college, paying him $24,000 a year -- about $61,000 today. Even better, Fay got to hobnob with superstars.

"Mark Aguirre, Rolando Blackman and Derek Harper were coming into their own," Fay said. "It was surreal."

Blackman, a four-time NBA All-Star, was at Fay's recent engagement party. They met when he was playing for the Mavs and Fay arranged his interviews. "I saw Tony doing things that have made him so great today," Blackman said.

After 12 years, Fay decided to stretch his wings. "Counting my time as a season ticketholder in '84 until I left the Mavericks in '99, I did not miss a single home game in 15 years," he said. "I'm still the youngest season ticketholder in Mavs history."

Host with the most

The most pivotal job of Fay's career came working on the host committee for Super Bowl XLV under the guidance of Bill Lively, Dallas' fundraiser extraordinaire, who as its president, helped make sure North Texas put its best foot forward.

"On the surface, it's the Super Bowl, but really what we were doing was handling the coverage of it," Fay said. "Working with Bill [on the committee] introduced me to a level of people here who I didn't know or knew only in passing."

People on the board like its chairman, Roger Staubach, Aikman, Emmitt Smith, Charlotte Jones. That's also where he met Kit Sawers, now president of Klyde Warren.

"Tony has an incredible ability to defuse stress in the highest pressure situations," said Sawers, who also has been Fay's business partner.

There was one exception. It happened when they were working together on the host committee. Fay was in charge of PR and Sawers directed all of the events.

The night before the game, Sawers was dancing the night away at one of those big Super Bowl parties you hear about, when she came off of the dance floor to take a call from Fay.

"That's when I learned from him that there would not be enough seats for everybody at the Super Bowl," Sawers said of the game-day seating tempest created by the NFL.

"I remember looking around the room and thinking, 'Oh my gosh, we're all so happy right now. Everyone's going to know about this tomorrow, but right now I'm the only one in this room who does,'" she said. "We got through it as best as we could and can laugh about it now that AT&T Stadium is the gold standard."

Several years later, the NFL went mea culpa and settled with fans who didn't have the seats they paid for.

Troy and Tony

Aikman got to know Fay when the Hall of Famer was involved with United Way of Metropolitan Dallas, another key client of Fay's.

"I just inherently have an issue with incompetent people. It just drives me nuts," Aikman said. "On the flip side, I have enormous admiration and respect for competent people and those who take great pride in what they do. They're reliable, dependable and do what they say they're going to do -- those things that just seem to be kinda lost in the world today.

"Tony represents all of that."

In 2021, Aikman wanted to put on a music festival to benefit education and community initiatives in his hometown of Henryetta, Okla.

"I floated the idea with Tony," Aikman said. "I told him, 'Tell me I've lost my mind.' He said, 'No, I don't think you have at all.'"

Aikman told Fay that the only way he'd do the festival was if Fay produced it. "Tony didn't come up with any reason why he and his team couldn't do it. Without that, it just never would have happened. It's a reflection of my belief and trust in what he does."

Aikman and Fay lined up country music acts such as Blake Shelton, Pat Green and the Josh Abbott Band to headline the festival.

Fay said the event was a high point of his life. "Troy's asking for our help with the Highway to Henryetta, knowing how personal that was to him, was very meaningful for us."

Aikman's daughter was a summer intern at Fay PR. "She worked exceptionally hard when she was with them but had fun," he said. "My gut tells me from what I've observed that Tony's at the tip of the spear. He has really competent smart people. He gives directions about what he wants. Then he gets out of the way."

Dirk and Tony

One of Fay's favorite pictures is of Dirk Nowitzki being fitted for a blazer shortly after he got off a plane from Germany.

Nowitzki clearly remembers that day. "I was a 19-year-old and I'd never needed a suit. So when I landed just before the press conference, Tony said, 'At least let's get you a jacket or something.' "

They went straight from the airport to Lombardo's in Preston Center, where Jay Lombardo's team made custom suits for the Mavs and were used to fitting really tall dudes.

