Five months after legendary investor Ted Forstmann died of a brain tumor at age 71, IMG Worldwide, the sports-and-entertainment conglomerate he acquired for $750 million in 2004, still feels very much like his company.

Mr. Forstmann's former corner office suite, which overlooks New York's Central Park, remains largely untouched, with photos of former girlfriends Princess Diana and "Top Chef" host Padma Lakshmi still propped on shelves.

Next door, in a smaller office, sits Michael Dolan, Mr. Forstmann's handpicked successor as IMG's chief executive, and his polar opposite in many ways. Where his predecessor was a brash jet-setter, Mr. Dolan, the former chairman of ad agency Young & Rubicam, is soft-spoken and collegial, with a demeanor more like that of a mild-mannered accountant than a corporate raider.
At IMG, Mr. Dolan has to maintain the company's core business of managing top models and athletes—Roger Federer, Lindsay Vonn and Kate Upton are clients—and sporting events while expanding its efforts to create sports leagues, events and venues in China, Brazil and India. At home, IMG is working to consolidate its dominance in college-sports licensing.

Mr. Forstmann's buyout firm rarely held assets for more than a decade, leading to speculation that a sale of IMG is imminent. Mr. Dolan says that isn't so. Hollywood veteran Michael Ovitz attempted a takeover in Mr. Forstmann's final days, a move that cost his seat on IMG's board.

In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Dolan talked about his predecessor's long shadow and IMG's bets on emerging markets like India and Brazil. Edited excerpts:

 WSJ: Will IMG continue to exist as an independent company?

Mr. Dolan: It very much will. The people at Forstmann Little, which owns the company, see the progress we have made and they like what they have seen so far.

WSJ: Do you take calls from people interested in buying the company?
Mr. Dolan: I pick up the phone, but it's a very brief conversation because we're not for sale, and we mean it.

WSJ: What was your working relationship with Mr. Forstmann?

Mr. Dolan: You understand very quickly that there are things you can learn and things you simply can't. It's sort of like watching Alex Rodriguez hit. You can watch him but that doesn't mean that you can really improve your game.

WSJ: You had little experience in the sports business when you came to IMG. How did you end up there?

Mr. Dolan: Ted and I met two years ago. I was basically retired, but the more we talked about IMG and I shared my experiences at Y&R, the more it seemed like I could be helpful. It's a business that thrives on communication and direction, so you figure out where you want to go and then what you have to do is get out of the way of a group of people that is very self-motivated.

WSJ: When Mr. Forstmann's health was failing, did you call marquee clients like [tennis stars] Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal to let them know you'd be available?

Mr. Dolan: I didn't. They are all represented by people we have here who have had relationships with them for a long time. What I have told everyone is that I'm a huge supporter of our representation business. It's how we started 50 years ago, with Mark McCormack doing a handshake deal with Arnold Palmer. 
 WSJ: College-sports licensing and international investments, not athlete representation, seem poised to drive much of the company's growth.

Mr. Dolan: Ted saw IMG as coming in and filling a void as a company that takes an ownership interest in the leagues and the rights associated with them. Rather than earning a commission or a fee, [IMG] shares in the success of the value of the product and the venues we create. The model would be India Premier League cricket, [which IMG got a fee for setting up and running.] It is probably one of the most successful launches in the sports industry of the past 50 years. But we never had an equity interest there.

WSJ: That may be hard to replicate in Brazil, since that country already has a major soccer league, so do you see other opportunities there?

Mr. Dolan: With the Olympics and the World Cup coming there, Rio will be the epicenter of the sports world the next few years, so we have a deal with EBX Group, one of the country's most powerful companies, to invest in sports there. You could have golf, tennis, volleyball, soccer, surfing.

WSJ: Where do you see growth in the short term?

Mr. Dolan: You'd have to look at our college business, where we made a number of acquisitions for media rights that Ted pursued that I'd say were brilliant, because it created a one-stop place for advertisers to reach the market. I'd compare the college sports-rights business to where the cable industry was 20 years ago.

WSJ: How long will it take to see profits in the developing countries?

Mr. Dolan: Some of our joint ventures will begin to show profits in 1½ to two years.

WSJ: Who are your competitors?

Mr. Dolan: No one quite looks like IMG. Other companies do certain things that we do, but no one does everything when you consider the representation, event management, television production and the breadth—with college to pro sports to the fashion world.

WSJ: How do you describe your management style?

Mr. Dolan: It's about getting people motivated, aligned behind the same objective, giving them the resources they need to be successful.

Bradenton, FL--Ryan Tannehill rolls to his right and fires an 18-yard pass toward Rutgers wide receiver Mohamed Sanu.

The Texas A&M quarterback's throw falls incomplete for a second consecutive time. Before Tannehill, who could be a top-10 pick April 26 in the NFL draft, can get back to work, a voice booms.

"Hope those (video) guys have good editing skills," cracks Chris Weinke, referring to a video crew shooting on the IMG Madden Football Academy's field.

The dig is Weinke at his prodding best.

Weinke, 39, was once the guy throwing the passes, leading Florida State to an undefeated season and national championship in 1999 and winning the Heisman Trophy in 2000 before graduating to an NFL career. Now he's leading a new wave of coaches, joining other former players in tutoring some of the country's most talented passers.

They're not on college or NFL team coaching staffs. And they won't be found on a sideline in the fall. Instead they're on practice fields working as so-called quarterback gurus.

"The words 'quarterback guru' kind of scare me," Weinke says. "I know this: I love what I do. It's one thing to say you're a college or NFL quarterback coach/coordinator. But there's no job in the world that compares to this. We have an opportunity to change lives."

Weinke has impacted a who's who of quarterback talent, working last year with Cam Newton (first overall pick, Carolina Panters) and Christian Ponder (12th overall, Minnesota Vikings) and this spring taking on Tannehill; Michigan State's Kirk Cousins; Wisconsin's Russell Wilson; Joe Montana's sons, Nate and Nick, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' Josh Freeman.

"Chris as a coach is perfect at what he does," says Newton, who was back to work with Weinke this month after throwing for a rookie-record 4,051 yards last season. "He knows what buttons to push with anybody from 7-years-old all the way up to me."

Weinke is a 6-4, 235-pound straight shooter with an easy smile, hard-won wisdom and no tolerance for slackers.

"Either a guy is willing to buy in and do the work or not," Weinke says. "I simply provided Cam with a structured environment and guidance to hopefully elevate his game."

Filling Need
Weinke is not alone. Quarterback gurus are popping up all over the country.

George Whitfield Jr. and Hall of Famer Warren Moon are working with Stanford's Andrew Luck, the presumptive first overall pick. They also teamed with Newton before the scouting combine last year.

Terry Shea, a former college head coach and NFL coordinator, is honing Baylor's Robert Griffin III, probably the No. 2 pick. He also has worked with Sam Bradford and Matthew Stafford.

Others with similar job titles include former New York Jets quarterbacks Chad Pennington, Ken O'Brien and Vinny Testaverde and former Cincinnati Bengals signal-callers Turk Schonert and Ken Anderson.

