SPECIAL REPORT | 50 COMPANIES
64 | www.sportspromedia.com
The global sports industry is a mighty large place and has for some time stretched well beyond the traditional teams and leagues, sponsors and broadcasters. Architects, media conglomerates, law firms, private equity groups, telecoms companies and increasingly sophisticated technology providers can all now lay claim to being part of the picture, essential as they have all become in sport’s growth in markets new and old. After careful evaluation and no little debate, SportsPro presents the 50 companies whose influence across sport is expected to be the most profound over the next 12 months – and probably far beyond.
Media Disney
Why? Disney-owned ESPN is going back to basics. For the Walt Disney Company and its sports broadcasting subsidiary ESPN, the past two years have been an exercise in international slim-lining. First the group sold its 50 per cent share in pan-Asian broadcaster ESPN Star to News Corp, its partner in the joint venture, for a reported US$335 million. It then all but pulled out of the UK market by selling its ESPN and ESPN America channels to free-spending BT Sport in February, before ending its distribution deal with MultiChoice’s DStv platform in Africa soon after. The cancellation of the X Games international events after just one year was also telling, as was the October 2013 sale of the Harlem Globetrotters by Shamrock Holdings, the Disney family’s investment arm. However, having trimmed the international fat and concentrated its efforts on the Americas, ESPN will undoubtedly continue to be a sports superpower in 2014. A panoply of broadcast deals across US sport’s major leagues will consolidate its home advantage, while the arrival in Brazil – a stronghold for the network’s international business since 1995 – of next summer’s Fifa World Cup and the Olympic Games two years later will ensure ESPN keeps itself occupied for the foreseeable future. IM
Why? A cautious approach with YouTube could make way for a much grander plan. Since its US$1.65 million acquisition of video-sharing platform YouTube in 2006, Google’s sports strategy has sometimes verged on the sporadic as it feels its way into the sector. A global live feed distribution partnership with cricket’s Indian Premier League was followed by a deal with the NBA for the live rights to 350 D-League games per season. Highlights of events such as the Six Nations rugby union tournament and the IIHF Ice Hockey World Championships were added later. A concerted effort for a major package of live rights is yet to come, however. Rumours circulated – and were swiftly quashed – in early 2012 that Google was looking to enter the race for Premier League rights in the UK, while it was reported in August 2013 that the Californian giant was in talks with the NFL for its Sunday Ticket package. The latter package, which is currently held by DirecTV at a cost of US$1 billion per season, will be available after 2014. The fact remains that Google is perhaps becoming the most powerful corporation on the planet. Its online dominance is only set to increase with global internet access and if it moved its sports strategy on from the ‘softly, softly’ approach to rights acquisition with YouTube, the industry would have no choice but to react. IM
Twitter Why? It continues to conduct the international sporting conversation. If there is a conversation happening anywhere about sport, chances are it is taking place on Twitter, that unrelenting source of news, non-news, debate and mindless chatter. Coming to life during live events, it has also become the go-to second-screen interface. In February, 24.1 million micro-messages were fired out during Super Bowl XLVII, with brands like Oreo and Tide issuing quick advertising takes on the second half blackout. More will follow in 2014 as records inevitably fall during the Fifa World Cup but it is what brands can do with the service that could bring the biggest change in the coming year. Twitter currently runs at a significant loss, but it raised US$1.82 billion from its 7th November IPO and has begun to take its financial performance more seriously. Advertising remains the main source of Twitter’s income – the bleed of hashtags and handles into real-world branding space and on to playing shirts will continue as companies look to engage more fans – but ‘data licensing’, its secondary revenue stream, could be just as interesting. It lets companies purchase access to the ‘fire hose’ of tweet analytics through resellers DataSift, Gnip and Topsy. This brought in a relatively modest US$32 million in the first half of 2013, but could grow significantly as its uses move from market research to supply chain and product development intelligence. EC SportsPro Magazine | 65
SPECIAL REPORT | 50 COMPANIES
Time Warner Cable Why? The new kings of the regional sports network. Any deal worth double the value of its comparable predecessors is likely to have a profound impact on all those that follow and Time Warner Cable’s US$8 billion, 25-year TV agreement with the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team is no exception. Two times the size of the biggest US regional sports broadcast agreement in history, that January tie-up raised the regional sports network (RSN) bar to previously unimaginable heights and its spectre will invariably be felt in negotiations on all future regional TV contracts. With the launch of the Dodgersdedicated RSN SportsNet LA in spring 2014 comes a new blueprint for the regional rights model, and if the basis for all future sports franchise valuations in the US lies in local broadcast contracts then it is TWC that holds the pen. By cutting out the expensive middle man, America’s second-largest cable provider has gained greater certainty and control over regional programming costs in Southern California, a strategy that has earned the company greater notoriety in the process. Effectively holding subscribers to ransom by requiring even non-sports fans to pay higher cable bills whilst simultaneously baulking at broadcasters’ attempts to hike retransmission fees, there can be little questioning the power of a company whose position in the regional rights market is one of the strongest out there heading into the age of the ever-more lucrative RSN. ML
BT Why? ‘Triple play’ is changing the way TV sport is delivered. If 2013 was about the fanfare for BT Sport then 2014 is about the fundamentals. The UK telecoms giant – the rump of one-time state monopoly British Telecom – became one of the first genuine newcomers in sports broadcasting for a generation when it set off in quixotic pursuit of subscription behemoth Sky Sports this year. Editorially, its efforts so far have been inconsistent, while ratings have not yet suggested the revolution the marketing folk promised. Such concerns may come to have little bearing. BT is positioning itself as the first true ‘triple play’ broadcaster, packaging premium HD television with ultra-fast internet and telephony services. It is using sport both tactically and strategically: countering BSkyB’s advances in the UK home broadband market in the short term and in the long term, positioning itself for a broadcast future where fibre networks will usurp satellite technology. In theory, BT has many times the resources of its rivals and the only question is one of commitment. How much is it really willing to stake, and possibly lose, in challenging Sky’s English cricket hegemony, for example, or backing up its UK£738 million outlay on Premier League rights in the next cycle, in support of its broader ambitions? The UK£900 million it recently spent on taking exclusive Uefa Champions League rights from 2015 and landing its first serious blow on Sky would suggest there is plenty more to come. EC
