Innovation, market trends, manufacturers, distributors--there
are a lot of terms thrown about in the sports industry that
you'll also hear in the corporate sector. So while it's
obvious, it still needs to be said--a sports-related business is a
business. "Once you get past the point of being amazed that
'Hey, I'm working with really tall people in
basketball,' you'll realize you're marketing a product
like Coca-Cola or anything else," observes Dan Mannix, CEO of
LeadDog
Marketing Group in New York City and adjunct professor at New
York University, where he teaches classes in sports
entrepreneurship and sports events tourism.
Echoing those thoughts, former business consultant Jennifer
Munro says, "You still have to have the right sales,
accounting, the capitalization and management. You're working
with the same principles as an accounting firm." Munro knows
of what she speaks. She's now the president of corporate sales
at Golf
Digest Schools in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, and specializes
in hosting corporate programs that bring business concepts and the
sport of golf together.
But Munro concedes that while it's a business, the sports
industry is "glamorous; it's more exciting, if you're
into drama and excitement and visibility. And it's simply more
fun."
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"The sports-industry crowd is much more fun, and more
satisfying [to be a part of], than the corporate sector,"
agrees Ed Estes, owner of Cincinnati-based DigitalBang LLC.
"Of course, I love sports, and that's a big part of
it."
Estes' company, which employs seven people, was an
all-purpose marketing firm when it began in 1997--until Estes
discovered sports. Today, sports-related marketing accounts for
approximately 75 percent of his business, which stands to make $2
million by the end of 2004. Estes' first foray into sports was
Hoops Frenzy, a software program that helps people run their own
men's college basketball contests online. In a nutshell, Hoops
Frenzy capitalizes on the office basketball pools across the
country, and it makes it easier and quicker for the office pool
manager to keep track of scores, teams and who in the pool is
winning what. From there, DigitalBang moved on to creating online
sports games that customers can play at company Web sites, which
offer consumers fun but also ask questions about their buying
habits along the way. The company now has products relating to
everything from NASCAR to football.
Estes, 38, says it's always a challenge to serve impassioned
customers: "You're going to hear very quickly if you get
something wrong. If we accidentally input a score wrong [using the
Hoops Frenzy software], we might get a dozen e-mail messages. But
as long as your answer to your customer is accommodating, people
[will] forgive those bumps. Just make sure you are ready to respond
quickly when you do mess up."
But even the messing up isn't so bad, because it's
linked to a lifestyle and culture that Estes feels passionate
about. "This is so much more satisfying than any other
industry I've been involved with," says Estes, who used to
work in IT sales. "In the corporate world, you're working
on what the client needs done, and you often don't feel that
great about the product you're working on. But when it's
related to sports, because most of us here enjoy sports 24 hours a
day, seven days a week, we feed off that satisfaction. And so even
though it's a business, suddenly it becomes a much more
interesting one when it's spun around a sporting
event."
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