36 | JANUARY 11 • 2024 

to present him an award at 
a Jewish Historical Society 
event. Not sure if he was the 
first member of the Jewish 
community to work in the 
front office for the Tigers, but 
I’m certainly proud that people 
like Jeff, Ben, Mike and I have 
been able to follow in Irwin’s 
footsteps. 
 
MEET MIKE SINGER
Mike Singer, 42, lives in 
Birmingham and is the vice 
president of Business Strategy 
and Activation with the Detroit 
Tigers.
JN: Could you describe your 
role?
MS: This role has respon-
sibility for the Detroit Tigers, 
the Detroit Red Wings, 313 
Presents (music and entertain-
ment division) as well as spon-
sorship strategy for the District 
Detroit. 
I lead our corporate 
Partnership Strategy Team, 
which generates new sponsor-
ship ideas, constructs our part-
nership presentations, manag-
es the Corporate Partnership 
budget and maintains the rate 
card of our sponsorship assets, 
among other special projects. 
And I lead our Activation 
Team, which implements all of 
the sponsorship assets in con-
tracts and are the day-to-day 
relationship experts with our 
clients.
JN: What is the most excit-
ing part of working with the 
Tigers organization?
MS: The people, by far. Each 
day is different and having 
the opportunity to work with 
so many great internal and 
external people in different 
departments and industries, 
both local and national, is fan-
tastic. I learn something new 
every day, and I get to spend 
time with the most talented 
sports marketers anywhere in 

the world.
JN: Is there a particular day/
game/moment that stands out 
the most?
MS: Opening Day 2022 for 
the Tigers after the pandemic 
ended was a fun day. Tigers 
fans were eager to get back to 
the ballpark and enjoy the day, 
and you could feel the excite-
ment in a sold-out Comerica 
Park. The Tigers won on a 
walkoff, and all of the hard 
work from planning Opening 
Day was experienced by every-
one in attendance. Those are 
the moments that are fun to be 
shared with your teammates.
JN: What has it been like to 
work in Detroit? 
MS: I grew up outside of 
Chicago, so Detroit sports 
were always a rival. I moved 
to Detroit in 2013, and I love 
the comeback nature of the 
city. There is such a sense of 
pride for living in Detroit and 
there is a desire to continue to 
improve. The Detroit versus 
everyone mentality is real, and 
it helps they are very passion-
ate about all of their sports 
teams.
JN: What connection points 

might you have to the Jewish 
community?
MS: With my wife’s fami-
ly residing in Michigan, we 
celebrate the major holidays 
around family. The High 
Holidays, Passover, Chanukah 
highlight our holidays. We 
belong to Temple Shir Tikvah 
in Troy and participate in sev-
eral programs there.

MEET BEN FIDELMAN
Ben Fidelman is the direc-
tor of Communications and 
Broadcasting — Ilitch Sports 
+ Entertainment. He lives in 
Downtown Detroit.
JN: Could you describe your 
role?
BF: I work with our 
senior vice president of 
Communications and 
Broadcasting. We handle two 
specific areas. For our group, 
it’s the strategic communica-
tions of the clubs — a lot of 
larger scale campaigns and 
emerging issues that face our 
business, some positive and 
some crisis situations, and then 
also the day-to-day broadcast 
operations. We work a lot with 
the social media teams and 

the media relations teams to 
make sure that the way that we 
engage with fans is consistent 
and highly engaging. 
JN: What is the most excit-
ing part of working with the 
Tigers organization?
BF: I think the most pow-
erful thing that we do is the 
everyday nature of base-
ball. People choose to be at 
Comerica Park and in the 
offices of a baseball team 
because everyone’s rowing in 
the same direction. Everyone’s 
making the same sacrifices of 
their summer holidays and 
weekends to make sure that 
we give our fans a first-class 
experience and make sure the 
players have a first-class expe-
rience. That probably is my 
favorite part. 
That was particularly on dis-
play with the Miguel Cabrera 
celebration for his retirement. 
It was an incredible weekend 
that I had the good fortune to 
be project managing alongside 
our director of marketing; 
the full season celebration of 
Miguel, one of the greatest 
players of all time. But, specif-
ically, that final weekend was 

OUR COMMUNITY

continued from page 35

Ben Fidelman, Jordan 
Field and Mike Singer 
sharing a laugh.

