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Roberto Gonzalez is the founder and president of the Telmex Telcel Basketball Youth League, among other impressive titles. He is a passionate enthusiast of basketball and of Mexican culture and arts, and he has become a distinguished businessman, promoter, and strategic sports business consultant.
As a student athlete at Michigan State University, he was a member of the NCAA basketball championship team (1979). He is the first Mexican American basketball player to win an NCAA championship, which to date is the second most viewed game in basketball history (35.1 million viewers) behind the 1998 NBA finals game six, Utah Jazz versus Chicago Bulls.
For over three decades, he has managed a vast portfolio of clients with his agency Plataforma 360, where he has linked valuable brands with recognized athletes and formed winning synergies, such as the Cancun Governor’s Cup—a college basketball tournament owned and operated by ESPN Regional Television Inc., a subsidiary of ESPN—played and transmitted from Cancun, Quintana Roo, as well as and the first-of-its-kind historic partnership between the NBA Development League’s (now called the G League) Texas Legends with the state of Veracruz, Mexico. This multiyear partnership included arena naming rights.
For nearly thirty years, Gonzalez has been holding memorable events for Grupo Bimbo in Mexico, as well as in the US, where he is strategically working with the group to position some of Grupo Bimbo’s brands through different successful marketing strategies and points of sale within the sports and entertainment industry. Examples include brand activations for the Wonder brand through basketball clinics, presentations, and promotions throughout Mexico, as well as with the Takis brand in the US, and establishing successful partnerships with teams such as Los Angeles Lakers, New York Knicks, Dallas Mavericks, Golden State Warriors, Chicago Bulls, and others.
Through his philanthropic initiatives he also has promoted the visit of various honorable members of the Basketball Hall of Fame to Mexico, including Earvin Magic Johnson, Hakeem Olajuwon, Dominique Wilkins, Shaquille O’Neal, Jason Kidd, Steve Nash, and Kobe Bryant. His activities have allowed him to carry out different successful projects that have helped promote and position Mexico as a “safe and sound” tourist destination among sports enthusiasts, tourists, NBA stars, and basketball fans in the US, both professionally and collegiality.
In 2008, partnering with the Carlos Slim Foundation and the Telmex Telcel Foundation, he founded the Telmex Telcel Basketball Youth League, which serves as the only youth league in the world with no inscription fee or any cost to play. This league plays throughout the thirty-two states of Mexico, and its purpose is to build a social platform through sports, specifically impacting thousands of children through diverse basketball initiatives and programs. The program has created successful synergies with NBA certified coaches and players, as well as having a strategic alliance with the US Secretary of State through their sports diplomacy initiatives.
In 2019, along with three other agile and innovative leaders, Gonzalez founded Business Concierge to help institutions increase their production through their marketing, commercial, and business strategies in the US market. Together, they have developed a formula that helps companies benefit from years of experience in top- and bottom-line growth, while gaining market share even from large well-established institutions.
He is a native of Detroit, Michigan, and his Mexican roots come from his father, who emigrated from Mexico to the US to work for the Ford Motor Company. Gonzalez currently resides between Mexico City and Frisco, Texas.
