February 20, 2006
Let the (media) games begin | A Portland-based sports agent with 10 clients competing in Torino talks about the impact of the Olympics on his business
By Peter Carlisle
Portland-based director of Olympics and action sports for Octagon, an international sports and entertainment marketing firm
I can honestly say that if it wasn't for [snowboarder and Olympic medalist] Ross Powers, I probably wouldn't be where I am today. I don't even think I'd have a business. I do think now that I have the aptitude to do what I'm doing. I'm fairly well suited to [be a sports agent] ˆ that's fairly clear to me. But you can have the engine, and if you don't have the fuel, you're not going anywhere. Ross was the fuel. He's what enabled me to put my abilities to work and produce results that would attract other athletes and marketers, and would enable me to build a business.
I graduated from Bates and went right into law school at the University of Maine. After that, I went into private practice, and worked for a law firm in Portsmouth, N.H., and at PretiFlaherty in Portland. But towards the end of 1997 I started to figure this sports management thing out. And by 1998 I was on my own.
It was very different back then. There was nobody really focusing on the [snowboarding] space, but there were some very experienced agents that were kind of dabbling. [Nationally ranked snowboarder] Ryan Mullen was from New Hampshire and had been represented by Jerry Solomon, who was the agent that had represented Nancy Kerrigan and worked for a big outfit. But he was dabbling with Ryan, and snowboarding is not the kind of sport you can dabble in. I think Ryan realized that.
I could see how you could make a snowboarder more marketable. People had just started talking about Generation Y at that point, and ESPN had started getting into action sports. Some of the sports were just novelty sports, but skateboarding and snowboarding were really the two pillars that supported it all. And I saw there was an opportunity to kind of get in on the ground floor, so I specialized in snowboarding.
It was a big risk because no one [in snowboarding] at the time was all that marketable, but I continued to do some legal work to fuel this sports management practice. I can remember thinking to myself, hopefully in three years time it will be self-sustaining and I can wean myself off the legal work. And I happened to get lucky. I worked with Ryan Mullen first, and Anton Pogue second ˆ he's an alpine guy ˆ and I think [Vermont-native] Ross Powers was the third snowboarder that I signed.
I met Ross on the way back from Nagano, [Japan, the site of the 1998 winter Olympics,] where he had just won the bronze medal. With Ross, things took off so dramatically that it was maybe six months and I had jettisoned my legal work.
Not long after I started, I realized that most of the value in snowboarding at the time was generated in film and editorial. If you were [a snowboarder featured in] the ads in Transworld Magazine or Snowboarder, then you were making money. The competitive athletes had a little bit harder time making money [from competitions], but I felt that [competitive snowboarding] was the future of the sport. The core industry and the snowboard enthusiasts would always favor the films and the editorial, but the growth just wasn't there ˆ the participation base can only become so big.
If snowboarding is what your mother likes to watch, then that's where the growth is. The only way the American general public will watch sports is if it's packaged as competition, in my opinion. So I focused on competition and I said I was going to dominate that side of the business and try to grow with it. Starting in 1998 with Ross and Tricia Burns ˆ and, ultimately, Kelly Clark and the other athletes I represented ˆ that set us up for Salt Lake City.
Opening the window of relevance
A lot of people say that Salt Lake City was snowboarding's coming out party. And every time I hear it, I take exception to that suggestion because it's been growing steadily since the very beginning. Yes, it was enhanced by Salt Lake City, but we'd still be where we are now ˆ we'd still have a third snowboard event in Torino ˆ even if it wasn't for Salt Lake City. I think Salt Lake was maybe the easiest opportunity for people who weren't paying attention to see what snowboarding has become. Snowboarding didn't become what it is now from Salt Lake. It was a more gradual progression.
But while Salt Lake may not have been snowboarding's coming out party, to some extent it was [Octagon's] coming out party: It confirmed at that point that we were positioned in snowboarding beyond where others were, at least as far as the general public was concerned. Now, the athletes that are going to Torino that we represent are all making over a half a million dollars a year, and some are making more than $1 million a year, almost entirely from endorsements. [Carlisle and Octagon represent 10 of the 16 Olympians on the U.S. snowboarding team, including Gretchen Bleiler and Maine native Seth Wescott.]
