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.

As more and more athletes and their agents begin to accept social media devices, professional leagues are also gaining a strong presence on the social networking sites.  However, whereas the athletes are publicly posting information that is widely disseminated to a large audience of followers, the various leagues have decided to create much different identities on the popular sites.  Leagues are employing personal to create covert, and often fake, identities in order to keep track of its active players and future players.  Teams are also using such techniques to filter the talented players with little “social baggage” from those who like to post pictures holding guns, displaying bad drinking habits, etc.

And teams are doing it in a very creative and effective way…

But they’re doing it in a rather interesting and some might argue unethical way. NFL personnel are setting up Facebook profiles that look to be that of an attractive woman. From there, they send friend requests and messages to the players they are evaluating.

If the unsuspecting future NFL star accepts it, suddenly, the teams evaluating them have access to their personal information and photos, which, could raise all sorts of questions about the athlete if they have anything unflattering in their profile.

I have said it many times…new social networking technologies greatly empower the star athlete with an existing large following.  It also helps the largely undiscovered talent find additional fans and supporters by exposing a charming or interesting personality.  However, these sites can end up killing an athlete’s career if not used correctly.

It is very important for athletes and their agents to hire consultants to teach athletes the best practices for using these social media devices, have those consultants set the athletes up with accounts on the various services that are appropriate for the client (not every athlete should be on Twitter or have a Yardbarker Blog), and make those consultants follow the athlete’s social media habits (including the posting of information, pictures, video, etc).

I have done some consulting work in the past.  Another big name in the industry concerning this type of work is Kathleen Hessert, who has really made a name for herself for teaching Shaq how to Tweet on Twitter.  Through her company, Sports Media Challenge, Hessert has been able to help many other high-profile athletes become social media pros in a short period of time.  It really is not a long process and is well worth whatever the price may be for consulting.  The amount of damage one person can do to his/her image and endorsement profile is 100 times the cost of hiring a consultant.  Additionally, having a strong social media presence can greatly increase the value of one’s image and endorsement profile, paying for the consultation multiple times over based on additional profits.  Now that leagues and teams are tracking athletes on these sites, it is even more important to make sure that your clients have the proper training to manage the potential risks associated with having a presence on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.

I own a sports agency, but that does not mean that I am unavailable for consultation on these issues.  If interested, you know the email address!

Where: Edison Ballroom in New York City

When: October 29, 2008

Subjects: The complicated economics of league rights, data business, syndication, exclusivity, premium and more.

Headliners:

• Gary Bettman – Commissioner of NHL
• Bob Bowman – President/CEO of MLBAM
• John Skipper – EVP of Content at ESPN

Some friends who will be speaking are Darren Rovell of CNBC and Will Leatch, founder of Deadspin.com.

Cost: $300.  Registration link.

Voting for the “winner” among the five finalists started yesterday and will go on for one week, ending at 12 AM on Tuesday, September 2nd.  Voting will be conducted at the Press Row website, on the poll located on the right sidebar of the home page.  At the end of the week of voting, the site with the most votes will win.  Each IP address/unique visitor can vote once.

Go head over to the site and vote for us, if you wish.

No market is as volatile on the web right now as sports.  The rise of social media and thus the voice of the citizen journalist has not had a more profound effect on any market more than it has sports.

Deadspin is one of Technorati’s top 100 blogs. Profootballtalk.com’s “Turd Watch” has become fodder for sports radio stations across the country. And this style of sports journalism, that focuses more on the exploits of athletes, is finding its way into the mainstream sports media.

Your clients are being talked about online, whether you are making the conversation happen or not.

The biggest problem with all of this is that the concept of Online Reputation Management is not being embraced by sports agents, sports organizations, and athletes. The current environment is not one suited for the old code of “Keep your mouth shut and let things roll by.”

On the other hand Roger Clemens, is a great example of this pitfalls of reputation management failed.

The person that this new brand of media has the most potential harm for is the low profile professional athlete. These athletes are easily disposed of their teams, or if they are involved in an individual sport they run the deadly risk of losing sponsorships.

How do you handle a reputation crisis?

By being transparent. People will find out the truth, or think they know the truth already. By being transparent, and offering apologies or solutions you can often squelch the online fire.  It seems counter intuitive to the concepts formerly held dear by PR specialists, but there is case study after case study about Fortune 500 companies employing the concepts of transparency to keep their reputation intact online.

What steps should you take to protect your rep and your investment?

1) Setup a reputation monitoring system. These can range in price from free to several thousand dollars a month. I have created a free tool at http://snydeysense.com/snydey-web.

2) Monitor sentiment about your athlete, both positive and negative.

3) Create allies in the sports publishing market. A good relationship with bloggers and forum moderators can go a long way to putting out a fire.

4) Hire an SEO to flush negative sentiment out of search results on Google and other engines if a reputation issue does come up.

5) If a crisis does hit, act fast, and be transparent. If your athlete gets found driving while impaired, release a statement written by the athlete apologizing and promising to send a donation to M.A.D.D. This will take the bloggers fodder away; you’ve addressed the issue and there are few people that don’t respect a person that accepts blame and looks to right their wrong.

When you are talking about reputation management you are really talking about protecting an investment you have made in an athelete or coach. Sitting on your hands can never save you money, and poor rep management can cost you everything. Take the time to setup a strong plan for your client base, and you will likely see the return on your investment of time.

DigitalSports.com is a local sports media company that will aim to cater to a national audience. For now, the service is limited to Hawaii, Indiana, Maryland, New Jersey, Virginia, and Washington D.C.

No matter what state you live in, at DigitalSports.com you can access information about local High School and Club Sports & Activities. Information is not only supplied by the people who designed the website; users generate content by sharing accomplishments of those that participate in youth sports in their communities. The goal of DigitalSports.com is threefold: inform, entertain, and inspire, all while solely focusing on the positives of child athletes and hashing out any negatives that may occur in youth athletics.

The DigitalSports.com platform is meant for the children that participate in local athletics; however, their parents, fans, and coaches may benefit from the services provided. Included in the site are professionally written articles about local sports coupled with extensive video and photos of prior events. The setup allows alumni of the local sports to look back and re-live some of their own memories through the posted content. In fact, Joey Dorsey can reminisce about the old days when he led his highschool team to an undefeated record much like this year’s Memphis Tigers. Think he was still missing about half his free throws back then? DigitalSports.com provides you the video to see for yourself.

My favorite aspect about the site is that the executives are committed to only displaying positive stories, photos, and videos. If you subscribe to ESPN.com’s general feed you will notice that at least half of the stories deal with a guy holding out of practice, a drug bust, or Chris Henry. DigitalSports.com won’t cover any of those issues. Twenty high school athletic conferences representing 350 schools are currently examined and 2,500 pieces of original content are produced per month. Join now and see what the site has to offer.