Al Jazeera Why? The new-world Fox stretches its legs. Launched as long ago as 1996 with a focus on news and current affairs, Al Jazeera has grown its targeted investment in sport only in the last few years, with soccer the understandable focus given Qatar’s commitments elsewhere in the game. Roots have been laid down in France, where Al Jazeera has rapidly become one of the most significant players – predominantly through its acquisition of a package of Ligue 1 rights in 2011 and Uefa Champions League rights a year later – and the United States, where it has picked up live rights to Spanish, French and Italian soccer. In both countries, Al Jazeera’s branding has been replaced by that of BeIN Sport but the Qatari influence remains as strong as ever. A new marker has been set down in the Middle East, too, where the company this year wrested Premier League rights from Abu Dhabi Media Group and centralised its production at state of the art new facilities in Doha. All the signs are it has not finished yet. Despite opting not to bid for the current set of UK Premier League rights, Al Jazeera would surprise no one at all if it made a multi-billion game-changing play in the next cycle. DC 66 | www.sportspromedia.com
Supersport Why? Still the biggest and most reliable benefactor in African sport. As the window through which the continent of Africa watches sport, Supersport is a key player in sports broadcasting and its unchecked dominance of the sub-Saharan market is something to behold. Nowadays, there isn’t much worth watching that the pay-TV network doesn’t show, its burgeoning family of channels airing, quite simply, every major sports league and event. Last October the company completed a US set by adding the NHL to existing deals for coverage of every other American major league, and in 2014 it has a winter Olympics, a Fifa World Cup and a Commonwealth Games to sink its teeth into. Still the biggest and most reliable benefactor in African sport, Supersport has been clear about the obligation it feels to support the industry – soccer in particular – across the continent, and its reach extends well beyond its core broadcasting business. The company currently holds significant interests in no fewer than six professional South African sports teams. ML
News Corp Why? A bout of acquisitions and consolidations has galvanised Fox International. No list compiling influential companies in sport could be without News Corp. Rupert Murdoch’s media behemoth remains the major international force in sports broadcasting and last June’s split into two publicly traded companies has clearly not quelled its typically voracious appetite for rights. As its main rival ESPN scales back to the Americas, 21st Century Fox appears most galvanised by the division. On a mission to expand seemingly everywhere, in recent times the company and its subsidiaries have fully taken over ESPN Star Sports in Asia and explored a new model of ownership by buying into the Dutch soccer league channel Eredivisie Live. Elsewhere, new acquisitions and the launch of new channels have helped to prop up the value of rights in their respective territories. A major deal to broadcast German soccer’s Bundesliga in all corners of the globe does not kick in until 2015 but coverage of premium content such as the NFL, MLB and French Open tennis will be pushed heavily across multiple territories in the next 12 months as the company trumpets its growing global portfolio. If 2013 was the year in which News Corp upped the ante in its US battle with ESPN by launching two new 24-hour national networks in August, 2014 will see more blood in that perennial tussle shed internationally. ML
Only Bill Gates is richer than Carlos Slim, who boasts a growing portfolio of sporting interests
América Móvil Why? Carlos Slim, Mexico’s richest man, is making moves on the sports industry. When the world’s second-richest man acquires a liking for sport, it would be foolish to turn a blind eye. América Móvil, the mobile network operator owned by Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim, secured the broadcast rights to Sochi 2014 and Rio 2016 in Latin America, excluding Brazil, in March and the implications for Mexican sport are profound. On the very same day as that deal was announced the Mexican government approved an antimonopoly telecom reform bill that is set to give Slim, who controls around 80 percent of Mexico’s fixed line business and about 70 per cent of the mobile sector, the ability to enter a domestic television industry currently dominated by Televisa and TV Azteca. As a result of that bill, Mexico’s telecom regulator Ifetel will open a tender next year for two national TV licences and should Slim be interested in participating in one of the projects, as experts have suggested, América Móvil will have a platform to exploit the Olympic rights in Latin America’s second-largest economy, the only market included in the 17-country deal in which Slim has no television presence. Slim’s influence in sport, meanwhile, continues to grow. In September 2012 he bought, through América Móvil, 30 per cent of the shares in Mexico’s León and Pachuca soccer teams, and so concerned by Slim’s arrival is the Mexican soccer establishment that new legislation is now being initiated to stop multiteam ownership. Formula One is also a likely target. Slim’s telecoms company Telmex, which currently backs the Sauber team, had been mooted as a replacement for McLaren’s outgoing title partner Vodafone, while the prospect of Mexico joining the 2014 calendar will undoubtedly have the motorsports-loving magnate salivating. ML
Comcast Why? NBC’s new owner has provided fresh impetus, with Premier League and Olympic rights driving the US broadcaster. ‘Fingers in pies’ doesn’t quite cut it for the largest mass media and communications company in the world by revenue. Comcast’s tentacles stretch far and wide and its acquisition of NBCUniversal – at first in part in 2009 and then in full in early 2013 – has ensured those tentacles go deeper into sport than ever before. Having outbid rival broadcaster Fox to acquire the exclusive US rights to England’s Premier League for around US$250 million in October 2012, NBC Sports Group is backing soccer from across the pond in a big way. A mix of clever marketing and an aggressive commercial strategy has contributed to sports-mad Americans taking to the English game, with stateside viewing figures in the early weeks of this season up 93 per cent compared with the same period last term. Perhaps the biggest reward in the long term, though, is that more people are now tuning in to NBC’s broadcasts of Major League Soccer (MLS). With Olympic rights in the bag up until the 2020 edition in Tokyo, thanks to one of the most lucrative contracts in world sport, NBC has now added coverage of the next two Paralympics to its programming and in Sochi the broadcaster has another opportunity to further cement its Olympic broadcaster status in 2014. ML SportsPro Magazine | 67
SPECIAL REPORT | 50 COMPANIES
China Central Television (CCTV) Why? Premier League apart, if you’re not on CCTV you’re not in China. State-owned broadcaster CCTV, which operates 42 channels and has the potential to reach an audience of 1.3 billion, is uniquely placed given its near-monopoly over the Chinese TV market. As a result, rights holders often accept drastically diminished fees – or even pay CCTV – in order to gain access to its gargantuan viewership. The International Olympic Committee (IOC), Fifa and the National Basketball Assocation (NBA) are among the organisations to have sealed long-term deals with the free-to-air broadcaster, while CCTV’s coverage of the World Table Tennis Championships women’s singles final was watched by around 50 million fans in 2013. The Premier League, which generated some UK£2.2 billion (US$3.52 billion) from its latest cycle of international rights sales, is seemingly the exception to the rule. After its contract with CCTV ended in 2007, English soccer’s top flight struck a deal with pay-TV network WinTV before Super Sports Media Group picked up the rights ahead of the 2010/11 season. Following a six-year, US$120 million extension in October 2012, the agency will now sublicense games to regional Chinese networks until 2018/19. The CCTV machine, meanwhile, rumbles on. Since moving into a new 53-floor headquarters in Beijing, it has also started to flex its muscles internationally, launching English-language services in the US and Kenya and announcing plans to expand its overseas staff tenfold by 2016. IM
