Yesterday, I had the opportunity to speak at length with Teague Michael Egan, who was rather receptive to speaking to me on the record.  After letting the media talk for the past week or so, Egan was ready to tell his story.  Egan was home for the Thanksgiving holiday, and was not taking a break from trying to build his company, 1st Round.  In fact, he was headed to Pine Crest High School, one of the two high schools in South Florida that he attended prior to enrolling at USC.  Pine Crest has an exceptionally talented basketball program; University of Kentucky freshman Brandon Knight is a graduate of Pine Crest.  Later that day, Egan planned on visiting St. Thomas Aquinas, the second South Florida high school he attended.  He was on the school’s golf and track team; St. Thomas is known nationwide as having one of, if not the, toughest football programs.

Egan was born on July 6, 1988, making him 22-years-young at the date of this article being published.  I believe that Egan felt comfortable speaking with me, as I had also started my own sports agency at the age of 22, as an undergraduate at the University of Florida.  The following contains the parts of our discussion that have not yet been mentioned.

Darren Heitner: Why did you transfer from Pine Crest to St. Thomas Aquinas in high school?

Teague Egan: I transfered from Pine Crest to St. Thomas Aquinas in my Junior Year.  My brother [Riley Egan] wanted to transfer because St. Thomas had a much better track team, which ended up winning the state championship after the transfer.  I was and still am very close with my brother, and I wanted to go where he went.  My brother runs the Pictures Division of 1st Round.

Heitner: What gave you the idea to start 1st Round?

Egan: I was in between businesses.  I had started a couple businesses in high school and college.  These were big business ideas.  I felt like like I was over my head, though.  I had just pledged a fraternity called Phi Psi.  Sterling Brewster was in my pledge class; he became a partner in 1st Round.  A couple of football players also pledged the same fraternity.  Daniel Harper, Everson Griffen (drafted by the Minnesota Vikings in the 4th round, but Egan referenced him as a projected 1st round pick), Spencer Spiegel, and Jordan Campbell all pledged with me.  I became great friends with Everson, Daniel, and Jordan.

In the Spring of Sophomore year, I went to Jordan and said that should start a business.  I came up with the name “1st Round” because a lot of my boys were going to be drafted in the 1st Round, and I thought it was cool.  I grew up with signed helmets, footballs, and jerseys all over my room.  I played 5 sports in high school.  I had season tickets to the Heat and Dolphins.  I loved sports.

I started throwing parties with Jordan.  We went head-to-head with 28th Street Entertainment (Egan stated that this was USC’s top nightlife promotion group).  We threw an entire party for free, but negotiated a huge percentage of the bar.  We provided free transportation to club, free admission, and blew 28th Street out of the water.  The party was packed with hundreds of kids from USC, UCLA, and LMU.  We lost money on the party, but 1st Round Entertainment was officially established.  I was busy throwing parties, having great times with friends, and had an “in” with all the cutest girls.  All of Jordan’s friends on the USC football team started coming to my parties as well.

That summer, I was up on Nantucket Island on the beach hanging out on the 4th of July.  One of the guys I brought out to the beach was the best freestyle rapper I knew.  It suddenly hit me that that I wanted to start a record label.  At the time, I was questioning the success of 1st Round Entertainment, because I was throwing fun parties, but losing money.  But I  had a good name.  I started the record label and signed Sam Adams (the freestyler who accompanied him to the beach).

I first named my record label “Lazy Boy Records.”  I decided to change it, though, and make all of my companies reflect the 1st Round Brand.  I made the decision to do so after reading a book about branding that was written by Richard Branson.  I liked the whole “Virgin” idea and keeping everything under the same brand.  In the near future, I will be doing a management deal with Lady Gaga’s management, for Sam Adams.

Anyway, when Jordan transferred to Louisville, we started the sports agency.  The division is far bigger than negotiating 3% for the athletes we represent.  We want the sports division to be the next Nike.  We don’t want to just deal with contract negotiation.  Instead, we want to manufacture merchandise and apparel.  I structured 1st Round after Nike.  Nike has the swoosh, 1st Round has the wings; easily identifiable.  The slogan is also based after Nike.  Theirs – “Just Do It” vs. ours – “Go Higher” – everyone can identify and relate to it.

Heitner: But it does seem like you also want to represent athletes, no?

