Sports Marketing Students Travel to Sports Mecca: New York City

By Lynn Kahle

Lynn Kahle is the James Warsaw Professor of Sports Marketing at the Charles H. Lundquist College of Business. The following is a travelogue of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center's annual New York City trip. The Warsaw Sports Marketing Center is the premier sports marketing center in the nation and the first to operate from within a college of business at a major AAU research university. Its advisory board boasts leaders from NBC Sports, ESPN, NASCAR, and Women's Sports Foundation, among others.

For the fourth consecutive year, the entire second-year M.B.A. class of sports marketing students from the Charles H. Lundquist College of Business accompanied myself and sports marketing faculty Dennis Howard, Bob Madrigal, Mark Phelps, and Rick Burton to New York City. Also along for the ride were Lundquist College Dean Philip Romero, Associate Dean Chris Murray, Randy Swangard, director of the Lundquist Center for Entrepreneurship, and Deb Chereck, director of career services.

This privately funded, annual New York City trip, organized by Lundquist College's Warsaw Sports Marketing Center, provides students the opportunity to meet with important leaders in the sport industry and to explore job opportunities. Students started with a banquet at the Harvard Club, providing an opening to network with many of the top people in the sport industry.

LEARNING FROM THE LEADERS
The first formal meeting occurred at the offices of the National Basketball Association--generous supporters of the trip, financially and logistically. The group had a lengthy audience with Commissioner David Stern and NBA Entertainment President Adam Silver. Val Ackerman, President of the WNBA, also met with the group.

Commissioner Stern has an excellent reputation in the sport business industry because he understands and applies the basic principles of marketing as well as anyone in sport. Stern's description of the logic of the NBA's changing of media partners from NBC to ESPN, ABC, and AOL, officially announced after we left New York, provided evidence for his reputation. He devised a method of avoiding league revenue loss in an environment of decreasing audience size and shrinking sponsor commitment (a problem throughout the entertainment industry, not uniquely an NBA problem). He once again provided effective business leadership through the maze of changing times and new media.

His clear solution: increase the number of televised games. Previous partner NBC, owned by General Electric, does not have a strong presence in cable sport, which would be necessary for the new strategy to work. Stern instead turned to ABC, which Disney owns, along with the Disney cable sport network, ESPN. Learning the details of this strategy afforded students a real-time understanding of sport marketing reasoning at the highest level.

Later we would get a chance to see NBA action in person, enjoying ourselves in the way sport marketers should. We took the short trip to New Jersey to watch Michael Jordan and Jason Kidd play (Nets vs. Wizards).

Our next meetings took place at the offices of ABC. Two Warsaw Center Board members hosted us: Teri Wagner, Vice President, Programming and Strategic Marketing for ABC Sports, and Jim Noel, Assistant General Council for ESPN. We learned first hand about the successful bid process to woo the NBA away from NBC. Thus we saw the mirror image of what we heard at the NBA. We learned about the second "win" in the win-win deal. The intricacies of the negotiations opened many eyes. We also talked with several other top executives, including George W. Bodenheimer, the President of ESPN. And of course we heard a great deal about Sports Center, the irreverent, popular ESPN show.

A trip to NBC was next, the scorned lover in the NBA-ABC affair. Jonathan Miller, Senior Vice President for Programming at NBC Sports, graciously agreed to meet with us and share his observations on a rough year at NBC Sports (Remember the XFL?). He showed remarkable courage in discussing his frustrations and challenges in the NBA negotiations and in the future of sport media. NBC, of course, also has many successes to discuss, including NASCAR and the Olympics. But Mr. Miller helped us understand that industry competition has winners and losers, sometimes determined by the changing market for media products. We thus saw, again from the principals, the third side to the triangle of one of the year's biggest sport business stories as it developed.

Our visit to the National Football League was especially exciting for the students. Ty Stewart, a Warsaw center alumnus, who is now a successful executive at the NFL, choreographed case-study presentations from several high-level NFL managers, oriented toward current issues under active debate. The group could observe and discuss current decision-making by top NFL executives first hand. Included in the presentation was another Lundquist College of Business alum, Whitney Moulaison, a rising young marketer in the NFL's sponsorship group.

The Warsaw group also met and talked with two other League Commissioners, Gary Bettman of the National Hockey League and Don Garber of Major League Soccer. We also heard about Mastercard's sponsorship activities from Bob Kramer, Vice President of Global Sponsorships and Events. These visits allowed students an opportunity to ask probing questions and hear candid appraisals of the industry from its most valuable players.

Some of the faculty also had the opportunity to visit the Sports Summit, an annual gathering of sport industry leaders. One of the most impressive industry representatives was Ted Leonsis, owner of the Washington Capitals and Vice Chairman of America Online, Inc. In less than three years he has increased the Capitals' revenues from $23 million to $69 million through wise application of principles of consumer behavior and innovations centered on his understanding of new media. For example, he asked fans if they had any reasons not to love the Capitals. He received 125 different complaints, and he has now resolved 109 of them. Customer satisfaction has consequently increased in every 90-day period that he has owned the Capitals. He also is an owner who answers e-mail.

Each year, rookies with great potential join professional sport teams. Just as the young Michael Jordon and Jason Kidd showed great potential as basketball players, I now think many of our sports marketing M.B.A. students have great potential in the sport industry. With the "street-smart" and conceptual education they receive from classes at the Lundquist College of Business, discussions, and travel to places like New York, they are the missing pieces for the success of many sport businesses.

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