Sina Why? Its NBA streaming deal is a mobile model for the social media age. Sina first partnered with the National Basketball Assocation (NBA) in 2010, picking up a host of online broadcast, VOD and marketing rights for four years. Three years on, the Shanghaiheadquartered internet platform expanded its deal to create specific online destinations for all 30 teams and, more significantly, add mobile streaming rights to the package. It will now provide coverage of one live game daily on its mobile platform and via its mammoth microblogging site, Sina Weibo, which surpassed 500 million users in February 2013. Given state broadcaster CCTV’s chokehold over the TV market, Sina’s cross-platform tie-up marks unchartered territory for a US sports league in China and, after the Golden State Warriors and LA Lakers played pre-season friendlies in Beijing and Shanghai this season, it demonstrates the vast potential the country holds in terms of viewership and technological innovation. It could also provide a template for the major global social networks to follow as they move deeper into the mainstream media space. IM
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Globo TV Star Sports Why? Cricket’s banker has big plans to diversify the Indian broadcast market. Star Sports is the paymaster of world cricket. Through a global broadcast partnership with the International Cricket Council (ICC) and deals with national bodies in India, England, Australia, South Africa and beyond, it pumps hundreds of millions of units of various currencies into the game. In spite of that, it is through other sports that Star may have a major influence in 2014. Now run independently of co-founder ESPN, the News Corp-owned broadcaster has announced a new Rs20,000 crore (US$3.1 billion) sports budget alongside a sweeping rebrand of its four domestic channels. It will hope, too, to diversify the sporting diet of Indian fans. Alongside cricket – not including the Sony-screened IPL – will be the Indian Hockey League and Indian Badminton League, Formula One and Premier League soccer. Then there is the Indian Super League, the IMG Reliance-backed attempt to finally turn India’s indiscriminate casual interest in soccer into focused commercial success. Star has spent a reported RS2,000 crore (US$324.7 million) for a one-third stake in the competition, which launches in the third quarter of 2014. That gives it a surprisingly large interest in turning minds away from bat and ball in one of the world’s great, growing media markets. EC
Why? Brazil’s big broadcasting beast is back after missing London 2012. Rights holders looking to gain traction in Brazil need look no further than Globo TV. Brazil’s largest media company is able to deliver unparalleled audience figures in the sports-mad country, a fact made all too clear during the London 2012 Olympics. For the sake of a few extra millions, the IOC opted for an untested second-tier broadcaster, Record, as its Brazilian partner for those Games but without the far-reaching promotional muscle of Globo, TV ratings plummeted some 50 per cent from Beijing 2008. Thankfully for the Olympic movement, Globo has returned to acquire the rights for Rio 2016 and it will be keener than ever to reassert its domestic dominance in the run-up to that event – not to mention the 2014 Fifa World Cup, for which it also holds the terrestrial rights. For domestic rights holders, meanwhile, the value of partnering with Globo cannot be underestimated, with Globo TV Sports – the company unit that licenses Brazilian sports, including top-level soccer, to broadcasters around the world – a genuine go-to destination. ML
Agencies Keneo Team Marketing Why? Tasked with growing Europe’s biggest sporting competitions – again. For 20 years, Lucerne-based Team Marketing has had one of the sports industry’s better gigs. Operating at an arm’s length from European soccer’s governing body, Uefa, it has been charged with selling the rights to the continent’s club competitions, including the increasingly prestigious Champions League. It has done a good job, too, exploiting a much-admired sponsorship model and a global appointment-to-view television proposition to the tune of up to €1.3 billion a year. Now it needs to do it again. Uefa has set a challenging but not unfeasible target of a 20 per cent uplift in revenue for its club competition rights in the 2015-18 cycle, with sales now underway. Team not only needs to deliver on that, it also needs to work out how best to move its prized sponsorship model into a new media era. Then there is the matter of Uefa’s second competition, the Europa League, which has toiled in the growing shadow of the main event. Its rights are being fully centralised for the first time in the new cycle, leaving Team to help fashion a stronger brand identity to go with the renewed purpose that will come with a Champions League place for the winners from 2015. EC
Why? A technical consultancy that comes with an IOC guarantee – almost. Paris-based agency Keneo provides sports events with technical consultancy from the early concept stages right the way through to delivery. Of course, there are plenty of companies around the world offering similar services but Keneo’s pedigree is second to none. In owner Edouard Donnelly and associate director Etienne Thobois, Keneo has two of the keenest, most analytical minds in the sports industry. Both played key roles in Paris’ bid for the 2012 Games and in France’s hosting of the 2007 Rugby World Cup – Thobois as chief executive – and both have operational experience in spades. Although Thobois considers operations as the company’s core area of expertise it excels in bidding work, where it has a considerable ace up its sleeve. Having been embedded within the IOC as technical assessors for the race to host the 2016 Games, Thobois, Donnelly and their team know precisely what it takes to put on an Olympics. That knowledge proved invaluable for the winning Tokyo bid for 2020, when Keneo provided key consultancy on all the technical aspects of the bid save transport and security. JE
Legends Hospitality Why? As corporate seating accounts for larger than ever slices of revenue, the need for a more sophisticated model is being filled. New Jersey-based Legends Hospitality was founded in 2008 by the New York Yankees, Dallas Cowboys, Goldman Sachs and CIC Partners ahead of the opening of Yankee Stadium and the Dallas Cowboys’ recently renamed AT&T Stadium. Having started life as a catering, concessions and merchandising specialist, Legends has redefined the industry by expanding its offering to cover ticket sales, sponsorship and naming rights capabilities, as well as project feasibility and economic impact studies. Across the firm’s three subsidiaries its client roster now includes the Orlando Magic, the Dallas Mavericks and the Circuit of the Americas racetrack, while a 2009 partnership with IMG saw it break into the college market with the likes of Texas A&M University. Legends is also handling the sale of luxury suites and club seats at the San Francisco 49ers’ new Santa Clara Stadium. Those revenue streams, along with the sale of the stadium’s naming rights to Levi’s, are said to have already generated over US$1 billion towards the cost of the project, which currently stands at US$1.3 billion. IM
CAA Eleven Why? Uefa’s new model agency is going in the right direction, but still has nine months of hard work ahead. CAA Eleven, a newly created company affiliated to the Creative Artists Agency in the US, was appointed to manage the broadcasting, sponsorship and licensing rights to all national team soccer competitions under the Uefa banner in October 2012. As well as a centralised package of qualifying matches for Euro 2016 and the 2018 Fifa World Cup, the rights also included Euro 2016 itself and all of Uefa’s youth and women’s national team competitions. The agreement is believed to have seen CAA guarantee more than the €1 billion Uefa has already promised to distribute among the 53 European member nations. Though the news itself was long expected, the identity of the winning bidder came as a surprise to the sports broadcasting industry. Nevertheless, under the leadership of former Lagardère executives Olivier Guiguet and Stéphane Schindler, CAA Eleven, a bespoke agency in the mould of Uefa’s club competitions commercial offshoot Team Marketing, has hit the ground running. Deals with major broadcasters across many key territories came on a near monthly basis throughout 2013 and though nine months of hard work lie ahead, the company is in good shape to meet its target. ML SportsPro Magazine | 69