Egan: I officially became certified by the NFLPA on October 1, 2010.  My Nike goal is down the road.  I want 1st Round to be a “full service sports franchise.”  The word “agent” has such a negative connotation.  We will provide anything the athlete can want.  I want to do a lot of athlete branding.

Heitner: What is the make-up of your company?

Egan: I structured my company with 6 different divisions.  Each division has a different President.  I also incorporated the “crossover effect,” where each division can help out the others.   Sports, records, pictures, entertainment (parties, but I eventually plan to own restaurants, clubs, entertainment venues), capital, and philanthropic.

Heitner: Tell me a little more about your capital division.

Egan: This division began based on my and my dad’s background.  I have has several investments in many fields, stocks and bonds (he says that Apple is his biggest holding), money in BlackRock, global allocation funds.  The main area that I am looking at is venture capital and investments into small, upcoming businesses that have huge potential for growth.

Heitner: What are your thoughts on what has been written about you thus far?

Egan: What I have done is almost revolutionary. I have gone into unchartered waters. I am one of, if not the youngest certified agent, and I am an undergraduate student at a university.  Everything that has happened is absolutely ridiculous.  It is such a unique situation.  The rules are in place to prevent people like Cam Newton from getting $180,000 or Reggie Bush from having houses bought for his parents, not to prevent students from getting rides in golf carts from other students.  They try to stress “student” coming before “athlete” in almost everything.  If you want to claim that, then I am a “student” first and then an “agent”.  Call me a “student-agent.”

Heitner: People are calling out the NFLPA for granting you certification while you are a still a student.  What do you have to say about that?

Egan: Athletes should be able to have whoever they want represent them, as long as the person has experience and capability to represent properly. The fact that I am a student should not prevent me from representing an athlete. If a student has sufficient negotiating experience that meets the qualifications the NFLPA deems acceptable, there is no reason he should be denied.  I am a born negotiator.  I have a lot of negotiating experience.

Heitner: What about the criticism regarding Jordan Campbell, a current student-athlete, being a part of your organization?

Egan: Jordan never actually signed the LLC documents.  I believed that it was a bad idea and a potential conflict.  I am going to wait until after his eligibility to make him an official partner.

Heitner: What is your plan for 1st Round Sports in the immediate future? Are you going to wait until the criticism subsides before you go out and recruit players?

Egan: Now that this all happened, I have to watch myself and stay within the rules even tighter, but I am not going to sit back.  The #1 thing was to make sure that my friends did not get hurt.  Now that they are back and reinstated, I feel free to talk with the media.  I will be putting the golf cart up on Ebay and will have some of the proceeds go back to USC Football.  I am looking at baseball and basketball on top of football, and already represent an MMA fighter (Ryan McMahon) and have connections to the UFC.

Heitner: What about the threat of getting in trouble for rules violations?

Egan: Rides to clubs, free entry to clubs, and golf rides around campus were given to everybody.  There was no special treatment being given to athletes.

Heitner: What kind of advice would you like to give people who dream of becoming sports agents?

Egan: It’s all about relationships.  How is anyone supposed to be a sports agent if he is not friends with the athletes and is some random 30 or 40 year old guy?  It is all about trust.  I have amazing relationships with the guys.  They know and trust me.  It’s not the grades you make, it’s the hands you shake.

Interview With The Agent: Teague Egan from Sports Agent Blog - Sports Business, Sports Law, Sports Negotiations, NCAA Rules

Men’s grooming company Axe, hoping to drum up some tidy PR, decided to use her much publicized chest to promote their company. A deal was struck to have their logo temporarily tattooed on the left hand side of her chest. As many would have seen throughout the World Cup, Larissa likes to wear tops that don’t leave much to the imagination, thus allowing such a billboard to be displayed. Kudos must be given to the marketing team that came up with this idea. Photos of the model have gone viral, and are consistently linked around the web, resulting in the massive amount of publicity for what one would think would be a relatively small outlay.

However, Axe wasn’t the only ones to use Larissa, with Nokia jumping on board as well. The scantly clad fan would often keep her Nokia E71 tucked into either her top strap or in her cleavage. Shots throughout the game would also show her using the phone.  The effectiveness of this sponsorship must be questioned, as it was often difficult to tell what phone she was actually using. The Nokia E71 looks very similar to a Blackberry, and a quick straw poll resulted in many thinking she was actually using a Blackberry. Many viewers would probably have thought that there was no sponsorship associated with her phone as it wasn’t as predominately displayed as the Axe logo.