And even the Manning family is involved with the Manning Passing Academy run by former New Orleans Saint Archie with Super Bowl-winning sons Peyton and Eli as well as their brother, Cooper.

"A couple of my friends, Turk and Kenny Anderson, are now coaching guys one-on-one," says Cris Collinsworth, an NBC analyst who was a Bengals receiver. "These coaches have even more significance now because of the limited offseason time NFL coaches are allowed to spend on the field with players."

In previous years, teams could start working with players in the middle of March. That date has been moved to April 16 under the new collective bargaining agreement.

The result has been a coaching void at the game's most complicated position. That's where the QB gurus have stepped in.

Weinke is credited with helping Newton to become the first overall pick last April, but he also prepared him for his rookie season while the NFL was shuttered by the lockout.

"What Chris did for Cam was tremendous," Panthers coach Ron Rivera says. "It was very fortunate for us that Cam decided to go to IMG and develop that relationship with Chris. It really paid off."

Weinke prepared Tannehill for his pro day today, implementing Hall of Fame coach John Madden's curriculum of fundamentals and film study supplemented by Weinke's mantra of "building quarterbacks from the ground up" with metronomic footwork and accuracy.

"Chris is doing a great job," Madden says. "It's something that's just going to get bigger and bigger."

Weinke is a sculptor of rhythm and timing with outside-the-box drills. For instance, he creates an obstructed pocket with a wall of four 6-foot-plus tackling dummies.

"You don't see the rush, you feel the rush," he says. "That visualization is how you have to operate."

Tannehill, whose initial issue was herky-jerky footwork, Weinke says, drops back five steps and lets fly based on blind faith.

"I didn't have my eyes closed, but I couldn't see the receiver at all," Tannehill says.

Weinke is a full-time employee of IMG, a sports agency. His clients include athletes represented by IMG and other groups. But a large portion of his time is spent training kids as young as 7, and Weinke estimates he has worked with more than a thousand players from 25 countries.

It's a unique job Weinke came to after a unique career. He was a second-round pick of the Toronto Blue Jays in 1990 as an infielder, playing for six years before going to Florida State as a quarterback.

"Now I get my satisfaction helping kids develop," he says. "I grew up in St. Paul, Minn., wanting to be an NHL player. I took another route instead."

No Time to Rest
After his 90-minute workout with Tannehill in a group that includes Boston College linebacker Luke Kuechly and local high school receiver Garrett Pratt, Weinke extols Tannehill's upside as a receiver-turned-quarterback with 19 starts.

"Ryan is throwing the ball as good as I've ever seen," Weinke says. "He's got all the tools and is going to be special."

The Miami Dolphins, who select eighth, would be a natural landing spot considering his former Texas A&M coach, Mike Sherman, is the Dolphins' offensive coordinator.

Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll, whose team has the 12th pick, also has interest despite recently signing veteran Matt Flynn. "We are considering Tannehill," he says.

Tannehill hasn't taken a day off since January, following his mentor's indefatigable example.

"Cam and Christian ended up getting a lot better and playing well working with Chris," Tannehill says. "That's the end goal — to start and play well in the NFL."

Recovered from January surgery for a broken foot, Tannehill watches video of his first day throwing on the move. Weinke switches to Tannehill and Texas A&M falling to Arkansas in 2011. He pauses and then calls Tannehill to the white board: "Draw that play up."

"Chris and I are on the same page talking plays and protections," Tannehill says. "I've gotten so much better in my time here being smoother in my drops and not aiming the ball."

Weinke earns a six-figure salary and aspires to become a college head coach. But his payoff on game days is watching Newton and Ponder apply his lessons on his office flat screen.

"I don't ever show the excitement," Weinke says. "But internally I'm sitting there saying, 'I'm proud of those guys, how they operate in the heat of battle.' Seeing them succeed is really what it's all about."

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/nfl/story/2012-03-25/chris-weinke-trains-nfl-qb-prospects-ryan-tannehill/53841764/1
 

On April 12, NBA owners gather in New York for their first board of governors meeting since the bitter labor dispute last fall. During that lockout, NBA Commissioner David Stern told anyone who would listen that the players would have to accept cuts because the NBA was losing more than $300 million a year, with 22 of its 30 teams in the red. The new collective bargaining agreement helped owners control costs, but many still badly need a revenue boost, which is why an old idea may get a new hearing at the April meeting: selling ad space on game jerseys.

According to Sports Business Journal, the idea is expected to be debated at the meeting. NBA spokesman Michael Bass says the agenda is not yet set but that “sponsor logos on NBA uniforms is a subject of ongoing conversation.” Marketing experts say it’s only a matter of time. “When you look at the revenue streams left available, jersey branding is the most significant that hasn’t been exploited,” says David Abrutyn, head of global consulting at sports marketing firm IMG Worldwide. “It’s inevitable,” agrees Frank Vuono, co-founder of 16W Marketing.
Illustration by Marcos Chin

What’s not so certain is what a jersey deal is really worth. Front Row Marketing Services, whose parent company, Comcast-Spectacor, runs 11 regional sports networks and owned the Philadelphia 76ers until last fall, figures the annual cost to companies to place their logos on uniforms would range from $1.2 million to $7.5  million per year, depending mainly on the market where the team plays. The calculations are complicated, says President Chris Lencheski. His analysts have scoured game footage to tabulate which parts of a jersey appear at various points during a game’s telecast. “There is a marked difference on the return, depending on where a patch might be,” he says. “And is it a 3-inch-by-3-inch patch? Or is it a 3-inch-by-3-inch square, and your logo can fit inside that area? It sounds silly, but this is what you do.”

A study by Horizon Media last year put the annual value of the television exposure of the space across an NBA jersey’s chest in a range from $4.1 million for the L.A. Lakers to $300,000 for the Minnesota Timberwolves. Abrutyn, whose IMG arranged the partnership deal between the NBA and its official automotive partner Kia Motors, says those numbers are probably low. He estimates the Lakers could fetch $10 million to $15 million per year. Both Abrutyn and Vuono point to European soccer, where marquee clubs, such as Manchester United, get more than $30 million a year for uniform deals. Whatever the cost, there will be no shortage of bidders, says Lencheski. “I’ve got about six companies that would buy it right now.” Abrutyn says companies that already have naming rights to NBA venues, such as Staples in Los Angeles or TD Bank in Boston, are likely to be “the ones on speed dial once this gets approved.”

While dealmakers are understandably gung-ho, fans might not be thrilled to have advertisers invade one of the few commerce-free corners of the game. None of the four major U.S. sports sells space on game jerseys. And the NBA, unlike the other leagues, doesn’t even give space to its uniform maker, Adidas. But the purists have long been in retreat. In 1979, Liverpool became the first professional soccer club in England to put a sponsor (Hitachi) on its uniform. At first, the BBC refused to air the club’s games. Now every team in the Barclays Premier League sells the space on players’ chests. “Commercialization in sports has long been accepted in society,” says IMG’s Abrutyn.