And I know for a fact that Salt Lake City set me up for the summer side because Michael Phelps hired me after he saw me on the Today Show [talking about Ross Powers]. I've always been a big Olympics guy, so I was naturally drawn to [those games, too]. And from a growth standpoint, I was running the Olympics and action sports division at Octagon, and if you don't have a presence on the summer side, you're going to have problems. Even as snowboarding becomes more of an Olympic sport, if someone else is dominating the summer side then they're always going to be a threat on the winter side. So it was something that we really needed to figure out.
The question was how to find a way to parlay [our success at Salt Lake City] into a position on the summer side. I went back and signed [Olympic swimmer] Lenny Krayzelburg, who was a client at Octagon and had left. When I came on board, I went back to him and convinced him to come back. I told him that it would be a little different than before. Lenny came back on board, and from there, Michael Phelps, who is a phenomenon, was looking for an agent. He interviewed all the big firms ˆ and we're one of the big firms. They were about to sign with another big agency, and his coach saw me on the Today Show and for whatever reason said, "We've got to talk with this guy before we make a decision."
So I had an opportunity to meet those guys and sign Michael in 2002. If you can't grow a summer Olympics business with Michael Phelps, than you're probably incompetent.
After the 2004 summer games in Athens, we put together a month-long tour of the United States with Michael [and swimmers] Ian Crocker, Lenny Krayzelburg [and others]. We actually pulled it together with Disney when we were in Athens. We had been talking to them, but it wasn't until Phelps won his third medal that they said that the reaction in the States was huge, and that we should try to do this.
If you didn't do anything, if you were an Olympic athlete that wasn't represented and didn't really prepare for maximizing either media or corporate opportunities, then your window of relevance ˆ even if you're a star of the games ˆ is usually about two weeks before the games and two weeks after the games. That's not even two months, and that's a challenge because you're essentially trying to build a platform for your business and your career.
For us, the objective is to push that window open a little bit more ˆ so instead of being two weeks before, maybe it's six months before. Or, if you're extremely lucky, it's a year before. And you do that by more proactively pitching stories to the media, arranging strategic relationships with companies that aren't just going to pay these athletes but will also promote these athletes through advertising or other promotional approaches. And you hope to establish the athlete in the minds of the general public long before the games. So when they make their impact ˆ and to do that, they really do need to perform ˆ there's already context for that performance. That work, I think, sets up the opportunities after the games so these athletes are bigger stars and the impression that they make is going to last a little bit longer. It's so the general public doesn't sort of tune out, start watching March Madness and forget the characters that were built in Torino.
That's what we're up against, and the way to avoid [people forgetting] is to set up the ad and media before the games. If you can create a vehicle like a tour, or something that's going to be compelling to whatever market you're going to, the media will keep the story alive. It's sort of balance; you're trying to regulate the flow and not cut it off. If you cut it off, you'll lose the media's interest straight away. During Athens, we did as much NBC stuff as we could [with swimmers Phelps, Crocker, Krayzelburg and others] while we were there. We kept the athletes in Athens during the entire Olympics, which was somewhat atypical because most athletes are burned out by the time their events are over and they want to get out of there. But it's also their careers, and they'll generally defer to us. So we kept them there for the games and did as much NBC stuff as we could so they're still out there and still relevant.
But we also kept a lot of the other media at bay. It's just supply and demand ˆ you're just trying to keep the demand up as long as you can. When we organized the Swim with the Stars tour, every city we went into hadn't had access to the athletes. For example, the Dallas Morning News covers the Olympics very aggressively and they send people there, but we wouldn't do anything with Dallas Morning News knowing that we were going through Dallas a few weeks later during the tour. By the time we got to Dallas, it was still a big story and the demand was still there. So we were able to sort of keep the demand as high as it was during the closing ceremonies for about a month after the games.
Every athlete's different, and every athlete's marketed differently. You want to try and target the market that's going to create as much value for that athlete as possible. Chris Klug, who won a [snowboarding] bronze medal in Salt Lake City, was the first-ever organ transplant recipient in the Olympics. His market is unique. He's incredibly marketable in a pretty big market, which is the medical community, the pharmaceutical community, the transplant community. For something like that, maybe the best media might be print that reaches those communities. It might not do him a world of good to be on ESPN, but if you can get him on CNN on National Donor Day, then his community is there and his community is seeing that. That would be really effective media for him. Other athletes are pretty much marketable regionally, which means the most important media wouldn't be the national media but the regional media or the local media. So it sort of depends on how you're marketing the athlete. But the challenge of how to keep it relevant to the general public is the same.