SPECIAL REPORT | 50 COMPANIES
Infront China
Dentsu
Why? The one major western agency making hay in China. China is home to over a sixth of the world’s population, a surging economy, an expanding middle class and a corresponding appetite for sports. It is no secret, and those have been the facts for some years. The Beijing Olympics went a long way to educating a marketplace in the efficacy of sports sponsorship. In the wake of the Games, sports marketing sophistication has grown and the country is certainly more open to following western-style blueprints for business. But expanding a business into China is a lot easier said than done. Many have tried, and few have succeeded. Swiss agency Infront, however, is the exception to the rule. When Infront lost a lucrative package of soccer rights in the mid 2000s, the message came from on high: ‘Diversify and spread; new sports and new territories.’ Chinese basketball was one of the company’s biggest bets. Having signed a seven-year deal with the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) in 2005, Infront set up a local subsidiary to manage the account. The initial term was a loss-making one but Infront achieved huge gains in terms of production professionalism, sponsorship management and television audience, increasing the exposure of the league by 130 per cent. When a five-year renewal was signed with the CBA in 2012, Infront guaranteed the league a rumoured US$270 million, a figure that was almost immediately paid back in one go when Li Ning signed on as the league’s major sponsor. From now until the contract’s conclusion in 2018, Infront China is looking at nothing but upside. JE
Why? A giant at home and abroad with Tokyo 2020 to come. Dentsu estimates that total advertising expenditure in Japan last year was 5,891.3 billion yen (US$59.6 billion). It alone can take credit for nearly a quarter of that figure in a country that is second only to the United States in terms of overall advertising spend. But Dentsu is far more than simply the leading player at home. Just as crucially, the world’s fifth-largest advertising group has come to be seen as Japan’s window to the world, its international reputation burnished by the acquisition of international sports broadcast rights packages, its work acting on behalf of international federations such as the IAAF, and efforts to give major Japanese brands a presence on the world sporting scene. As the Olympic Games move towards Asia, with the Korean city of PyeongChang first up in 2018 before Tokyo takes centre stage two years later, Dentsu, active in 110plus countries and with a workforce nudging over the 37,000 mark, will be keenly eyeing sport as a way to make even greater gains at home and abroad in the coming decade. DC
Infront China’s deal with the Chinese Basketball Association is paying off
IMG Why? The most anticipated sale in sport. For so long the biggest beast of the agency world, IMG, created in the mould of legendary founder Mark McCormack, still occupies a unique place in the sports marketing stratosphere. Its next chapter is poised to begin, perhaps as soon as the end of the year, with Forstmann Little in the midst of a sales process which is the subject of much speculation across the industry. A long list of bids has reportedly been whittled down to around ten – a combination of agencies and private equity firms. Whoever emerges with the prize will have likely paid over US$2 billion and acquired a company which has evolved significantly from its early days of talent representation alone. A well-established media arm, a thriving college division in the United States and a series of joint ventures in the markets of the future – Turkey, Brazil, India and China – are all now part of an empire which remains as relevant as ever, even in the face of widespread competition from the pretenders to its agency throne. DC
Competitor Group Why? Bringing mass participation to the masses. The move towards mass participation offers the sports industry rich commercial opportunities. Often a neat fit with corporate social responsibility programmes, and often taking place against spectacular backdrops, marathons and triathlons have unsurprisingly sprung up on every continent in recent times. With a nod to specialist agencies like London-based Limelight, California’s Competitor Group probably leads the pack when it comes to turning mass participation events into revenue-generators. Its Rock ‘N’ Roll Marathon Series has taken things a step further, successfully fusing mass participation with entertainment through a formula rolled out across the world. Focused entirely on what it calls ‘the active lifestyle industry’, Competitor is currently operating over 80 events with 600,000 professional and amateur participants taking part last year. It is ideally placed to capitalise on a segment of the industry that is growing to such an extent that FINA and the IAAF have both unveiled plans to open up their elite world championships to the masses. DC 70 | www.sportspromedia.com
Roc Nation Sports Why? A new way for talent representation. It may not be the most established or the biggest player in talent representation but Roc Nation Sports, the new agency formed last April by rapper Jay-Z in partnership with Creative Artists Agency (CAA), is the name on everybody’s lips. Jay-Z, real name Shawn Carter, has been a growing presence in the sports industry for some time and while some say his latest venture is merely a shortlived gimmick designed to earn himself and his clients a quick buck, all the signs are that the ‘Jigga Man’ is here to stay. Snapping up high-profile names such as basketball star Kevin Durant and NFL player Geno Smith, Roc Nation Sports has quickly put together a small yet undeniably marketable client base, one which oozes the kind of crossover appeal upon which Jay-Z has built his own career. Yet will it be a case of style over substance? In his song ‘Empire State of Mind’ Jay-Z famously claims to have made the Yankee hat more famous than a Yankee can, but as Scott Boras, the former agent of the Yankees star and first Roc Nation Sport client Robinson Cano, put it, “When your agent wears a Yankee hat, how seriously are they going to take you?” That, of course, remains to be seen but one thing is for certain: where Jay-Z goes, others tend to follow. ML
Technology
Repucom Why? The data monopolisers are setting an industry standard. After years of scepticism, the sports industry has embraced statistical analysis as never before. Evolving apace, the sector has quickly begun to permeate all others and with ever greater quantities of information becoming available, the rate at which the sports industry digests it depends on spoon-feeders like Repucom. Now operating under one global, unified brand after assimilating its three previously separate sports marketing research businesses – Repucom, Germany’s Sport+Markt and their joint 2012 acquisition, IFM Sports Marketing Surveys – in the second quarter of 2013, Repucom is the market leader in the field of sports marketing research and data. With a client portfolio that reads like a who’s who of sport’s biggest properties, broadcasters, agencies and sponsors, the company employs over 1,400 staff in more than 20 offices worldwide. Among its key clients is European soccer governing body Uefa, whose Financial Fair Play regulations will require establishing a credible set of criteria for fair value in sponsorship. Repucom, through its efforts to become a trusted and consistent measurement platform for the industry, believes it holds the key. ML
Rostelecom is among a handful of Russian firms behind critical infrastructure upgrades in Sochi