Some fans would welcome the change because revenue coming from corporate coffers means more money for players. “Any money from the jerseys is not going into the owner’s pocket, I can assure you,” says Lencheski, “it’s going to produce the best basketball team they can.” The players, for their part, are not likely to complain, because they would be entitled to a share of the extra revenue. Plus, sponsorship money doesn’t come out of fans’ pockets. “The initial outrage of people putting names on stadiums ended pretty quickly when people realized that otherwise they’re going to have to pay a lot more for their tickets,” says Vuono, who knows a thing or two about outrage from helping arrange for Candlestick Park to become 3Com Park in 1995.

Even without a fan revolt, the league will have to sort out ground rules to keep from upsetting its current sponsors and TV partners. Could a team with Southwest Airlines on its Jersey play at American Airlines Arena in Miami? Does Kia’s status as the official automotive partner of the NBA keep Chrysler from buying space on the Detroit Pistons uniform? Bass says the NBA, which already does jersey deals in its development league and in the WNBA, is evaluating “the impact on key stakeholders.” One big consideration, he says, is whether jersey sponsorships would increase revenue or merely divert it from existing deals.

The largest stumbling block, ironically, could be the owners themselves. This fall’s lockout was in part a battle between the big and small market teams over revenue sharing. And tensions are still raw. In December, before the NBA put the brakes on a trade that would have sent star point guard Chris Paul from the New Orleans Hornets, which the league owns, to the Los Angeles Lakers, Dan Gilbert, who owns the Cleveland Cavaliers, sent an e-mail to Commissioner Stern asking, “When will we just change the name of 25 of the 30 teams to the Washington Generals?” He and the league’s other have-nots are likely to cry foul over any plan that promises to be dramatically more lucrative for the top five franchises than it is for the rest.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-03-28/will-nba-players-become-billboards
 

Bobby Sharma has a passion for basketball that goes beyond support for any one team. His interest is global rather than local. Nearly, a year after joining IMG as senior vice president, Global, Basketball the former NBA executive sees a very bright future for the game in India.

On his maiden visit to the God's own Country, Sharma witnessed the summit clash of the 26th Federation Cup. He was pleased with the talent and athleticism that was on display. In an exclusive chat with the TOI, Sharma spoke at length.

How difficult is it for an Indian to take up basketball? It obviously comes naturally to Americans?

Basketball is a game that was made for India. People often say India is a beautiful organized chaos, and that is also a great description for basketball. It's been said the musical analogy for basketball is jazz, with its free-flowing high energy, and unpredictable excitement. That exactly connects to the spirit of India

How expensive a sport is it to take up? Only fortunate kids get to play sports like tennis and golf.

The beauty of basketball is that it's one of the easiest games to play, as you only need a ball and a hoop. At least in terms of participation it's the second most popular sport in the world. It has a very low cost of entry, you can play it anywhere, and it's one of those games that's very easy to understand.

How does a youngster convince his parents that he wants to make a career out of basketball?

It's a good question. I would say it's the same answer for any sport, whether it's cricket, basketball, golf or tennis. There are professional opportunities for certain individuals, and our goal with IMG Reliance's professional basketball league in India will be to provide that opportunity in the most exciting growth market for sport. But as a professional career in sports can only be realized for a few, it should be noted the league platform provides for many other positive things in India, including health, wellness, and education - both as a game and as a business.

How important is the technical aspect at the grassroots level? In cricket and even football, many players learn at the streets and don't get their basics right until they go to an academy...

Like every other sport, fundamentals are a critical step in the development process for basketball. So it's very important to put technical standards in place at an early stage. In fact, that's one of IMG Reliance's short term goals for basketball in India, and something which we've been working closely with the BFI on.

Indians are not very strappingly built. Will that affect the growth?

I don't think it's fair to generalize a population of 1.2 billion in one of the fastest growing economies in world as such. I think there is a lot of talent and athleticism in the system already, but even more promising, there are plenty of untapped opportunities to identify more and more talent. We've already made great strides in the last year.

Can basketball really become India's biggest sport in the next 5 years?

I don't think any sport sets out to eclipse cricket in terms of popularity in India, especially on such a timeline. Rather, our goal with basketball is to capitalize on the success that cricket has demonstrated in terms of becoming part of a permanent sports landscape, and even the popular culture. And I think there's a lot of room in terms of providing India with alternative sports and entertainment options. In my view, the thing that sets basketball apart from all other sports as a commercial matter is its unique ability to highly-integrate entertainment into the game better than any other sport. It's very possible that basketball can become the number 2 sport in India in the near future.

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-03-28/nagpur/31249171_1_professional-basketball-league-img-reliance-sport
 

Invitation to Big Dance a Boon to Smaller Colleges and Universities

A spot in college basketball’s major tournament is not just a dream come true for the players; it’s also a huge boost for less-fancied schools.

Playing in March Madness, which kicks off in full on Thursday, may be a familiar ritual for Duke University or the University of Kansas, perennial high seeds for the NCAA men’s matchups. But for Robert Morris University, Virginia Commonwealth University and University of North Carolina at Asheville, among other smaller colleges and universities, the benefits can be enormous.

The experience of these schools shows how big a deal sporting success can be — not just in terms of enrollment or alumni donations. The increasingly professional approach of athletic departments means a bump in merchandising royalties and licensing deals.
“No one can forecast the specific business impact on schools making the tournament, but it can mean tournament-revenue payouts, increased brand exposure and national recognition, which can boost student applications and also revenue from licensed-merchandise sales,” said Ben Sutton, president of IMG College, which handles licensing and sponsorships for many top Division I schools.

VCU, one of the biggest underdog stories in recent years, saw its royalties jump 219% after last year’s March Madness, when the 11th-seeded team reached the Final Four. Royalty income during the fiscal quarter following the tournament was larger than any full year in the college’s history. The school’s number of licensees has risen to 163 today, from 126 before last year’s tournament run, according to IMG College.

After a 17-year gap, Robert Morris made the NCAA tournament in 2009 and 2010, losing in the first round both times. But despite the early defeats, the school’s merchandise sales jumped as much as 50% during March Madness, said Pat Cavanaugh, chief executive of Pittsburgh-based Crons, which was the school’s apparel-maker. Though the spike didn’t last after March, sales afterward were higher than before the tournament.

A difference between the big and small schools is the loyalty of a smaller school’s fan base, Cavanaugh said: “The reach may not be as wide, but the fans buy several items.”

Top sellers are usually items such as fleeces, T-shirts and pants. This year, Crons is outfitting UNC-Asheville, launching a new design on Wednesday for the team to wear during the tournament.

Cavanaugh commented that just making the Big Dance ramps up interest among the students and alumni and helps admissions efforts. Butler University saw a 41% increase in applications after the Indianapolis school’s team made the tournament’s championship game in 2010.

A team needs to make the tournament’s third round, known as the Sweet Sixteen, for national attention, he added. In the hope of capitalizing on that level of interest, Crons has a number of designs ready to push out in case UNC-Asheville makes it that far.

Last year was only the second time the school had made the tournament, and merchandise sales doubled this year, according to Cavanaugh, though that was also due to a new arena and on-site store.