This scenario highlights what could be a new wave of advertising in the future. Though ‘Human Billboards’ have been used in the past (think Boxing), it’s the the avenue of utilizing and exhausting a greater slice of media coverage that could attract another category of sponsorship. Will companies begin to place ‘fans’ around arenas with sponsor branding?

World Cup’s Hottest Fan is Used as a Billboard from Sports Agent Blog - Sports Business, Sports Law, Sports Negotiations, NCAA Rules

Football

• Definitely a smart business move by Nike [Nike signs Tim Tebow].
• Fletcher Smith had determined that Washington was the best place for McNabb [McNabb's agent: Trade to Redskins "was the desired outcome"].

Baseball

• Hoping this continues a shift in scouts ethically recruiting Dominican players [White Sox hire Krause as consultant].
• NY to Milwaukee – “stop whining” [Levine calls out Brewers owner].
• Lock up their ace for a max of $42.5 million [Gallardo, Brewers agree to contract].
• An agent friend agrees with my re-branding statement [What's in a Name?].
• Investigation is far along but not yet complete [Players union might file grievance against owners].

Basketball

• A potential future movie about Paul Millsap and his uncle/agent DeAngelo Simmons [Utah Jazz: Paul Millsap may soon be at the movies].

Shabbat Shalom: Friday Wrap-Up (4/9/2010) from Sports Agent Blog - Sports Business, Sports Law, Sports Negotiations, NCAA Rules

I no longer want to be associated with those who offer empty promises to players in order to find their name on an agency contract.  I don’t want athletes to think they can use me to pay for their training as if I am some sort of lending institution (how exactly did agents become the people who finance training anyway…where is that in the definition?).  And I definitely do not want to be grouped with any ‘sports agents’ who will violate the law or act unethically to gain a buck, or 100,000 bucks.

All of these thoughts led me to tweet this:

The responses were tremendous.   The best question was when one person asked if my re-branding would change the name of this blog.  Don’t worry, SportsAgentBlog.com is not getting a new domain name.

I’m a child of this amazing internet age.  My company, Dynasty Athlete Representation, has experienced the tremendous growth of the internet and social media since its birth in April 2007.  Thus, I was not all that surprised when my tweet created such an overwhelming response.  I was also not surprised that I would end up adopting a title that was introduced by someone who decided to reply.  The winner = athlete advocate.

Even advocate has the potential of having a negative connotation.  Wikipedia mentions that advocates represent those who lack the knowledge, skill, ability, or standing to speak for themselves.  But this is not what I am trying to convey at all.  Instead, I want to be someone who will do absolutely anything legal and ethical for my clients, and also empower them with knowledge as I aid them in their future success.  I see it as a process that involves my clients as much as possible.  They are not dumb in any sense, but they hire me and Dynasty for a reason – because we can add value that they might not be able to achieve on their own.  It could purely be that they do not have the time to do it in conjunction with excelling on the field or court.  It could also be a matter of the connections in the industry that we have built over time.  Additionally, our background in law and negotiation is something that many athletes do not have an opportunity to focus on until after their playing days are over.  These are the values I want my clients and potential clients to see; not the buying of players by paying training costs or promises that I will turn someone into a first round pick.  I’ll leave that to the ‘sports agents’.  What I want to provide is what an athlete advocate can do for his clients.

Sports agents will undoubtedly feel uncomfortable after reading this post.  I have beat the odds by getting to where I am today, especially since I have been very open from the start and have not allowed myself to get involved in any shady tactics.  Nothing will change.  In this process, I will attract haters and I will attract imitators, but all I care about is my clients knowing that they will get the best damn advocate they can find.

I am not only re-branding myself.  I want to re-brand Dynasty as an entity that you feel excited to be a part of. From the beginning, I have embraced openness about our inner workings and have provided you with information about our clients.  Hopefully you have grown to become familiar with our operation.  Dynasty is something that has amazing potential, and I want all of you to be a part of its success.  I want it to be the first agency that has its doors wide open and offers everyone interested in the opportunity to be an athlete advocate the chance to add value to the company and its clients.

No matter what the reasoning may be, I know you are smiling.