Rostelecom Why? An essential player in the creation of a city fit for the Games. The task facing the organisers of February’s Olympic Games in Sochi over the past seven years has been less the construction of an Olympic Park, more the creation of an entire city. Sochi, a previously unheralded city on Russia’s Black Sea coast, is being transformed into a state of the art winter resort in a multi-billion dollar effort driven by the Russian government. Rostelecom, part of the largely governmentowned Svyazinvest group, has been responsible for making sure the city is connected to the rest of Russia and the world – and representative on this list of the handful of state-run firms which are behind the country’s first Games since 1980. Working with fellow telecommunications giant MegaFon, another major Russian entity, Rostelecom has invested at least a quarter of a billion dollars in installing essential infrastructure in Sochi and across the immediate Krasnodar region. Russia’s is an expensive way of staging the Games, but in Sochi Rostelecom has had a sizeable role to play in creating what Vladimir Putin expects to be an international calling card of a city long after the Olympic flame has been extinguished. DC SportsPro Magazine | 71
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Arena Group Why? Ushering in a new sustainable future in stadium development. A growing fear of the dreaded ‘white elephant’ has made sustainability the guiding principle when it comes to new stadium developments. Temporary or modular venues, therefore, are a must for major event organisers and venue planners seeking to fulfil their ecofriendly ambitions. Through its global network of local partners, Arena Group provides a best-in-class solution to do just that, its vast array of products ranging from complete temporary event overlay and hospitality structures to the finer details of an event’s look and feel such as seating, furniture and interior design. Though its client base spans golf, tennis, soccer, sailing, motorsport and more, the company is best known for its London 2012 project, which included the construction of the magnificent 15,000-capacity beach volleyball venue. That project was hailed as a resounding success, enabling Locog to be more adventurous with its locations while contributing to the Games status as a benchmark for Olympic sustainability. 18 months on and the company has undergone a period of sustained strategic growth, acquiring Karl’s Event Services in the US and Asia Tents International in Malaysia to ensure Arena Group is perfectly placed to capitalise on the global sport industry’s move towards a manageable future. ML
Samsung Why? Creating the products and the components to change the consumer experience. It may be a longstanding worldwide partner of the Olympic Games, a long-term backer of the Asian Games and a supporter of high-profile properties like Chelsea FC, David Beckham and the Brazilian national soccer team, but Samsung’s ties to sport extend far further than its sizeable investments in sponsorship. Whether through mobiles, tablets or televisions, fans are connecting with their chosen passion in new ways and the Korean electronics giant has all bases covered, transforming the way sport is consumed through the kind of technological advancements that even its biggest rivals will do anything to get their hands on. While Apple’s hugely successful iPhones and iPads are both now familiar sights at live sports events, any Samsung executive will tell you it is the Korean company that is really on show. As one of Samsung’s biggest customers for microprocessors, memory chips and other vital parts, Apple remains critically reliant on Samsung components for its gadgets, despite the American firm’s ongoing efforts to rid itself of that frustrating dependency. For Samsung, meanwhile, a genuinely game-changing marketing partnership with the NBA – its largest investment in a major US league to date – means the company’s technology is now fully integrated into the league’s on and off-court product, with referees using Samsung tablets to review calls during games and fans able to access even more customised content via the globally popular NBA League Pass. ML
Tata Communications Why? Connecting the world like never before. In a world where everyone is striving for connectivity, Tata Communications and its like are making it happen. Tata, Indian-founded but now truly global, is responsible for nearly 20 per cent of the world’s internet routes, its network comprising 210,000 kilometres of terrestrial and subsea optic fibre cabling: it is a prime example of the kind of essential infrastructure specialists that have become essential to global sport. Amongst the company’s key clients is Formula One, for which it has provided ten times more digital capacity. Formula One, in turn, provides a showcase for Tata, but the company is also exploring new, quicker, more interactive ways to bring the sport to the viewer, via television companies, essentially by replacing satellites. That in turn could not only reduce the costs of hardware but herald an entirely new way sport is distributed to what Tata calls “end users”, wherever they are in the world. DC
Dow Chemical Why? The Olympics has given Dow, a brand of unseen ubiquity, a governmental foot in the door. Dow Chemical signed a ten-year deal to become an IOC TOP partner in 2010. That deal was partly motivated by the access it would give to global governments with infrastructure contracts to bestow, and, lo and behold, it is a role the US chemical giant has since augmented by becoming the carbon partner of Sochi 2014. As part of its commitment to the Games – its second as an official commercial partner – the company will implement energy-efficient technologies to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions associated with their delivery. It is certainly a far-reaching role but if its overall impact on reducing the Games’ carbon footprint will be difficult to measure, even harder to fathom is the company’s extraordinary diffusion within the man-made world. According to George Hamilton, the vice president of Olympic operations at Dow, “You probably come into contact with Dow products more than 90 times in 24 hours – you just don’t tend to see them.” If that is indeed the case, the sport industry’s reliance on Dow products or products enabled by them may just be greater than anyone could possibly have imagined. ML 72 | www.sportspromedia.com
Bloomberg Why? Boasts a best-in-class baseball anaytics product and is now applying financial data norms to the wider sports industry. Bloomberg Sports, the sports analytics offshoot of financial services giant Bloomberg, has been setting the pace in data exploitation since its launch in 2010. Its Major League Baseball (MLB) offerings are widely accepted as an industry benchmark thanks to the popularity of its fantasy products among fans and the level of integration its professional analytic tools offer for teams and players alike. The New York-headquartered firm has also begun to broaden its reach beyond the US and baseball, partnering with IMG in July 2012 to direct its efforts at soccer and the National Football League (NFL). Norwich City, who currently use the BSports Match Analysis system, became Bloomberg’s first Premier League partners in February 2013, while it also launched a mobile and online app for bettors, in partnership with British bookmaker Coral, which is designed around the major European soccer leagues. IM
Brocade Communications Systems Why? Finally bringing effective Wi-Fi to the stadium experience. Until now conventional wisdom has said that, given the limits in bandwidth available to Wi-Fi, it is nigh-on impossible to build a network that lets every single fan in a sports stadium connect at once. But thanks to the work of San Jose-based networking solutions company Brocade, that is finally changing. The designers of the Wi-Fi network at the technologically advanced Santa Clara Stadium are targeting 100 per cent coverage at the new home of the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers – a network big enough to simultaneously serve all 68,500 people in a sell-out crowd. Such a comprehensive, reliable network promises ground-breaking levels of convenience and connectivity, and if it proves successful when the venue opens ahead of the 2014 NFL season, equivalent systems will soon be installed elsewhere. ML