Rolling with it
It’s long been true that sporting success is a way to raise a school’s profile — both locally and nationally — and generate an increase in enrollment. For instance, after the heroics of George Mason University’s team, when the 11th seed made the Final Four in 2006, out-of-state applications to the Washington, D.C. school were up 54%.

But private (typically smaller) schools can benefit disproportionately. With Butler’s team making the championship game in each of the past two years, the university saw a 25% rise in season-ticket sales following the 2010 tournament, as well as record merchandise sales and donations to the athletic department. A university-commissioned study said Butler’s run was worth $639 million in publicity for the school through television, print and online exposure.

“It’s hard to get students to pay attention, for example, to even hiring a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, but doing well in sports can do that,” said Devin Pope, assistant professor at University of Chicago Booth School of Business and co-author of a study linking sporting success with higher enrollment.

Pope’s paper also found that quality of applicants is about the same as before; it’s not as if students with low SAT scores all decide they want to hit a sports-focused college.

Despite that, the jury is still out on whether college-basketball programs are worth their cost, Pope said. Among the top schools, 44% lost money on their men’s basketball programs in 2010, according to the NCAA, and the average program spent $1.44 million on its coaching staff.

“You hear a lot about the intangibles that people talk about with sports programs — about bringing students together and teaching values,” he elaborated. “Ultimately, I think it’s up to each university to decide if it’s worth it.”

Winston Salem-- IMG College thrives on March Madness.

The Winston-Salem company is providing assistance to 54 radio broadcast clients during the two conference tournament weeks, including 200 hours just on Friday.

Because IMG College has clients in nine conferences — including the Big East, Pack 12, SEC, ACC, Big 10 and Big 12 — local producers were on the air from 9:30 a.m. Thursday to 2 a.m. Friday

Given that several clients, including Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech and Wake Forest, are offering "wall-to-wall" coverage of all games in their tournaments, it's a physical and technological marathon not for the faint of heart — or stamina.

The producers, among things, update scores, make sure signals are working and put together highlights packages.

"It's a tightly scripted, all-hands-on-deck effort that puts IMG College on par with any broadcast operation in the world," said Andrew Giangola, vice president of strategic communications for IMG College.

Each game's play-by-play is piped to the local operations, where producers mix the sound with music, highlights from other games and commercial spots. The call is then beamed up to a satellite and downloaded to more than 2,200 radio stations across the country.

Yet, there's a calm, ordered side to the hoops frenzy at IMG College's operations on Trade Street.

Two studios filled with 43 individual broadcast booths enable IMG College producers to speak clearly with their three colleagues — a play-by-play announcer and a color announcer and an onsite producer — at the tournament site.

It's a coast-to-coast smorgasbord, which means a producer handling Duke's coverage could be next to a producer assisting Michigan's broadcast who is next to the producer on the Nevada-Las Vegas game.

For example, producer Andrew Africk was responsible this week for handling games involving South Florida, Syracuse, UCLA and Washington.

Although having so many games to juggle at one time can be challenging, it also can be a blessing when broadcasters need help filling time when the game preceding theirs goes into multiple overtimes.

And March Madness isn't even busiest time of the year for IMG College.

November is, because of the overlap of football and basketball broadcasts on Saturdays. For example, said Chad Cleveland, who is in charge of IMG College's local audio operations, the audio team produced 185 broadcasts during the week of Nov. 14 — 92 basketball and 43 football games and 50 shows — that totaled nearly 800 hours.

Altogether, the local IMG College unit produces more than 30,000 hours of radio for its partners each year.

The chance to become a familiar voice to fans, particularly on football broadcasts that can last up to 4½ hours with pre- and post-game segments, is part of the appeal of an working as a producer, Africk said.

Cleveland said several local producers have worked their way to play-by-play duties in college and professional sports.

"Those opportunities help us continue to replenish our talent when those here who have the chops for play-by-play get their chance," Cleveland said.

Chris Kroeger, who handles Pac-12 broadcasts, says he takes pride in creating audio that focuses on the individual characteristics of what makes a school's athletics and culture unique.

"We don't turn out carbon-copy broadcasts," Kroeger said. "The Washington Huskies broadcast sounds nothing like the Washington State Cougars broadcast."

Cleveland said IMG College is trying to build a local pool of producers through a yearlong broadcast technology program at Forsyth Technical Community College. At least three Forsyth Tech students have gone to work in the local studio.

"We're doing what we can to help keep IMG College based here," Cleveland said.

Despite the marathon days, Cleveland said the effort is worth it.

"Put it this way: We get paid to watch college sports, and we have a blast doing what we love," he said.

Triple major champion Padraig Harrington is to lend financial support to a wheelchair-bound relative by selling branding space on his golf clothing and equipment.

Father of three Gerard Byrne, 35, a cousin of Harrington’s wife Caroline, is paralysed from the waist down and has been told he will never walk again after being involved in a car accident a few weeks ago.

“This is why I never want to complain again about golf,” said the 2007 and 2008 British Open winner and 2008 U.S. PGA champion ahead of this week’s Honda Classic in Florida.

“Gerard will need a lot of assistance in his life - a wheelchair-enabled car, renovations to his home and other things,” he told the Irish Times.

“My sponsors have agreed to allow me to offer all the branding on my clothing and bag to the highest bidder for three tournaments in March and April,” added Harrington in a reference to the Houston Open, U.S. Masters and Heritage Classic.

The 40-year-old, who has dropped from third to 87th in the world rankings in the last three years, has already received some offers.

“We have a bid of 100,000 euros ($134,200) for the front of my cap and 50,000 euros for a space on my chest,” said six-times Ryder Cup player Harrington who is without a victory since the 2010 Johor Open in Malaysia.

http://www.golftoday.co.uk/news/yeartodate/2012_news/padraig_harrington_sponsorship.html

*****For more information please contact Adrian Mitchell at adrian.mitchell@imgworld.com.

PepsiCo is Bringing the Original Sports Drink Back to Athletes—and Expanding the Brand Beyond Beverages

Iman Shumpert is eight minutes into his Fatmax test at Gatorade’s new Sports Science Institute in Bradenton, Fla., before the first sheer layer of sweat appears on his shoulders. The National Basketball Assn.’s 17th overall draft pick has traded a New York Knicks cap and Beats by Dr. Dre headphones for a mask of tubes that makes him look like something out of Alien. At predetermined intervals, attendants boost the speed and grade of the treadmill he’s running on while computers record his heart rate and oxygen levels. The Fatmax figures out when a body is burning fat (as opposed to carbohydrates) most efficiently. “Hold out as long as you can,” Gatorade scientist John Eric Smith tells Shumpert. Maximum effort yields the best results. Smith cranks it up another notch. Shumpert picks up the pace. “Good,” Smith beams.