I can honestly say that if it wasn't for [snowboarder and Olympic medalist] Ross Powers, I probably wouldn't be where I am today. I don't even think I'd have a business. I do think now that I have the aptitude to do what I'm doing. I'm fairly well suited to [be a sports agent] ˆ that's fairly clear to me. But you can have the engine, and if you don't have the fuel, you're not going anywhere. Ross was the fuel. He's what enabled me to put my abilities to work and produce results that would attract other athletes and marketers, and would enable me to build a business.
I graduated from Bates and went right into law school at the University of Maine. After that, I went into private practice, and worked for a law firm in Portsmouth, N.H., and at PretiFlaherty in Portland. But towards the end of 1997 I started to figure this sports management thing out. And by 1998 I was on my own.
It was very different back then. There was nobody really focusing on the [snowboarding] space, but there were some very experienced agents that were kind of dabbling. [Nationally ranked snowboarder] Ryan Mullen was from New Hampshire and had been represented by Jerry Solomon, who was the agent that had represented Nancy Kerrigan and worked for a big outfit. But he was dabbling with Ryan, and snowboarding is not the kind of sport you can dabble in. I think Ryan realized that.
I could see how you could make a snowboarder more marketable. People had just started talking about Generation Y at that point, and ESPN had started getting into action sports. Some of the sports were just novelty sports, but skateboarding and snowboarding were really the two pillars that supported it all. And I saw there was an opportunity to kind of get in on the ground floor, so I specialized in snowboarding.
It was a big risk because no one [in snowboarding] at the time was all that marketable, but I continued to do some legal work to fuel this sports management practice. I can remember thinking to myself, hopefully in three years time it will be self-sustaining and I can wean myself off the legal work. And I happened to get lucky. I worked with Ryan Mullen first, and Anton Pogue second ˆ he's an alpine guy ˆ and I think [Vermont-native] Ross Powers was the third snowboarder that I signed.
I met Ross on the way back from Nagano, [Japan, the site of the 1998 winter Olympics,] where he had just won the bronze medal. With Ross, things took off so dramatically that it was maybe six months and I had jettisoned my legal work.
Not long after I started, I realized that most of the value in snowboarding at the time was generated in film and editorial. If you were [a snowboarder featured in] the ads in Transworld Magazine or Snowboarder, then you were making money. The competitive athletes had a little bit harder time making money [from competitions], but I felt that [competitive snowboarding] was the future of the sport. The core industry and the snowboard enthusiasts would always favor the films and the editorial, but the growth just wasn't there ˆ the participation base can only become so big.
If snowboarding is what your mother likes to watch, then that's where the growth is. The only way the American general public will watch sports is if it's packaged as competition, in my opinion. So I focused on competition and I said I was going to dominate that side of the business and try to grow with it. Starting in 1998 with Ross and Tricia Burns ˆ and, ultimately, Kelly Clark and the other athletes I represented ˆ that set us up for Salt Lake City.
Opening the window of relevance
A lot of people say that Salt Lake City was snowboarding's coming out party. And every time I hear it, I take exception to that suggestion because it's been growing steadily since the very beginning. Yes, it was enhanced by Salt Lake City, but we'd still be where we are now ˆ we'd still have a third snowboard event in Torino ˆ even if it wasn't for Salt Lake City. I think Salt Lake was maybe the easiest opportunity for people who weren't paying attention to see what snowboarding has become. Snowboarding didn't become what it is now from Salt Lake. It was a more gradual progression.
But while Salt Lake may not have been snowboarding's coming out party, to some extent it was [Octagon's] coming out party: It confirmed at that point that we were positioned in snowboarding beyond where others were, at least as far as the general public was concerned. Now, the athletes that are going to Torino that we represent are all making over a half a million dollars a year, and some are making more than $1 million a year, almost entirely from endorsements. [Carlisle and Octagon represent 10 of the 16 Olympians on the U.S. snowboarding team, including Gretchen Bleiler and Maine native Seth Wescott.]