IBM Aecom Why? The party planners for the greatest show on earth. High on the list of objectives for any Olympic host in the modern era is capitalising on the opportunity it brings to create or revitalise a part of the city. Aecom makes that happen, its expertise honed on huge urban projects in cities across the world by a workforce of nearly 47,000. Having been deployed for the best part of a decade in east London, for the 2012 Games, it is now deep in the middle of shaping Rio de Janeiro’s Games. Aecom employees are the masterplanners – layout and legacy are no buzzwords in their world – responsible for creating the focal point of the Olympics. In August 2011 the company won the contract to produce the urban masterplan for Rio’s Olympic Park, seeing off competition from 60 companies from 18 countries. The Rio site covers 120 hectares, compared to London’s 300, and will be the home of 15 sports at Games-time. And so it has begun again: a complex series of iterations – there were 2,500-plus over seven years in London – with long-term sustainability the objective, all with the ultimate aim of delivering the perfect sporting and social stage. The next 12 months, in a South American city where the challenges are numerous and the requirements daunting, will be pivotal to the way the world views Rio’s big moment in 2016. DC
Why? The stalwart in the field innovates again. International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) was one of the very first companies to use sport as a platform to showcase and drive its technological capabilities. In a partnership that lasted from the 1960 winter Games in Squaw Valley to the 2000 summer Games in Sydney, IBM provided various iterations of its hardware to the Olympic movement. When an attempt to integrate all the IOC’s hardware, software and technology infrastructure needs went sour at the Atlanta Games in 1996, the two parties opted to part company. For IBM, embarrassed on a global stage, it was time to go back to the drawing board. Over a decade on from its last Olympic experience, IBM is now once again leading the field in sport. Given the keys and, more or less, carte blanche to build, manage, maintain and evolve the digital offerings of two of its most prestigious sponsored properties, IBM has positioned The Masters and Wimbledon as digital pioneers. The official websites for both properties are best-in-sport – likewise the corresponding apps – while IBM’s evolving software systems process reams of statistical information before packaging it into valuable predictive analytics and other digestible valueadds online. Thanks to the ‘Big Blue’, two of the stiffer members of the sporting establishment find themselves in the vanguard of the ‘datatainment’ revolution. JE SportsPro Magazine | 73
SPECIAL REPORT | 50 COMPANIES
Sony
Microsoft
Why? Major player to sharpen sport’s image with 4K. In any year, Sony is a key player in the sports industry. The electronics and media colossus is a global partner of Fifa, its Playstation video games console brand is a long-term sponsor of the Uefa Champions League, it holds major TV rights in south Asia and the global rights to the Indian Premier League, and it owns Hawk-Eye Innovations, whose products settle scores in soccer, cricket and tennis. In 2014, it could be setting a landmark for how sport is watched around the world. The Fifa World Cup final in Rio will be broadcast and recorded in Sony’s 4K ultra-HD video format in July, with other games also likely to be included in the trial. Broadcasters have grown increasingly sceptical of 3D, with ESPN and the BBC among those to mothball their stereoscopic services, but there is much excitement about 4K within the industry. With specialised sets already on the market, a successful showcase in Brazil could bring it into the mainstream sooner rather than later. EC
Why? Making a big play in sport by taking the NFL’s on-field technology category. New ground was broken in the sports technology race in 2013, with Microsoft agreeing a US$400 million partnership with the NFL in May and Samsung following suit with the NBA in October. Microsoft’s deal, for fans at least, centres on the convergence of live streaming with up-to-date scores, stats and fantasy league game play through its Xbox One console. Its most significant implications, however, will be felt on the field, as two Surface tablet apps – designed to give staff access to players’ medical history from the field and assist with the diagnosis of head injuries, particularly concussion – are piloted by eight NFL teams throughout the 2013 season. Bold where its longstanding rival Apple has been disinterested, Microsoft is also hinting with its NFL deal at the future of technology sponsorships across sport: don’t just influence the way the game is enjoyed, influence the game itself. IM
Consumer Stubhub Red Bull Why? The undeniable pacesetter for brands building content. A brand owning content that continues to set the standard, Red Bull is as well oiled a marketing machine as they come. While its assault on the mainstream continues to reap significant exposure, as evidenced by yet another pair of Formula One world titles for Red Bull Racing and Sebastian Vettel in 2013 and its ownership of soccer teams in Austria, Germany, Ghana, Brazil and the US, the energy drink brand’s influence in sport’s orbital otherworld has grown immeasurable. Whether it be cliff diving, downhill skating, trail running, paragliding, air racing, surfing, skiing or mountain biking – the list is, quite possibly, endless – so ingrained is the Red Bull brand in the world of so-called ‘action sports’ that it is now all-but impossible to watch them without seeing the twin bull logo. Using such sports as marketing platforms invariably creates enough footage to captivate even the most ravenous of content-thirsty fans, and expanding the reach of offshoot company Red Bull Media House beyond the digital realm it has long mastered is next on the Austrian firm’s burgeoning agenda. Deals with major broadcasters in several key markets, notably its most significant TV agreement to date with Fox Sports in the US, are set to elevate the Red Bull Signature Series to unexplored heights in the coming years and, as the award-winning exploits of Felix Baumgartner and 2012’s Red Bull Stratos space jump project demonstrated, the sky is no longer the limit. What will they get up to next? ML 74 | www.sportspromedia.com
Why? The trend-setters in the secondary ticket market, but under renewed scrutiny. A legal form of scalping or a safe and secure platform for fans to exchange tickets: whatever one makes of the morality of secondary ticketing companies, they are not going to go away. By legitimising an act historically confined to shadowy street corners outside venues, Ebay-owned Stubhub has been at the forefront of the industry since its founding at the turn of the millennium and the company now claims to facilitate the sale of one ticket every second in the US, where sport makes up roughly 70 per cent of its business. That domestic growth, built on partnerships with over 65 sports organisations, has seen Stubhub venture into new markets in recent months, with English Premier League clubs, national governing bodies and high-profile venues having bought into the company’s revenue sharing model. But with the rise of the resale marketplace has come the need for sport to adapt to a changing landscape. Dynamic and variable pricing are both now common features of any forward-thinking organisation’s ticketing strategy, while Stubhub’s 2007 partnership with Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM) is an apt example of sport’s uneasy yet unrealised relationship with secondary ticketing. Despite the fact many MLB and team executives voiced their dismay at the way Stubhub’s service sometimes undercut the primary ticketing market, that groundbreaking deal was nevertheless renewed at the end of 2012, suggesting the approach within the industry very much remains: ‘If you can’t beat them, join them.’ ML
Betfair
GlaxoSmithKline
