Ex-Hornets exec manages to make Bobcats' scratch.

• Position: People - Tom Ward

Charlotte has a new National Basketball Association franchise (the Bobcats), with a new owner (billionaire Bob Johnson), new colors (blue and orange) and a new arena under construction (downtown). It's a different team, but the game's the same, and Tom Ward, the Bobcats executive vice president of business operations, has played it before. He was marketing director for the Charlotte Hornets in 1988, when that team was starting. "I have credibility because the first franchise was so successful. We were sold out for nine years."

Ward, 47, left the Hornets in 1997 to help start a National Hockey League team in Nashville, Tenn. He saw it as a challenge: "We got a hockey expansion team off the ground in football country, where their idea of a puck was something to put a drink on." But he loved the Carolinas, so when the offer came to return to Charlotte to work with the new team, it didn't take his family long to pack.

Ward's domain with the Bobcats includes ticket sales, sponsorships, broadcast rights, advertising, game presentation, and branding and merchandising. Though the Bobcats won't begin play until late 2004 (in the old Coliseum), his game plan already is focused on ticket sales, a team's biggest revenue source. The first phase is selling 60 suites in the new arena, targeting large corporations. In July, after just three weeks of sales, a third had been purchased.

Ward played basketball and football during high school outside...