Shumpert is among a string of athletes that includes NBA All-Star Dwyane Wade who have come to the new Bradenton lab looking for insights into their bodies (Shumpert has suffered muscle cramps for years) while Gatorade tests a series of new products, such as energy chews, intended to boost athletic performance. The lab is located at IMG Academies boarding school, which was founded by the late New York private equity magnate Theodore J. (Ted) Forstmann. The lab primarily serves IMG’s student-athletes, nearly 1,000 high school kids from all over the world who pay as much as $60,000 a year to go to boarding school nine months a year, splitting each day 50/50 between classes and their sport. “It’s Hogwarts for athletes,” says Trevor Moawad, director of the IMG Performance Institute, a unit of the academy. And for Gatorade, it’s a skunkworks with a captive crew of guinea pigs. “Where else is a population like this?” Smith says after Shumpert concludes his test and downs a bottle of lemon-lime G Series Pro O2 Perform, an update on its original drink, which introduced electrolytes to the mass market.

More than 40 years after football players at the University of Florida first sipped what would soon become Gatorade, parent company PepsiCo is looking to move the brand beyond beverages. In the same way PepsiCo rules the potato chip aisle, its Gatorade division has embarked on an audacious plan to cover the sports nutrition world with offerings to challenge a full spectrum of energy and after-workout “recovery” products, including energy bars, gels, protein shakes, and pretty much anything else athletes put into their bodies. “One beverage can’t serve all your needs as an elite athlete,” says the brand’s chief, Sarah Robb O’Hagan. (Her official title is Gatorade president, North America, and global chief marketing officer, sports nutrition, for PepsiCo.) Gatorade’s goal is to go from a big fish in a $7 billion U.S. sports-drink industry to an even bigger fish in a $20 billion sports nutrition market.

The plan so far is in its infancy, visible to the outside world mostly in the repackaging of its three core product lines—the G Series, G Series Fit, and G Series Pro. Each now comprises pre-, during-, and post-workout products labeled 01 Prime, 02 Perform, and 03 Recover. They require a flow chart to keep straight, and some industry observers view the metamorphosis warily as a work-in-progress. “I think it’s a very confusing brand,” says Tim Hoyle, director of research for PepsiCo shareholder Haverford, a wealth management firm, and an avid cyclist.

Gatorade has its work cut out for it. It will need to persuade everyone from high school jocks to weekend tennis warriors that they should trade bananas for packaged carbohydrate chews, and peanut butter sandwiches for processed protein bites. And it must overhaul its distribution system. Instead of just stacking beverages high and selling them cheaply in grocery and convenience stores, the new strategy requires the company to rethink everything from advertising to in-store displays. Gatorade now is selling to GNC vitamin shops, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Whole Foods Market, and specialty sports stores. “It’s about being where athletes shop and sweat,” says Andrea Fairchild, vice-president of brand marketing.

One thing Gatorade doesn’t lack is motivation. After several decades of steady growth, Gatorade had sluggish sales in recent years and a full-scale collapse during the U.S. recession. Determined to walk away from discount-driven sales—or “rented volume,” as Robb O’Hagan calls it—the company decided in 2008 to turn away from couch potatoes who chugged Gatorade to wash down a cheeseburger or cure a hangover. Analysts gasped during a 2009 earnings call when PepsiCo Chief Executive Officer Indra K. Nooyi said such consumers—who had by then reverted to cheaper beverages like soft drinks and tap water—“didn’t really have a right to exist in the Gatorade world.” Harsh, perhaps, but it was Nooyi’s way of saying PepsiCo wasn’t selling out anymore.

On a recent afternoon at Gatorade’s headquarters in downtown Chicago, Robb O’Hagan laced up her roadworn Nike Air Pegasus running shoes to discuss the Gatorade transformation over a light jog through the city. PepsiCo recruited Robb O’Hagan from Nike in June 2008 as Gatorade sales were grinding to a halt. The 39-year-old executive is a test market of one. In August, Robb O’Hagan and her husband, a stay-at-home dad and part-time Web producer, completed the Chicago Triathlon. The Olympic distance race—1.5 kilometer swim, 40 kilometer bike ride, and a 10 kilometer run—was her annual athletic goal, part of a program she instituted for Gatorade employees to make sure they were walking the talk. “You can pick whatever your goal is,” she says. “It might be that you want to lose a few pounds. One guy wanted to bench-press 300 pounds.”

One of Robb O’Hagan’s first moves was to revive the idea of truncating Gatorade’s logo to a simple “G.” Unveiled in a mysterious Super Bowl ad in 2009 that never mentioned the word “Gatorade,” the G intrigued some consumers and baffled others. The intent, says Robb O’Hagan, was to appeal to a new generation and to develop a logo that can appear on a wider range of goods.

She also noticed the brand really wasn’t marketing to athletes. “The huge aha! for me was, ‘We’re an athletic performance brand, we’re selling in convenience stores, grocery stores, Wal-Mart, but we don’t even show up in a sporting goods store, in a cycling store, in a place where an athlete actually goes to equip themselves to play sports,’ ” she says. Robb O’Hagan has since brought Gatorade back to athletes and to the science that gave the brand its credibility.

First developed by researchers at the University of Florida in 1965, Gatorade took off quickly with college and professional athletes because it has a formula proven on the playing field. By 1983 it had became the National Football League’s official sports drink. In 2001, PepsiCo bought the $2 billion-a-year brand, and the soft-drink and snack giant spent the better part of the decade pushing Gatorade through its massive distribution system. PepsiCo introduced hundreds of flavors and package deviations, including a breakfast version, Gatorade A.M., pitched by Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning. The strategy made sense at the time, Robb O’Hagan allows, but it crashed along with the economy in 2008. In 2007 the sports-drink category had mushroomed to $8 billion a year in the U.S., and Gatorade controlled 80 percent, according to industry newsletter Beverage Digest. Within three years, the sports-drink market had declined by $1 billion, and Gatorade’s market share had eroded to 74.8 percent. Meanwhile, serious athletes were turning away from sports drinks to a raft of emerging products, including Jelly Belly Sport Beans, Bonk Breaker Energy Bars, and the Honey Stinger energy waffles endorsed by Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong. They bought Carbo-Pro powders in large tubs. Gatorade had mostly conceded these markets. “It’s our role to make anything to drive an athlete’s performance that goes inside their body,” Robb O’Hagan says, drawing a comparison to her former employer’s strategy. “Nike’s all about what’s outside your body. We’re about what’s inside.”

Gatorade’s transition from beverage giant to sports nutrition company is taking shape on several fronts, not the least of which is social media. In a midsize conference room in Chicago known as “mission control,” four to six employees with laptops watch a bank of six screens like NASA rocket engineers. On the screens, they track the Internet’s “mood” toward Gatorade, thanks to software that collects, categorizes, and interprets a cross section of online conversations. Then, on their laptops, they follow up on individual comments and complaints. For example, Gatorade investigated one about caps on some drinks being hard to open and discovered that the bottles in question had overheated during shipping. “It’s the world’s largest unaided focus group,” says 31-year-old Randall Brown, global director of digital strategy for Gatorade.