Why? The world’s largest betting exchange is a source of key information in the match-fixing fight. Sport’s symbiosis with betting goes back more or less to its origins. There can be no surprise that the exponential growth of the sports industry, and all of its attendant media, has sent bookmaking proliferating in all directions. New names and new ways of playing have emerged and in some markets, where economic conditions have been bitterest, betting firms have flooded a widening sponsorship breach. There is a darker side, however. Both outgoing International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Jacques Rogge and his replacement Thomas Bach have compared match-fixing to doping in terms of the threat it poses to sport’s future and although much of that manipulation comes from illegal betting and organised crime, the legitimate industry has a part to play. World-leading online betting exchange Betfair has benefited most from sporting globalisation but the information it gathers on its service – where it apparently handles more trades per day than Europe’s stock exchanges – could be crucial in the fight against the fixers. Its in-house integrity team monitors suspicious betting activity and has information-sharing agreements with over 50 administrative bodies worldwide, including the IOC. That approach will not be enough on its own but could unearth some valuable nuggets of intelligence. EC
Why? The company behind a ‘better’ water than water has a vital anti-doping role. As the fight against doping has come to the fore, so too have pharmaceutical giants like GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). Cooperation with the pharmaceutical industry is critical if the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is to stay one step ahead of the dopers and GSK is at the forefront of efforts to demonstrate the positive role that science can play within sport. Having signed a long-term contract with the global body back in 2011, the British group now has an integral role to play in the creation of early-warning systems for performance enhancing drugs, providing WADA with confidential information about medicines in early-stage development that could be abused by athletes once they are licensed for wider patient use. Beyond its work with WADA, in recent times GSK has also been a leading force in the commercialisation of nutritional supplements and isotonic refreshments, successfully marketing its electrolyte-rich Lucozade Sport as a drink that ‘hydrates and fuels you better than water’ before selling the brand for UK£1.35 billion in September. ML
West Ham’s Sam Allardyce drinks Lucozade Sport, sold by GSK for UK£1.35 billion in September
Coca-Cola Why? The biggest double bill in sport awaits in 2014. They don’t come much more consumer-focused than Coca-Cola and with the next 12 months including two of the mega-events into which the brand has plunged huge amounts of money, its activation and engagement efforts will be closely watched and perhaps even used as a barometer of the health of the top-level sponsorship market as a whole. ‘Liquid and linked’ is the new phrase du jour at Coke’s Atlanta headquarters; engagement, in other words, or a step beyond mere activation, as demonstrated by trophy tours, torch relays and music initiatives all over the world. Coke promotes its Olympic sponsorship in 110 countries, while its Fifa World Cup activities will take in 180-plus. As important to the company as its global efforts, however, is its ability to use such sponsorships to force a business step-change in host countries. In Russia and Brazil, it has two huge markets to tackle. The results, as with everything Coke does, will be scrutinised forensically inside and outside the company. DC SportsPro Magazine | 75
SPECIAL REPORT | 50 COMPANIES
Emirates Why? Effectively Dubai’s public investment vehicle. When it comes to sports sponsorship, few firms can rival Emirates in the value and pedigree of its properties. The government-owned carrier’s teeming portfolio spans soccer, rugby, tennis, golf, motorsport, cricket, sailing, horse racing and Australian rules football, among others, and pushed its annual sponsorship spend beyond US$182 million in 2012. It also cemented sport’s value as a promotional platform and brand-building tool for the Investment Corporation of Dubai, the airline’s owner and the government’s main investment arm. A front-of-shirt sponsorship of English rugby league team Warrington Wolves in October offered a neat illustration of Emirates’ strategy: coinciding with the arrival of the Rugby League World Cup on British shores, the four-year deal marked the airline’s first foray into the 13-man code and highlighted the team’s proximity to Manchester Airport, from which Emirates runs three flights a day to Dubai. On a global scale, ‘Fly Emirates’ branding is set to feature heavily in the new year thanks to the airline’s status as a Fifa worldwide partner heading into next summer’s World Cup in Brazil and as the official airline of the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Meanwhile, long-term contracts with the likes of Arsenal, Real Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain in soccer, the US Open in tennis, the Ryder Cup in golf, and Formula One – as well as a seemingly insatiable appetite for new acquisitions – will ensure a formidable presence in the years ahead. IM
Emirates has been linked with a naming rights deal for Real Madrid’s Estadio Santiago Bernabéu
Heineken Why? Activation acclaim and a new unified approach could spell more sports investments. Although 139.2 million hectolitres of beer per year is only enough to position it third behind Anheuser-Busch InBev and SABMiller in terms of production, Dutch brewer Heineken International has found itself as almost certainly the most global name in the beer game. Having consolidated its media-buying to one international agency – Starcom Mediavest – last year, Heineken is now treating its international marketing effort with the kind of joined-up approach of the world’s most recognised international brands. The brand’s long-running association with the Dutch Olympic Committee and its signature ‘Holland Heineken House’ might have a domestic bent, but its backing for European rugby, through the Heineken Cup club competition and the Six Nations, and more significantly for soccer through the Uefa Champions League, which switched from sister brand Amstel to Heineken in 2007, have opened international doors and won industry acclaim. The US is one of Heineken’s strongest markets, where it trails only Corona as the nation’s largest import. After leaning on its new association with James Bond for marketing traction there in 2012, could a new, unified approach see the brewer challenge AnheuserBusch and Budweiser’s dominant position across the American sports sponsorship landscape? JE
Nike Why? The world’s biggest sportswear company will be impossible to ignore as ever. In 2014, as in most other years, Nike will be the world’s biggest sportswear company. It will face challenges from its tradition rival Adidas, from upstarts like Under Armour and a rebounding Puma. It will head to the Fifa World Cup with its most recognisable of logos on some of soccer’s most recognisable shirts, including England’s for the first time and, of course, that of host nation Brazil. It will lead the build-up to that tournament with one of the year’s most anticipated marketing campaigns. It will make deals that, financially, others cannot: British newspaper reports suggest that a new five-year contract with Premier League champions Manchester United – worth close to half a billion dollars – is not far away. It will follow the unmistakeable names – Tiger, Manny, LeBron – and go to Sochi and the Super Bowl. Its footwear will get lighter, its technology smarter. Nike will probably not do anything all that unexpected in the year to come but will end it, inevitably, ahead. EC 76 | www.sportspromedia.com
Adidas Why? World Cup year for the Fifa supplier in its hi-tech pursuit of Nike. Even-numbered years mean mega-events in the world of sport, and that invariably means mass exposure for Adidas. The perennial Fifa, Uefa and IOC supporter will again supply balls and officials’ uniforms at the World Cup in 2014, while dressing the likes of highly fancied Germany, Spain and Argentina in Brazil. If nothing else, the quadrennial argument about just how round a football should be will generate plenty of column inches if any goalkeepers are embarrassed by the latest Herzogenrauch-developed projectile in June. Adidas is midway through a significant five-year business plan and its long-term goal is catching Nike. The German brand has made telling recent forays into its rival’s territory, picking off Italian soccer champions Juventus and Virat Kohli, soon to be the biggest star in Indian cricket. It also boasts highly successful fashion-led ‘classics’ lines. But it is set to make innovation a strategic cornerstone. It believes its Boost foam technology will revolutionise the running shoe, while it is also entering the nascent ‘smartwatch’ market with the touchscreen Micoach Smart Run. EC
