Shamrock strikes celebrity bowling deal
Brian Corcoran, president and CEO of Shamrock Sports and Entertainment, stands, third from right, with seven of the sports marketing firm's employees at a NASCAR event in New Hampshire where drivers from client Richard Childress Racing competed
Local marketing firm Shamrock Sports and Entertainment is on a roll.
The 10-employee Portland firm recently landed its latest deal with a new arm of the Professional Bowlers Association, which has plans to revamp its image and take the sport into prime time.
Starting in January, the PBA will introduce the PBA League, a team-based approach to the game where celebrities and athletes like Chris Paul, Jerome Bettis and Terrell Owens will serve as "owners" for five-person squads of the world's finest bowlers.
"Our primary role is to secure sponsors for the PBA League teams," says Shamrock owner, President and CEO Brian Corcoran. "Secondary to that, we're helping the PBA to identify, through our relationship with celebrities, personalities who would want to be a PBA League owner."
To that end, Corcoran says that the PBA League is talking with celebrities like Jimmy Kimmel, Mark Wahlberg, Will Ferrell, Drew Carey and athletes Michael Strahan and Tony Stewart as owners of possible teams in cities where those particular stars have sway. The PBA hopes to field eight teams in its 2013-2014 season, which will be broadcast on sports network ESPN.
For the marketing firm and its array of quirky sports league clients such as the Arena Football League and the Red Bull Air Race, the addition of the PBA League isn't much of a surprise to those familiar with the company, which has tripled its size and expanded its slate of services in the last three years.
The PBA, which Shamrock signed just four months ago, is a sign of that growth. The league has now become the agency's biggest client, followed closely by SeaWorld and the Boston Athletic Association, host of the Boston Marathon.
Corcoran says its latest client demonstrates Shamrock's role as a "matchmaking" business, identifying brands that are particularly well suited as sponsors, and connecting those with sports and entertainment ventures as a means of driving business and viewership.
For the PBA, that meant securing sponsorships that would resonate with the bowling alley crowd in addition to finding celebrities who could bring in a prime-time audience and drive youth viewership to a sport where 67% of the viewing audience is above the age of 50.
"The [owners] first and foremost have an affinity for bowling," says Corcoran, citing Los Angeles Clipper point guard and NBA All-Star Chris Paul.
Corcoran says the five-time NBA All-Star's interest in the sport stretches back to his childhood in North Carolina.
"The only way to spend time with his father was tagging along to the bowling alley," Corcoran says. "He was literally an every-day-at-the-lanes bowler."
While Shamrock's involvement in the PBA is currently limited to prospecting for sponsorship deals, Corcoran holds out hope that its work might one day lead to greater involvement.
"Our primary responsibility is securing partnerships, but we also have the opportunity to be the marketing arm of the PBA League," he says.
A former NASCAR and Fenway Sports Group executive, Corcoran opened Shamrock Sports in March 2010. The agency changed its name in 2011 to reflect a growing focus on entertainment, driven chiefly by their partnership with SeaWorld.
But the company has kept its slate of local work as well, with clients like the TD Bank Beach to Beacon 10K Road Race.
"As much as we are a sports and entertainment business, we're also looking to bring new events that will drive economic growth in the area," Corcoran says.
The company's location does have challenges. Finding direct travel routes between Portland and locations where Shamrock does business is one, says Corcoran.
"We're hopeful that with the renovation of the jetport, they will find a way to get more direct flights," he says. "We travel pretty extensively and the inability to get direct flights causes us to make unnecessary trips to Boston."
Overall though, being in Portland works for Shamrock.
"There are at least some points during the year when clients would prefer to visit us, and I think it's been an attractive market to recruit employees," he says.
And that's been helpful. The agency has recently expanded into conducting analytics, hiring new staff — including two contract employees — and using its expertise in sports and entertainment marketing to judge the potential impact of sponsorship deals.
"You have a lot of people looking at how to evaluate these sponsorships," he says.
Corcoran says Shamrock is also working to develop capacity for in-house creative services — logo design, branding, marketing materials — as a way to grow the business and broaden current work.
"The reason why we've reinvested in our analytics and creative services is because it's a way of delivering more value [and] bigger, better ideas that pack more punch," he says.
But Corcoran says he doesn't plan to measure the company's growth by an ever-expanding client list.
"While we have grown in the last three years, we take the 'less is more' strategy," he says. "Some companies have 100-plus clients — our goal is between six and a dozen."
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