To deepen and update the information, Gatorade recently hired the man who invented the Fatmax test. Asker Jeukendrup was a professor of exercise metabolism and director of the human performance lab at the University of Birmingham in England. He worked with Armstrong during the Tour de France winner’s comeback from cancer. Jeukendrup’s job is to take a maze of often conflicting and highly specialized nutrition science and boil it down for mass consumption. “A lot of the science actually goes unused; it’s done to maintain academia,” he says.

Gatorade plans to use his work as the basis of new products, too, although this won’t be easy. People absorb proteins, carbohydrates, and electrolytes at different rates, and those rates can change with the weather, says Lawrence Armstrong, professor of environmental and exercise physiology at the University of Connecticut’s human performance laboratory. Research, for example, says protein helps repair muscles after exercise. But simply chocking a bar full of protein won’t work. The body can handle only so much at a time. And even when the optimal level of a carbohydrate is determined, making large amounts of the supplement palatable in a drink requires further expertise. “There are many, many factors that influence performance, including psychology, including sleep, including environmental conditions,’’ Armstrong says.

NBA star Wade started taking his nutrition more seriously after leading the Miami Heat to the 2006 championship title. Wade’s leg muscles began to seize during the deciding sixth game against the Dallas Mavericks. “The last three to five minutes of the game, I was just cramping up bad and trying to tough it out,’’ he says by telephone from Australia, where he is helping launch G Series. Gatorade is working with Wade to customize a nutrition program for him.

Naturally, Gatorade can’t make individualized products for everyone; the company has to find common denominators. Its solution so far has been the G Series. The core line is targeted to “performance” athletes—competitive high school swimmers to adult basketball league players—who make up nearly a quarter of the U.S. population, Robb O’Hagan says. The series includes a 4-ounce carbohydrate-loaded “pre-game fuel” drink pouch designed to be easily torn open and squeezed into your mouth. The flavored recovery water in the series is packed with protein and carbohydrates.

G Series Fit moves down the ladder a bit and is intended for the roughly 55 million Americans aged 18 to 34 who exercise three times or more per week. These people work out to stay healthy, without necessarily competing. The supplements in Fit are scaled back to match less intense workouts. This line is where Gatorade’s departure from beverages is most pronounced so far: The main offering is a fruit-and-nut bar segmented into bite-size, 50-calorie squares. A fruit smoothie provides an after-workout dose of protein to help the athlete recover sooner.

G Series Pro, meanwhile, is a consumer version of products Gatorade had already been producing for professional athletes. A recovery bar contains whey and casein from milk protein for muscle growth. Vitamins and minerals in the bar boost muscle metabolism, Gatorade says, while carbohydrates help store energy in muscles and the liver in the form of glycogen sugar. Gatorade soon will roll out Pro chews—essentially Gummi Bears for endurance athletes—to compete with Gu Chomps and Clif Bloks that are a staple on long-distance courses. The company also sells two all-natural versions of its new drinks that use noncaloric sweeteners. Gatorade drinkers accustomed to buying 32-oz. bottles for 99¢ may experience sticker shock when it comes to the newest products. PepsiCo charges for its innovation. A 12-oz. bottle of the Pro pre-workout carbohydrate drink sells for $2.99.

This product lineup demands an equally dramatic shift in how and where PepsiCo distributes Gatorade in stores. Before Gatorade’s transformation, sales were split fairly evenly among grocery chains, club stores such as Wal-Mart, and convenience stores. “We are setting a different bar for how we are looking at retail,” says brand marketing Vice-President Fairchild, whom Robb O’Hagan recruited from Nike last year.

Gatorade has taken its Pro series into cycling and running specialty stores that cater to endurance athletes as well as health supplement stores such as GNC. “People come in and buy nutrition from me every day and spend hundreds of dollars,” says Julian Angus, 40, owner of Tempo Cyclery in Sarasota, Fla., who remembers a time last decade when only a few companies made products for elite athletes. Margins rival those of clothing and accessories, he says. Still, Angus was skeptical when Gatorade first pitched him on the products and started sending displays. He worried that customers, not realizing these were new offerings, would think they were being charged boutique prices for the same old drinks they could buy at the supermarket.

As far as they have come, Fairchild and Robb O’Hagan say a fully evolved distribution model is still years away. By some estimates, Gatorade controls about a fifth of the sports nutrition category. “It’s a pretty daunting task to create this across all retail channels and across all of our business,” says Fairchild. “We’re not looking to change the entire marketplace overnight.”

What is the single most frustrating issue in American politics? The deficit? Nah. Entitlement reform? A cakewalk. The Republican Party's presidential nominee? A day in the park. It's this: Reforming the nation's failing inner-city schools.

When in 1999 Ted Forstmann started the Children's Scholarship Fund with John Walton, he thought it was a good idea that might last about four years. The short version of the good idea was that CSF would raise private funds to give scholarships to inner-city students, whose parents also would contribute money toward tuition at a private school of their choice. The notion was that CSF would offer a helping hand until larger reforms emerged to repair an obviously failing public education system.

The fund attracted a lot of attention then because Ted Forstmann, a founder of the Forstmann, Little & Co. leveraged-buyout firm, and John Walton, whose father was Sam Walton, between them put $100 million behind the effort and raised another $100 million. For those who've been in the trenches of education reform, what happened next has entered the realm of legend.

An almost incomprehensible 1.25 million families from some 22,000 U.S. cities and towns applied for the four-year scholarships. In New York City, 168,000 applied (about 30% of those eligible) for 2,500 scholarships. Nor were they seeking a free ride. The scholarships were typically for less than $2,000 a year, with the parents expected to pitch in perhaps half of that.

On announcement day, the fund awarded 40,000 scholarships. And Ted Forstmann took the occasion to say in public what he wanted to say about the state of education in the United States, circa 1999:

"Some insist that if we would just keep doing more of what we have been doing—spend more money, hire more teachers and reduce class sizes—we will get different results. I don't believe that anymore."

He said one more thing that day worth recalling. It was about the $1,000 or so each scholarship family was kicking in: "Consider that $1,000 over four years from the parents of 1.25 million children adds up to $5 billion. Five billion dollars from families who have very little. Five billion in scrimping and savings, in second jobs and second-hand clothes, in basic necessities not bought, and countless other sacrifices made—simply to escape the system that they've been relegated to and to obtain a decent education for their children."

Mr. Forstmann thought the failure of the education status quo was so obvious and the need for change so dire (he called it "an appeal to the moral middle of America") that change of some sort would come soon to American public education. Needless to say, he was wrong. Change did not come to public, inner-city education. The teachers unions won't allow it, and the pols in the party they support value incumbency's power more than anyone's notion of a moral crisis.

Messrs. Forstmann and Walton persisted with their notion of reform. There's an old saw about commitment that I like, especially when money is on the line: in for a nickel, in for a dime. To date, the Children's Scholarship Fund has raised $483 million. It has disbursed scholarships to 123,000 students. It has affiliate programs in 33 states, which now administer the program on their own.

