Seattle Kraken membership sales senior account executive Jake Silva joined the team in 2021 and has spent five years helping fans and businesses discover the club through membership options.
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Jake Silva joined the Seattle Kraken in 2021 as the organization prepared for its inaugural NHL season, beginning his career in inside sales at the same time the schedule was getting underway.
Silva said his first two weeks on the job coincided with the beginning of the team’s season, and that early period offered a firsthand view of what it meant to build a new NHL franchise.
Over the following years, he moved through account executive roles and eventually worked with the membership sales team, where his primary responsibility is introducing new fans and businesses to the Kraken experience.
According to Silva, membership sales is not only about purchasing tickets; the sales team works with prospective members to understand what they want from attending games, whether that means family time or employee and client experiences, and then guides them toward the membership option that fits best before transitioning them to the service team.
He described the role as a bridge for people to understand the benefits of sharing hockey as an experience with their families.
One of Silva’s most rewarding parts of his work has been watching families gradually develop a connection to hockey and the Kraken. He recalled supporting families that started by attending only one or two games in a season, sometimes with little familiarity with the sport.
Over time, he said those experiences helped introduce children to hockey and, for some families, led to attending more games or having their kids join junior hockey programs.
Silva said he has seen a progression where some families reach the point of going from occasional attendance to a 22-game half-season plan after years of building interest.
As the Kraken has grown, Silva said the ways fans can attend have expanded as well. In the team’s early seasons, season memberships were often the primary way for supporters to get into games, but he noted that additional options were later introduced, including group opportunities and family bundles.
He pointed to his own tenure as a chance to see those changes firsthand, including the early days when he was involved with checking vaccination cards during the inaugural season and later helping support new opportunities for fans to attend games.
Before his Kraken role, Silva grew up between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe in Northern California and studied sports management at Washington State University, where he also met his wife.
After graduating in 2020, he said the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted plans for a position in Spokane, which fell through, and he spent several months in North Carolina working in door-to-door pest control sales.
Silva said that period helped him discover an interest in sales and the persistence required to succeed, before leading him back toward the Pacific Northwest and the opportunity with the Kraken.
Reflecting on what has kept him working through different roles, Silva said his father’s advice stayed with him: people should take pride in doing whatever they do well, even if they were “shoveling rocks,” making sure the work is done and in good piles.
He also said he understands how the organization’s broader community efforts connect to his day-to-day work, including support for initiatives such as the One Roof Foundation.
Outside of work, Silva described an ongoing connection to the outdoors developed in Northern California, including childhood involvement with the Boy Scouts around Lake Tahoe, and said he now enjoys skiing and snowboarding in winter and spending time near water in summer.
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