No Longer A Sports Agent – Now An Athlete Advocate from Sports Agent Blog - Sports Business, Sports Law, Sports Negotiations, NCAA Rules

There are still a few people who cannot wait to wake up, get a cup of coffee and sit in front of a newspaper to read the sports news of the previous day.  It won’t be long until even those select few who have yet to give up recycled paper end up ditching old-school news for instant up-to-the-minute news.  Even more gratifying than receiving current news is receiving news straight from the players themselves.  That’s what PlayerPress.com is offering its consumers.

PlayerPress.com was created roughly 18 months ago as a new blogging platform where the content is solely powered by passionate fans and pro athletes.  Over fifty professional athletes are blogging on the site.  Those athletes include Sidney Rice of the Minnesota Vikings, Brian Cushing of the Houston Texans, Antrel Rolle of the New York Giants, Clinton Portis of the Washington Redskins, and Michael Vick of the Philadelphia Eagles, as well as Dan Boyle of the San Jose Sharks.

PlayerPress.com has attempted to distinguish itself from other athlete blog hosting websites like YardBarker.com by building each client his own website on his own domain name and then monetizing those sites through the sale of merchandise and advertising spots on the website.  A prerequisite for joining the PlayerPress.com is that the athlete must be willing to blog, as consistent blogging drives traffic and keeps the content fresh.

The founders of PlayerPress.com understand the importance of branding.  That is a main reason why they also created the site, AgencyAthlete.com.  This particular offering aims to serve as a social media public relations firm with the goal of building players’ brands online.  Agents and agencies that do not have the knowledge or time to build effective and successful social media platforms for their clients can definitely benefit from the services that AgencyAthlete.com provides.

Both entities are led by the same management.  They have built a very respectable clientèle base and look like they will have a lot of success in the future.  Take a moment to check out both sites and see what you think. This is a young but up-and-coming company with plenty to offer.

Companies That Understand Sports Social Media from Sports Agent Blog - Sports Business, Sports Law, Sports Negotiations, NCAA Rules

The Giving Back Fund is a national nonprofit organization that was established in 1997 to provide professional philanthropic management, consulting, and mentoring to athletes, entertainers and others.  The organization will be holding its annual Summit in at the Omni Hotel & Resorts in San Diego, CA on April 21st and 22nd, featuring presentations and panels on the use of technology and social media in philanthropy, how to successfully host a fundraising event, a Q&A session, and a presentation by former sports agent, Jeff Moorad.

Speakers include:

• KURT ASCHERMANN, President, Charity Partners Foundation. In 2006, Aschermann packaged and helped produce Denzel Washington’s first book A Hand to Guide Me, which has raised close to $1 million for Boys and Girls Club of America.
• CLAUDIA CAPLAN, As Chief Marketing Officer at Mendelsohn Zien Advertising, Claudia led the new business efforts and worked on strategy for clients. Carls, Jr. CEO Andy Puzder was quoted as saying, “The chain’s turnaround is attributable in large part to a marketing strategy engineered by the Los Angeles advertising agency, Mendelsohn Zien.”
• CAROL CONE, Chairman and Founder, Cone, Inc. Carol is a pioneer in cause-branding. Her signature cause programs have raised more than $1.2 billion for various social causes.
• SHARON GELMAN, Executive Director, Artists for a New South Africa. Founded in 1989 by Alfre Woodard, Danny Glover, Mary Steenburgen, and other members of the creative community, ANSA works in the US and South Africa to combat HIV/AIDS. ANSA has raised and granted more than $9 million with the help of their supporters who include Samuel L. Jackson and Carlos Santana.
• STACIE MANN, Vice President of Partnerships, Network for Good. Stacie is responsible for the website Six Degrees, which features and was started by Kevin Bacon. The site brings a social conscience to social networking.
• DAN MIGALA, Vice President of Partnership Solutions, San Diego Padres. Dan was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame for a sponsorship program he conceived and implemented.
• JEFFREY MOORAD, Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, San Diego Padres. One of the most recognizable names in professional sports, Jeff Moorad brings more than 25 years of sports industry experience to San Diego and the Padres. Moorad was involved in more than $3 billion in athlete contracts, including representing Pro Football Hall of Famers Steve Young, Troy Aikman, Warren Moon and Thurman Thomas. Moorad was the negotiator on a number of landmark contracts for a baseball client base that included Manny Ramirez, Eric Karros, Ivan Rodriguez, Mo Vaughn, Shawn Green and Raul Mondesi.
• JAISON MORGAN, Founder, Common Pool. Jaison is an expert on incentive driven models. While Senior Director of Prize Development at the X PRIZE Foundation, Jason built a pipeline of over $300 million in philanthropic competitions.
• KIM NOVICK, Development Director, Tony Hawk Foundation. Over the past seven years, Kim has put the Tony Hawk Foundation on the charitable map, raising funds through corporate sponsorship, private donations, special events, and foundation grants.