Sports properties Anschutz Entertainment Group Why? The best at buildings, with Anschutz firmly back in control. After an uncertain start to 2013 Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), the company that owns more sports venues, teams and events than any other, is back treading familiar ground. Billionaire founder Phillip Anschutz took his sports and entertainment giant off the market in March after failing to find a buyer willing to meet the company’s reported US$10 billion valuation, and while that coincided with the departure of Tim Leiweke, AEG’s influential president and chief executive since 1996, it also saw Anschutz himself resume a more active role in the company with a focus on global strategy and operations. Given his reputation, few would bet against Anschutz taking AEG to new heights in the coming years. A key partner in the NBA’s continued expansion into China, AEG has deep roots in the world’s fastest-growing economy, while back on home shores the company’s US$1.2 billion development of Farmers Field, a 72,000-seat stadium in downtown Los Angeles designed to host an NFL franchise, could yet add America’s most popular sport to its controlling stakes in the country’s second-largest market. ML
Mission Hills Why? Riding a Chinese golfing wave with no limit to ambition. “There were only a handful of golf courses 20 years ago and now there are 698 golf courses in China,” said Ken Chu, China’s leading golf businessman, in a SportsPro interview in early 2013. Chu is chairman of Mission Hills, a colossal golf and leisure empire that spans the country across three resorts, housing 24 of the very best of those 698 courses. The numbers are stark. There were 100,000 golfers in China in 1995. Last year, there were three million. Mission Hills itself is able to provide 3,000 rounds on any given peak day. The ranks of China’s middle classes are swelling by the day. Research published by McKinsey in June suggested that in 2000, just four per cent of urban Chinese households were within an income range of US$9,000 to US$34,000 – between the average income of Brazil and Italy in purchasing-power parity terms. By 2012, that figure was 68 per cent, and McKinsey expects 75 per cent of China’s urban consumers to fall within that band by 2022. Chu’s father, a canny Hong Kong businessman, broke ground on the first Mission Hills resort in 1992, bringing the first sprinklings of the concept of leisure tourism to the country in the process. Those sprinklings have formed a torrent in the intervening years, and with plans for five more resorts over the next five years, Chu certainly doesn’t lack the ambition to take his father’s vision to an altogether grander scale. JE
Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment Why? Big things are expected from ex-AEG chief Tim Leiweke. Under new management thanks to the installation of Tim Leiweke as president and chief executive in June 2013, Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment (MLSE) has been given a new lease of life. Tasked with leading the transformation of MLSE and its properties, including the NHL’s Toronto Maple Leafs, the Toronto Raptors NBA team and Toronto’s MLS franchise, big things are expected from the influential former chief of AEG and he has not been shy in stoking expectation. Now at the helm of Canada’s largest professional sports organisation, Leiweke has pledged to deliver a Stanley Cup parade to a booming Toronto for the first time since 1967 while overseeing a major rebrand of the Raptors franchise. He is also targeting a doubling of MLSE’s value in the coming years, but the company’s future growth is not entirely down to him. In Bell Canada and Rogers Communications Inc, who between them acquired 75 per cent of MLSE in June 2012, the company has the backing of two of Canada’s largest corporations, both of whom have extensive telecom networks and other media holdings that could benefit MLSE’s properties through widereaching promotional tie-ins. Watch this space. ML SportsPro Magazine | 77
SPECIAL REPORT | 50 COMPANIES
Law Proskauer Rose Why? The go-to law firm for major league labour disputes. Few law firms can rival Proskauer Rose when it comes to sporting pedigree. The New York City-founded powerhouse’s sports department took its first steps with the NBA in the 1960s and has gone on to work in some capacity with every major league throughout the US. It has also produced two of the country’s most senior sports leaders in David Stern and Gary Bettman, who trained with the firm before joining the NBA and NHL respectively. In establishing its own leadership position in sport, Proskauer Rose has built a reputation, honed over many years, as something of a labour dispute and collective bargaining specialist; indeed, it has become the go-to sports law practice for league administrators whenever a lockout threatens to rear its ugly head. The firm had presided over two NHL lockouts, four player/owner disputes in the NBA and the NFL’s 2011 lockout before its most recent high-profile case: the agreement to end the NHL lockout which ran from September 2012 to January 2013 was concluded in Proskauer’s Manhattan offices. Beyond resolving lockouts, Proskauer has evolved with the industry and now routinely represents ownership groups acquiring sports properties across the major leagues. IM
NBA commissioner David Stern is a notable veteran of Proskauer Rose
Finance Qatar Sports Investments Why? The industry’s deepest pockets. Nowhere has Qatar’s commitment to using sport as a national brand-building effort been more evident that in its investments in soccer. With the 2022 Fifa World Cup looming, somewhat awkwardly, on the horizon, Qatar is attempting to ingratiate itself in the global soccer family and Qatar Sports Investments (QSI) is its vehicle for doing just that. Founded in 2005, QSI is an offshoot of the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), a sovereign wealth fund that invests domestically and internationally on behalf of the resource-rich emirate’s ruling family, and such state-backed buying power means it is a force to be reckoned with. QSI arrived on the scene amid much fanfare in 2010 after striking a headturning US$220 million deal with FC Barcelona that has since seen Qatar Airways become the first ever for-profit commercial entity to adorn the front of the Catalan club’s famous shirts. The following year the company bought a controlling stake in Ligue 1 soccer side Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) and with it a doorway to further Qatari invest in the French market. The question now is: where next? QSI has primarily focused on turning PSG into a global force in recent months but it is surely only a matter of time before the company invests again. ML 78 | www.sportspromedia.com
CVC Capital Partners Why? Are Formula One’s owners looking for an exit route? In the search for profit, no wonder private equity firms have come to see sport as one big opportunity. CVC Capital Partners is amongst the best known – as the largest shareholder of Formula One, a position CVC has held since 2005, it is hard to be anything other than a topic of discussion, even if the desire is to operate in the background. CVC has become part of the sport’s unending soap opera, spending much of its time refinancing and, for the last couple of years, pondering the right moment to float the company. A plan to do so last year stalled and a series of what might best be described as complications, not least the legal travails awaiting Bernie Ecclestone in the UK and Germany, have since prevented another try. Publicly, at least, there remains no sign of a succession plan, with chief executive and chief string-puller Ecclestone reaching 83 in October. It is a situation which will come to a head sooner or later. Outside Formula One, meanwhile, CVC is reported to be in the running to buy IMG, an acquisition which would give the company a greater influence still over international sport. DC