Our Team

Jeff Urban

Jeff Urban is a leading Sports Marketing executive. Recently serving across multiple consulting engagements, Urban was President and Co-Founder at Whistle Sports, a company that creates, curates, and distributes breakthrough entertainment content for young, active males. With an aggregate social reach of over 510 million, Whistle Sports was nominated by Sports Business Journal for the Best in Digital Sports Media award 2015, named by Fast Company as one of the world’s 10 most innovative video companies, and ranked in the Top 10 Media Companies in Inc. Magazine’s 5000 List of Fastest-Growing Private Companies. Whistle Sports’ owners, investors, and content partners include the NFL, PGA Tour, Major League Baseball, NASCAR, Major League Lacrosse, Derek Jeter, Peyton Manning, Mia Hamm among others. Whistle Sports currently has studio offices in New York, Dallas, Los Angeles, and London.

Urban served as the Senior Vice President, Sports & Event Marketing at Gatorade and held that position for two years where he handled Gatorade’s national property relationships, managed Gatorade’s stable of athlete endorsers, integrated both properties and athletes across the brand, and oversaw the 25-person strong sports marketing team managing the $120,000,000 in sports investments.  He also served as a Director in the Sports Marketing group at Gatorade for eight years.

Bill Howe

A veteran of the synthetic turf industry, Bill was vital to the development of SFPI’s GameKeeper turf system. Through the combining of hydrologic engineering with advanced material science, he coordinated the Company’s efforts to develop a technically advanced synthetic turf athletic field system that mimics natural grass. The results of those efforts have served to create a leading turf technology designed for superior safety and performance characteristics, as well as a much cooler and more durable playing surface. A sports field unlike any other in the industry. Bill continues to serve as head of research and development, as well as a Director for the Company. 

Phil Christiansen, P.E.

Philip G. Christiansen P.E. holds both a Bachelors and a Master’s degree in Civil Engineering, has 55 years of work experience, and since 1979 has worked extensively in sport facility engineering. The sports related work has been primarily running track and synthetic turf field design.  His projects are in over 20 states and include running tracks of various surfaces including rubberized asphalt, latex and urethane, and design of synthetic sports fields with a variety of turf fabrics and infills.

Two of the most important engineering aspects in any sports facility design are soil conditions and drainage. Through the many years of design work Mr. Christiansen can readily recognize soils that may be a problem and has developed designs that stabilize soils. His experience in drainage design and hydrologic and hydraulic analysis allows him to design projects that reduce offsite peak flow rates, by incorporating into the designs onsite detention of stormwater, and when necessary infiltration of stormwater into the soil.

Mr. Christiansen has worked with Sports Fields Partners since its inception to develop the unique synthetic turf system Sports Field Partners offers today.