And I know for a fact that Salt Lake City set me up for the summer side because Michael Phelps hired me after he saw me on the Today Show [talking about Ross Powers]. I've always been a big Olympics guy, so I was naturally drawn to [those games, too]. And from a growth standpoint, I was running the Olympics and action sports division at Octagon, and if you don't have a presence on the summer side, you're going to have problems. Even as snowboarding becomes more of an Olympic sport, if someone else is dominating the summer side then they're always going to be a threat on the winter side. So it was something that we really needed to figure out.
The question was how to find a way to parlay [our success at Salt Lake City] into a position on the summer side. I went back and signed [Olympic swimmer] Lenny Krayzelburg, who was a client at Octagon and had left. When I came on board, I went back to him and convinced him to come back. I told him that it would be a little different than before. Lenny came back on board, and from there, Michael Phelps, who is a phenomenon, was looking for an agent. He interviewed all the big firms ˆ and we're one of the big firms. They were about to sign with another big agency, and his coach saw me on the Today Show and for whatever reason said, "We've got to talk with this guy before we make a decision."
So I had an opportunity to meet those guys and sign Michael in 2002. If you can't grow a summer Olympics business with Michael Phelps, than you're probably incompetent.
After the 2004 summer games in Athens, we put together a month-long tour of the United States with Michael [and swimmers] Ian Crocker, Lenny Krayzelburg [and others]. We actually pulled it together with Disney when we were in Athens. We had been talking to them, but it wasn't until Phelps won his third medal that they said that the reaction in the States was huge, and that we should try to do this.
If you didn't do anything, if you were an Olympic athlete that wasn't represented and didn't really prepare for maximizing either media or corporate opportunities, then your window of relevance ˆ even if you're a star of the games ˆ is usually about two weeks before the games and two weeks after the games. That's not even two months, and that's a challenge because you're essentially trying to build a platform for your business and your career.
For us, the objective is to push that window open a little bit more ˆ so instead of being two weeks before, maybe it's six months before. Or, if you're extremely lucky, it's a year before. And you do that by more proactively pitching stories to the media, arranging strategic relationships with companies that aren't just going to pay these athletes but will also promote these athletes through advertising or other promotional approaches. And you hope to establish the athlete in the minds of the general public long before the games. So when they make their impact ˆ and to do that, they really do need to perform ˆ there's already context for that performance. That work, I think, sets up the opportunities after the games so these athletes are bigger stars and the impression that they make is going to last a little bit longer. It's so the general public doesn't sort of tune out, start watching March Madness and forget the characters that were built in Torino.
That's what we're up against, and the way to avoid [people forgetting] is to set up the ad and media before the games. If you can create a vehicle like a tour, or something that's going to be compelling to whatever market you're going to, the media will keep the story alive. It's sort of balance; you're trying to regulate the flow and not cut it off. If you cut it off, you'll lose the media's interest straight away. During Athens, we did as much NBC stuff as we could [with swimmers Phelps, Crocker, Krayzelburg and others] while we were there. We kept the athletes in Athens during the entire Olympics, which was somewhat atypical because most athletes are burned out by the time their events are over and they want to get out of there. But it's also their careers, and they'll generally defer to us. So we kept them there for the games and did as much NBC stuff as we could so they're still out there and still relevant.
But we also kept a lot of the other media at bay. It's just supply and demand ˆ you're just trying to keep the demand up as long as you can. When we organized the Swim with the Stars tour, every city we went into hadn't had access to the athletes. For example, the Dallas Morning News covers the Olympics very aggressively and they send people there, but we wouldn't do anything with Dallas Morning News knowing that we were going through Dallas a few weeks later during the tour. By the time we got to Dallas, it was still a big story and the demand was still there. So we were able to sort of keep the demand as high as it was during the closing ceremonies for about a month after the games.
Every athlete's different, and every athlete's marketed differently. You want to try and target the market that's going to create as much value for that athlete as possible. Chris Klug, who won a [snowboarding] bronze medal in Salt Lake City, was the first-ever organ transplant recipient in the Olympics. His market is unique. He's incredibly marketable in a pretty big market, which is the medical community, the pharmaceutical community, the transplant community. For something like that, maybe the best media might be print that reaches those communities. It might not do him a world of good to be on ESPN, but if you can get him on CNN on National Donor Day, then his community is there and his community is seeing that. That would be really effective media for him. Other athletes are pretty much marketable regionally, which means the most important media wouldn't be the national media but the regional media or the local media. So it sort of depends on how you're marketing the athlete. But the challenge of how to keep it relevant to the general public is the same.
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