The imperative to be current requires that we interrupt this rare, good-news story to admit unsavory political issues. It has become difficult not to notice that the current American president is never so energized as when he is traveling the land denouncing "millionaires and billionaires." We are instructed to believe that the 1% are pillaging the 99%. Which is to say we are going to get a presidential election rooted in well-fertilized animosities of class and party. By contrast, Messrs. Forstmann and Walton (who died in 2005) concluded back then that percentage and party could be put to more productive use.

After raising the ante on school reform with their own $100 million for the scholarships, the two men recruited a bipartisan array of backers, such as Democrats Andrew Young, Eli Broad, Pat Moynihan, Tom Daschle, John Breaux, Ron Burkle and Floyd Flake; and Republicans Trent Lott, Henry Kissinger, Julian Robertson, George Shultz and Roger Staubach. Mr. Forstmann's current vice-chair for the fund is Mike McCurry, a former press secretary for President Bill Clinton. Measure this political alliance against the enormous difficulty the past three years of getting Congress to reinstate the Washington, D.C., Opportunity Scholarship Program. It did so in April.

Bipartisan philanthropy is of course traditional in the U.S., where more than $200 billion is given annually by individuals to keep cultural, educational and medical institutions operating. This is a world of grown-ups, and no doubt the tradition of bipartisan support will continue, no matter how much vilification is unloaded on them in the next 12 months.

Mr. Forstmann has long argued that all the money dumped into public education budgets misses the element most crucial to the schools' success: active parental involvement. His solution to getting them in the game has been requiring the parents to contribute between 25% and 75% of the scholarship award, based on need. That's it. The parents can pick any private school they desire. Many go straight to neighborhood parochial schools, once the sturdy adjunct to many urban public systems. Asked how they assure the quality of the choices, Scholarship Fund President Darla Romfo says, "We don't decide what is a good school; they do." And if they don't like that school, they're free to switch the scholarship to another.

This is the point at which the obligatory "outcomes" data is normally inserted. At first CSF didn't try to measure results because they didn't expect to be in business this long. They do have strong evaluation results now, but here's an editorial comment: If the choice is between strong parental involvement and nearly no parental involvement, the data in favor of involved parents came in about 200,000 years ago.

Some time back, in an essay on the entrepreneur's social role, Mr. Forstmann wrote, "He inhabits a world where belief precedes results." For years, no more frustrating belief has existed in American domestic politics than the possibility of giving inner-city children a better education. Against the public-school monopoly, sustained forward movement has seemed impossible. That may be changing. This year at least 13 states passed some form of school-choice legislation. Notably, Indiana's new voucher program is letting parents use public funds this fall to send their children to private, mostly religious, schools.

We live in bitter and divided political times, with optimism in short supply. It is somehow fitting that an idea Ted Forstmann and John Walton put in motion 12 years ago just had a breakout year. Sometimes, belief really does produce results.
 

Lindsey Vonn has spent much of the past seven years defending something.

The most accomplished skier the United States has produced, Vonn has 42 World Cup victories and an Olympic gold medal. She became the first American to win three consecutive overall World Cup titles, from 2008 to 2010, but skiing championships aren't the only thing the outspoken, photogenic face of American winter sports has had to defend.

There's her relationship with U.S. teammate Julia Mancuso, who told Sports Illustrated in 2010 that, "You come to meetings after races and it's like it's a bad day if Lindsey didn't do well."

There are her facial expressions. Her decision to pose in a bikini for a photo shoot. Her criticisms of course conditions. Her supposed lack of enthusiasm after her reported best friend in the sport, Germany's Maria Hoefl-Riesch, took away her World Cup title last season. There are claims Vonn RSVP'd "no'' to Hoefl-Riesch's wedding this offseason through an email. And claims her friendship with Hoefl-Riesch -- so cozy that Vonn and husband/coach Tom typically spent Christmas Eve in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, with her -- had eroded to the point that Hoefl-Riesch took shots at Vonn in the voracious German media.

"You like that?" Vonn said, chuckling. "It's always interesting."

For now, the interesting storylines are on the hill.

Vonn, 27, entered the 2011-12 World Cup season attacking quite successfully, winning the giant slalom for the first time in her World Cup career in the season's first event in Soelden, Austria -- becoming just the fifth woman and first American to win events in all five Alpine disciplines.

"It's actually kind of nice," Vonn said of her new mindset. "It's a nice change, and I like, kind of, being the underdog so to speak and chasing after someone. It's a cool feeling. I think it's definitely more motivating. I definitely feel like I have more fire than I had in the past couple seasons."

Vonn said she is mentally refreshed after falling short last season. She entered the final months 216 points behind Hoefl-Riesch in the overall standings but regained the lead with two races left, only to lose it in the penultimate event. Hoefl-Riesch held on to win the title when the final race of the season, a giant slalom, was canceled because of bad weather in Lenzerheide, Switzerland.

"I feel like sometimes I ski to defend something," Vonn said. "You don't ski freely. You ski as if you're holding on to something, but in reality you don't have anything. You have to ski to get it."

Vonn has attacked her Hoefl-Riesch issue by talking through their differences, she said, and agreeing not to make their personal relationship public fodder any longer.

And for the record, she said, the RSVP report was bogus.

"I didn't go," she said. "She knew that I wasn't going. I wrote her a letter and explained everything, but she knew before that."

Vonn said she and Hoefl-Riesch "are still friends," and spoke this summer at a training session in New Zealand and agreed to pull their relationship back into the private realm.

"Our opinions are still different, but Lindsey has acknowledged certain things, and that's the end of that story for me,'' Hoefl-Riesch told The Associated Press. "... We will focus on our sports now. Lindsey is to me a rival like all others.

"We both were disappointed with how things went last season, just in the sense with how things were handled with the media. We both think that should be the story. It should be about our skiing, not all the tabloid drama."

That will be difficult, considering how public they had made it in the past and the fact that Vonn expects Hoefl-Riesch to be her main rival for a championship.

"I think Maria is definitely the skier to beat this year," Vonn said. "There are a lot of other young girls that are coming up, as well, a lot of really capable skiers -- [world giant slalom champ] Tina Maze and Lizzy Goergl [who was third at Soelden] and a number of other girls. I think it is going to be exciting and probably another tight race."

Vonn -- who said her goal is to ski until the 2015 world championships in her hometown of Vail, Colo., then assess whether she's fit for the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea -- has been a controversial figure because of her candor and her success. She gets it. She doesn't regret it. But she feels it.

Vonn has been labeled a complainer for discussing her injuries, ostensibly as alibis, and for critiquing course conditions and their possible effects on her performance. She was extremely critical of weather-impacted conditions on the Whistler Creekside course at the Vancouver Olympics in 2010 after crashing and losing a chance at a gold medal in the super combined. Her point, however, was supported on Twitter by teammate Ted Ligety, who said the course was "in horrible condition."

"I definitely think some of the criticism, at least, is unfair,'' Vonn said. "... I've always been very open with the media. I tell people the injuries that I have, and I think maybe I've been a little bit too open sometimes. It definitely hurts me when I see things written about me that are negative, but I've also learned to not take it to heart, and to focus on my job and skiing the best I can."