Attendees must confirm pre-existing athlete and celebrity associations before attending. The Giving Back Fund reserves the right to refuse admission to the Summit.

Registration (click here):

• General Registration – $499
• Group Registration (two or more) – $449

For questions please call The Giving Back Fund at 310.649.5222

The Giving Back Fund’s 2nd Annual Best Practices Fundraising Summit from Sports Agent Blog - Sports Business, Sports Law, Sports Negotiations, NCAA Rules

You’ve landed a talented athlete as a new client. A professional contract is fast-approaching. When the contract is signed, will the athlete’s online presence be ready?

In sports, the athlete’s name is the brand. So it should come as no surprise the bad guys on the internet, known as cyber-squatters, may try to take advantage of your athlete’s name and brand.

An example: In California, a single cyber-squatter was recently convicted of registering the domain names of nearly 800 basketball players. Domain names are Web browser addresses, like SteveNash.com and ChrisBosh.com. The affected players ranged from NBA pros to top high school and college players. Because of this one squatter, hundred’s of athletes were unable to take the first step into online branding. This was just one squatter — there are thousands of squatters on the NET trying to make money from athletes’ brands.

As an agent, you need to start managing your client’s online brand early —before fame and success attract the cyber-squatters. It’s critical for agents to help athletes create a comprehensive online branding strategy.

Here are 5 simple tips to help agents prepare and protect a player’s online brand:

1. Register a Dot-Com Domain Name

Domain names are Web addresses, so they are the focus of your online branding plan. Having a domain name with your player’s first and/or last name in it, like RogerFederer.COM, is the Grand Slam of Internet branding. The domain is also part of the player’s main email address.

But, web domains are a scarce resource, and are registered on a first-come-first-serve basis —  so even RogerFederer.COM doesn’t own Federer.COM

Once you start searching for an available domain name, you’ll be surprised how hard it is to find an available domain name. If your client has an uncommon name, you may be lucky and still be able to acquire CLIENTNAME.COM. Other good domains to register are nicknames. Shorter domain names are usually better, dashes and digits in a domain name are not as easily remembered by site visitors.

The Dot-Com domain is the most memorable and upscale—it’s far better than the other top-level domains (.NET, .ORG, .INFO, .BIZ, .US, etc.).

To register a domain, visit a Domain Registrar like Godaddy.com (http://GoDaddy.com). If the client’s name is available, you can register it for about $8 a year – you’ll need to renew every year or you lose the name. There are also many websites, such as Afternic.com and Sedo.com, that help you buy and acquire domains that are already registered — though auction prices can be exorbitant.

As long as you’re able to get the athlete’s main domain, it’s not worth going overboard speculating on a bunch of domains when an athlete is just starting out. However, keep in mind that the squatters will try to take advantage of typos in web addresses, so you may consider acquiring common misspellings of your client’s name (for Tennis, think Nadall.com, Nedal.com).

Later in this article I have some tips for what to do if you can’t get the name you want.

2. Create Social Networking Accounts

When fans want to find out about an athlete, they’ll go to the social networking sites; MySpace and Facebook are the biggest. With MySpace, you’ve always been able to get a page like http://Myspace.com/CLIENTNAME, so, you’ll want to grab that. Facebook now has that feature, too. And you’ll want to start and take ownership of a Facebook Fan Club for your client.

What content do you put on all these social media sites? It doesn’t matter—you can leave them blank to start with. The main point is that you control the real estate for your brand.

If you or your client does create some content on a social media page, keep the site very professional. Don’t let the athlete use these accounts for gossiping with friends, uploading photos or video of last Saturday night’s party, or other unprofessional uses. Future sponsors and advertisers will be watching, so you need to keep the client’s content squeaky clean and  presentable. Once something is on the Internet, it’s nearly impossible to take it down.

But remember: The main point is to acquire these online properties, even if you don’t use them at first. It’s far better to have nothing on a Web pages than to have cyber-squatters fill the page with advertisements.

