Over the years the role of many agents with team.has been adverserial. However with more and more teams looking to expand off sports coverage and increas. ROI for partners, as well as maximize opportunities with athletes, are working closer with athlete reps (and vice versa) to maximize and use economies of scale whereever possible. The latest and best example of that is Reynolds Sports Management and their work with clients including Torii Hunter, and B.J. and Justin Upton. that has shown how to work with teams to get solid exposure for all involved and find ways to tell the good stories.the Angels, key sponsor Purple Energy Drink and Reynolds Sports’ Mike Dillon, the entire group has benefitted from some solid placement on Hunter's background, personality and offfield work in addition to his athletic talent.extensive upcoming piece on HBO's Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel, a series of strong cross promotional plans with Purple, print pieces including one on ESPN.com. The Upton's side has seen cooperation and coordinating schedules and pitches to land cover time on ESPN Magazine and Sports Illustrated, a lengthy feature in the current issue of Complex Magazine and a solid USA Today pieceworking strategically together and keep all sides informed is sometimes the exception and not the rule on the pro side, and in these are perfect examples of striking on a wide variety of opportunities to maximize the spotlight. Well done by all involved.
On the other side, a.example of how miscommunication can lead to chaos unfolded in Milwaukee over the last few days, when the flegling Milwaukee Bonecrushers of the CIFL (not the ALF or AF2) had their entire front office call the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to tell them they were quitting. The paper, who has followed and supported the team in the early stages, could not get anyone from team mangement or even the league to return a phone call, which led to this story in the paper yesterday. Thanks to the digital ability of papers to update stories as the day goes on, the JS's Don Walker was able to finally get ownership response almost 24 hours later, and published a followup on his blog and linked to owners response on their website. Still, it is hard for a sports business entity, especially a fledgling one, to be taken seriously at any level when there is no coordination or response to the media who are covering the team. The owners are probably very successful businessmen in another field, and they should apply those same business tactics to their sports enterprise. A little response takes away a lot o.wasted time.
On to some other good reads…The blog GeekGestalt doesn’t do much sports coverage, but we caught a nice piece that went up yesterday on the science of hitting a baseball… a different take that could enter into some unique pitches or branding chances with the science community or Newspapers In Education…the New York Times had a solid profile on Fantasy Sports Ventures Chris Russo…on the blog side, found another site that deals with sports marketing and social media worth reading…eyecube…and on the Olympic torch followup, First Call has a solid piece on how the controversy will or won’t effect Olympic sponsorship decisions,London Independent has a great piece on Coke's leveraging of the Olympic experience.