"The Backstreet Boys were hot back then, so I was trying to copy them," Nowitzki said. "Looking back at that old photo now and the bowl cut, it's definitely a cringe moment for me. But I guess it was a good look in the '90s.

"There's actually a funny story," Nowitzki said. "When I first got here, my English wasn't very good. I was shy and didn't want to do interviews. So when I saw Tony, I knew he was going to ask me to do something that I didn't want to do, so I ran for the locker room to hide."

Unfortunately for the 7-foot future superstar, Fay had full locker room access, so Nowitzki could run but couldn't hide.

"I gotta say I was not a huge Tony Fay fan my first year -- not that I didn't like him as a person -- I just knew he was going to ask me to do something I wasn't comfortable with. You gotta tell that story!"

The duo lost touch for a while, but in recent years Nowitzki and his wife, Jessica, have worked with Fay and his team on numerous projects primarily with Children's Medical Center and two major efforts to highlight North Texas sports.

"Tony's basically got all the great events in Dallas," Nowitzki said. "Everything we've done with him for the last three years has been well organized. He and his team are always on top of things and super responsive. We always feel that we're in great hands."

AdvertisementClients vs media

Fay didn't have a clue about PR when Sullivan hired him as an intern. So what does it mean to Fay now?

"It is a way for companies and individuals to get their messages out by working with the media who communicate with the masses."

Which is more important -- the client or the media?

"It's a fine line," Fay said. "You can have clients for a week or 10 years. But there are a lot of people in the media who I've worked with for 40 years. You have to be the best advocate for your client, but keep your integrity, your honesty and your trust with the media you work with."

Brad Townsend became the Mavs beat reporter for The Dallas Morning News in 1993 -- during the team's "sad-sack 1990s" -- with a record of 240 wins, 550 losses and no playoff victories.

"The first year I covered the Mavericks, they had a 2-39 record at the season's halfway point. Neither of the two wins were home games," said Townsend, who still covers the Mavs some 30 seasons later. "You learn a lot about someone when you're both under duress. Part of Tony's job was to, in essence, apply lipstick to a pig, but he also understood that a big part of my job was to explain to readers why that season turned historically bad."

Fay never criticized Townsend's coverage as unfair or too negative.

"Tony intuitively understands what is, and isn't, a story that is of value to readers and the writers who report them," he said. "But it's also clear that his clients come first.

"I can imagine he's had many difficult talks with clients through the years, explaining why their idea of great public relations doesn't necessarily mean The Dallas Morning News and other media will want to print or air that story."

At-A-Glance: Tony Fay

Title: Founder and CEO of Tony Fay Public Relations

Age: 57

Resides: Plano

Education: bachelor's degree in journalism, University of North Texas, 1990.

Personal: 22-year-old daughter, Katie Fay, a senior at Southern Methodist University; engaged to Kate Kyle who lives in Austin

AdvertisementTony Fay Public Relations LLC

Founded: 2016

Ownership: Tony Fay, small minority stakes held by two key employees.

Headquarters: Operates remotely

Employees: Tony Fay and 26 staff

2024 Revenue: $5 million

Business lines: Sports, entertainment and nonprofits

Clients include: Dallas Stars, College Football Playoff, American Airlines Center, Klyde Warren Park, PGA of America, Dallas Sports Commission, United Way of Metropolitan Dallas, Dallas Wings, Choctaw Casinos & Resorts, Perot Museum, and the Cotton Bowl Classic.

SOURCE: Tony Fay

Related StoriesRead MoreTexas Family Fitness merges with fitness behemoth, prompting uproar among customersCustomers said they felt blindsided by the announcement. Can you walk Y'all Street? What Dallas' financial coup means for downtownWhile many finance companies are clustered in Dallas' center, even more are spread throughout D-FW.

Daily Flux Report

Tony Fay stakes claim as Dallas' PR power player

POPULAR CATEGORY

corporate

tech

entertainment

research

misc

wellness

athletics