Although her travails do not usually reach mainstream outlets until Olympic years, they are grist in Europe, specifically in Germany because of her friendship and rivalry with Hoefl-Riesch. That Vonn speaks fluent German apparently has not prevented any misinterpretations. Among the reports last season was that Hoefl-Riesch was offended that Vonn did not congratulate her enough following her Cup championship.

"Totally, totally not true," Vonn said. "It's pretty comical, some of the stuff they conjure up. I know what happened, and I try not to take it to heart."

The defense continues.

*Photo Credit Alexander Hassenstein/Bongarts/Getty Images

Game Changers: Hillary Mandel
October 10, 2011, Page 36A

Hillary Mandel
IMG Media
SVP, Programming and Distribution

At a time when international barriers are being routinely broken down, Hillary Mandel is at the forefront of presenting sports programming worldwide. As senior vice president of programming and distribution at IMG Media, Mandel in the past year has been influential in selling Wimbledon’s rights package to the multiple platforms of ESPN and bringing the Rugby World Cup to NBC and network television for the first time. She also had a hand in securing for the ACC its rights deal with ESPN as well as the renewal for Izod IndyCar Series with ESPN.

An IMG employee since 1997, Mandel says her background as both a buyer and seller provides her a wealth of knowledge when brokering negotiations.

“It’s becoming apparently clear that there is a lot of desire for live sports,” said Mandel about the current state of rights fees in the market. “The popularity of the major sports is leaving a large wake for the niche sports.”

 ...............................................................................................................................................
• First job: HBO, as a researcher in programming.
• What is the best advice you’ve ever received?: There is no substitute for a face-to-face meeting.
• In 10 words or less, how would you describe your management style?: Respectful and passionate, inclusive and collaborative, we win and lose together.
• Person who had the biggest influence on your career in sports: Barry Frank. He gave me the opportunity; a seat at the table with total access. He’s been an unwavering champion and endorser of my ability and success.
• Woman in sports business you’d most like to meet: Pat Summitt. She’s shattered the record book in terms of championships, season wins and trips to the Final Four. The personal strength and will it takes to restart that engine every year and continuing to strive, improve and grow when you’re at the top — she’s truly inspirational.
• One attribute I look for when hiring is …: Intellectual flexibility.

WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
“Hillary is innovative in seeking solutions that work for all parties. She has the ability to distill very complex issues and work hand in hand to resolve them. She is a very good listener, asks the right questions and then works toward making a deal as opposed to creating barriers that prevent deals from being consummated.”
- John Wildhack, ESPN EVP, programming and acquisitions

Aug. 29 (Bloomberg) -- George Pyne, president of IMG Worldwide Inc., talks about an agreement between IMG and United Parcel Service Inc., which grants the package-delivery company branding and promotional rights to 68 additional schools in its college sports sponsorship program. Pyne speaks with Michele Steele on Bloomberg Television's "Bottom Line."

View the video at Bloomberg on Youtube

IMG has created the first national marketing platform in college athletics, and today it was announced United Parcel Service will be the first to take part.

Because of its vast representation in the collegiate marketplace, IMG has been able to create a partnership with UPS that, for the first time, will allow for a national marketing platform in collegiate athletics. UPS will become the official logistics, package-delivery and retail shipping service company for 68 schools.

When I asked IMG’s VP of Strategic Communications, Andrew Giangola, about the message this partnership sends about the business of college sports, he had this to say:

Big brands like UPS are realizing the attractiveness of the largest, most affluent, best-educated fan base in sports.  These fans have a special, intense passion for their alma mater and favorite teams, which makes collegiate marketing so effective. Previously, beyond a TV spot, national brands had no way to market nationally with all-important local campus relationships.  IMG made the investments to aggregate schools’ marketing, media and licensing right to create a brand new platform that’s national, while tapping the unique local tribalism of college sports.  Marketers have a new way to reach 172 million college sports fans.  And the NFL, NBA and MLB have a new competitor.

College sports fans total 172 million, of which 29 million earn $100,000 or more annually. Both figures are said to be the highest of any sports fan base. According to Simmons, a market research group, college sports fans are more likely to be college graduates, business professionals and business decision makers. Research also reveals college sports fans are “strongly aware of, embrace, and support sponsors of college sports.”

In addition to being the first national marketing platform in college sports, the partnership between IMG and UPS is believed to be the largest “non-network TV sponsorship in the history of college sports,” said George Pyne, President of Sports and Entertainment at IMG Worldwide. The agreement includes radio and tv advertising during IMG broadcasts of football and men’s basketball coaches shows and play-by-play radio coverage, stadium and area signage, and ads in programs and on athletic department websites. IMG produces more than 5,000 hours of college sports television programming per year and more than 28,000 hours of radio programming.

 UPS VP of Sponsorships and Events said of the partnership, “College sports provides a compelling communications platform to share the message that whether you’re a small business owner or a championship football coach, UPS’s master of logistics can help you succeed.”

IMG, the international sports and entertainment company, has entered a partnership with BEC-Tero, the prominent entertainment and multimedia operation in Thailand, to develop a joint venture company in the country.

IMG said that the new venture - IMG BEC-Tero Sports and Entertainment Company Limited – will focus on sports and fashion and its general manager will be Khun Charvalit, until now IMG’s vice president for Thailand.

BEC-Tero is seen as a suitable partner, in part because it is a unit of BEC World, the owner of Thailand’s leading free-to-air broadcaster Channel 3, which holds rights to sports including sepak takraw, a popular attraction in south-east Asia.

Martin Jolly, senior vice president and managing director of IMG Asia-Pacific, said: “We are delighted to be joining forces with Thailand’s leading entertainment company. We hope to bring our expertise in sports business as well as fashion and entertainment to the joint venture. BEC-Tero is a great joint venture partner due to its local presence and the support of BEC World, the operator of terrestrial TV Channel 3.”

Brian Marcar, managing director of BEC-Tero, said: "Today is a landmark day for us with Thailand's leading entertainment provider BEC-Tero joining with the world's premier sports, fashion and entertainment powerhouse IMG to create IMG BEC-Tero Sports and Entertainment Company Limited. It is with great delight and anticipation that we look forward to an exciting future together."

Last year, IMG partnered with Reliance Industries, India’s largest private-sector company, to create a joint venture called IMG Reliance which has a remit to develop world-class sporting infrastructure and coaching facilities and to create and operate sports and entertainment assets in India.

IMG Reliance’s projects include tie-ups with the Basketball Federation of India and the All India Football Federation.
 

The long-standing achievements of IMG, the global sports, fashion and media company celebrating its 50th year in 2011, have been recognized with the Outstanding Contribution to British Sport Award at the Sport Industry Awards 2011 ceremony on May 11, 2011 the 10th anniversary of the prestigious event.

View the video at the Sports Industry Awards.

Having trouble viewing the video? Click here to view it at Bloomberg.com

Feb. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Sundance DiGiovanni, chief executive officer of Major League Gaming, discusses the outlook and business strategy for the professional video-game league. DiGiovanni speaks with Michele Steele on Bloomberg Television's "InsideTrack." (Source: Bloomberg)