3. Create a Twitter Account

Twitter, an online Short Message Service (SMS) site, is extremely popular and growing so quickly that it gets a checklist item all to itself. When fame first strikes, Twitter is where the trendsetters will talk about your client. Beware: Twitter squatters are already grabbing up all the famous Twitter account names.

Signing up for a Twitter account is free, so sign-up for an account name that matches the client’s real name. You may want to update the Twitter status occasionally with things like recent victories and upcoming games. But again, the key is to own the Twitter account for later use and to prevent someone else from controlling the Twitter account.

4. Setup Email and Instant Messaging

Fans, sponsors, advertisers and other vendors will want to communicate with an athlete. When your client owns a COM domain, you can automatically receive all email sent to any address at @CLIENTNAME.COM.

But, as part of a comprehensive branding plan, create free accounts at Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and HotMail: CLIENTNAME@gmail.com, CLIENTNAME@yahoo.com, and CLIENTNAME@msn.com. Setup the accounts so that they invisibly forward email to a single address.

Additionally, try to get brandable accounts for AOL Instant Messenger and MSN Messenger.

5. Setup Voicemail

For a business phone number, you can set up a free GoogleVoice (http://voice.google.com) account, which comes with a free phone number in almost any area code. Configure GoogleVoice to automatically forward voice-mail to your email accounts as an audio/text attachment. Or you can forward all GoogleVoice calls to your cell phone (the forwarding will be invisible to the caller).

If your client needs to speak with the press by phone, he or she can easily make phone calls through the GoogleVoice account using their existing cell phone. Have the client use the GoogleVoice as a business phone number for all sports-related activities to prevent the athlete’s personal phone information from becoming mixed with the athlete’s career info. Keeping an athlete’s professional life and personal life separate will also help protect the athlete’s privacy.

Troubleshooting Your Brand

What do you do if you can’t get all of the above items? Well, if your athlete’s name is very common like Joe Smith, then he’s a little late to the Internet party. But you can still try for domains like “JoeSmithHockey.com”.

What if fame has already struck and the athlete’s brand is already cyber-squatted? There are laws to protect an athlete’s name and brand. Contact an intellectual property attorney who specializes in trademarks. If the athlete’s name is fairly unique, having a lawyer send a letter to the various social media sites can often get them transferred to the player. Gaining control of a squatted domain is a little more complicated, but an attorney can definitely help to acquire it. Solving cyber-squatting problems through the legal system will cost you a lot more time and effort than doing it right the first time.

Be Ready for Fame…

Most importantly, it’s critical to be a few steps ahead of the cyber-squatters. With the first whiff of fame, squatters will notice an up-and-coming player and grab up all the prime Internet real estate related to that player. You can reduce future legal costs by keeping up with online trends and by beating the squatters to the prime Internet real estate. Your client’s future sponsors will appreciate a clean online-brand that isn’t full of Internet spam.

Remember: Your job as an agent is to help plan for the athlete’s entire career. It’s never too early to get a player’s brand ready. By spending a little effort up front, you can make future success that much sweeter.

Managing An Athlete’s Online Brand: A 5-Step Getting Started Guide For Agents from Sports Agent Blog - Sports Business, Sports Law, Sports Negotiations, NCAA Rules

What: 7th Annual Relay Worldwide Sports Sponsorship Symposium by SportsBusiness Journal and SportsBusiness Daily

When: Wednesday, Sept. 30 – Thursday, Oct. 1, 2009

Where: New York City, NY at the Marriott Marquis

Keynote: Uli Becker, CEO and President, Reebok International

Panels:

Sept. 30

• 7:30 a.m. – Registration
• 8:30 a.m. – Welcome and Opening Remarks
  • Richard Weiss, Publisher, Street & Smith’s SportsBusiness Journal/Daily
  • Tim Mauer, CEO, Relay Worldwide
• 8:45 a.m. – The Recalibration of Sports Sponsorships and Event Marketing
  • Rich Lehrfeld, VP of Global Sponsorship Marketing, American Express
  • Tim McGhee, Exec Director of Corporate Sponsorships, AT&T
  • Dan McHugh, VP of Media, Sponsorship, and Activation, Anheuser-Busch
  • Scott O’Neil, President of MSG Sports
  • Matt Pensinger, Senior VP of Marketing Services and Consulting, Relay Worldwide
  • Mark Waller, Senior VP of Marketing and Sales, NFL
• 9:45 a.m. – The Rebranding of Gatorade: Inside the G Launch and Defending Against Competition in the Sports Drink Market
  • Sarah Robb O’Hagan, CMO of Gatorade
• 11:00 a.m. – The New Realities of Marketing: The Chief Marketers’ Perspective
  • Phil Clement, Global CMO and Communications Officer, Aon
  • Rory Finlay, Senior VP and Global CMO, Beam Global Spirits & Wine
  • Mark Ingall, Managing Director of Global Strategic Media and Marketing, Citigroup
  • Stewart Mitchell, Senior VP and Chief Strategy Officer, Sharp Electronics
  • Tony Pace, CMO of Subway
• 12:00 p.m. – Lunch
• 2:00 p.m. – Anatomy of the Procter & Gamble/NFL Sponsorship
  • Jason Dial, architect of the deal.
• 2:45 p.m. – Marketing to Hispanics: Leveraging Their Passion for Soccer and Other Sports
  • Marco Lopez, Senior Director of Relay Worldwide’s Hispanic Marketing practice
• 4:00 p.m. – The Ever-Changing Athlete Endorsement and Talent Procurement Business
  • Steve Battista, Senior VP of Branding, Under Armour
  • Frank Mahar, General Counsel, Genesco Sports Enterprises
  • Mike Principe, Managing Director, BEST
  • Ryan Steelberg, CEO, Brand Affinity Technologies
• 5:00 p.m. – Reception

Oct 1.

• 8:00 a.m. – Continental Breakfast
• 8:30 a.m. – Keynote Speech
• 9:15 a.m. – How the Sports Media Business and Media Buying are Changing Before Our Very Eyes
  • Ray Warren, EVP and Chief Revenue Officer, Comcast SportsNet
  • Jeff Flemings, Senior VP and Global Head of Social, VivaKi
  • Eric Fernandez, Senior Partner, MediaLink
  • Ed Erhardt, President, ESPN Customer Marketing and Sales
• 10:45 a.m. – Lifelock Makes its Mark in Sports
  • Todd Davis, CEO, Lifelock
• 11:30 a.m. – Up Next: A Futurecast on the Challenges in Sports and the Changes in Consumer Behavior
  • Rich Luker, CEO, The Luker Co.
  • Jerome Conlon, President, Brand Frameworks
  • Ben Kline, Chief Strategy Officer, Leo Burnett
  • Scott Hess, VP of Insights, Tru
  • Pat O’Connor, President, Minor League Baseball
• 12:30 p.m. – Conference Conclusion

Cost: $1,495 for SportsBusiness Journal paid subscribers. $1,650 for non-SportsBusiness Journal paid subscribers. Must register by September 23. Click here to register.

Relay Worldwide Sports Sponsorship Symposium from Sports Agent Blog - Sports Business, Sports Law, Sports Negotiations, NCAA Rules

My latest article on the site is titled, Should Sports Agents Network With Their Competition? This piece has special importance to me, because much of my success thus far in my career should be attributed to the open style of business I have run.  This blog is a major part of my strategy to open up the world of sports agency for all to understand and learn from.  Here is a part of the article:

Agents get a bad enough reputation from the media as is. Overall, sports fans don’t like us (holdouts/high salaries), our wives/girlfriends don’t like us (always traveling/at the computer/on the phone)…hell, everyone calls us Jerry Maguire, individually. At least we can like each other. We have to deal with each other at recruiting events, annual meetings, and professional games. Let’s at least pretend to get along.

Being Friendly With Your Competition from Sports Agent Blog - Sports Business, Sports Law, Sports Negotiations, NCAA Rules

Dan Schawbel wrote a piece at Mashable.com that discusses 5 Ways to Take Control of Your Personal Brand.

1. Create your Google profile.  Here’s mine.
2. Reserve your name on social networks.  I have reserved “heitner”, “dynasty”, or “dynastyreps” on many of them.
3. Establish a personal hub.  See www.DarrenHeitner.com.
4. Have a reputation management strategy.  My RSS reader tracks any stories that are written about my clients.
5. Promote your expertise.  Email me to become a subject for our Interview with the Agent column.  Not worth your time?  Okay.

What else should be added to this list?

A Lesson In Branding from Sports Agent Blog - Sports Business, Sports Law, Sports Negotiations, NCAA Rules