About The Author
Michael Smith
Staff writer Michael Smith covers colleges, golf and lacrosse.
Upcoming Conferences and Events
Featured Story
IMG Learfield secures ticket sales and marketing rights for South Florida, Appalachian State football, basketball05 / 21 / 12South Florida fills about two-thirds of Raymond James Stadium for its home football games. Appalachian State, on the other hand, draws an average of 4,000 fans more than its seating capacity. But both schools are signing deals with IMG Learfield Ticket Solutions to outsource their sales and marke... Tags: Colleges |
More Stories by this Author
Path to PGA Tour changing
The hottest crop of college golfers in years has equipment makers salivating, but new PGA Tour qualifying rules could upset the traditional model of the equipment deal for future pros. After this year, college players going through the tour’s qualifying school will be funneled to the develo ...
Channel again in SEC talks
The SEC is weeks away from restructuring its media rights deal with its current partners, CBS and ESPN, according to several industry sources, and in addition to talks about increasing rights fees, the conversations have also included more talk about a conference channel that could be ready for laun ...
Tags: Media
Illinois signs with Learfield
The University of Illinois, one of the few schools nationally that has kept its multimedia rights in-house over the years, has reached a 10-year agreement to outsource those rights to Learfield Sports. The Fighting Illini had been resistant to the outsource model, even though most of their peers ...
Tags: Colleges
Bowl sponsors get one-stop shopping
Marketing rights to 33 college bowl games will be available to sponsors from one source for the first time under an agreement reached by the Football Bowl Association and FishBait Marketing. By aggregating the marketing rights to all but two of the bowl games in college football’s postseaso ...
Tags: Colleges
Lewis looks beyond hoops
In his 14 years of working on the Olympics, Mark Lewis developed an understanding of where amateur athletics and commercialism meet. He is now the NCAA’s guy to oversee that delicate intersection. “We’re not going to start having rock ’n’ roll concerts where a basket ...
Tags: Colleges
ACC ups its rights fees by a third
More games, more rights and most of all, more money. That’s what was at stake when the ACC reopened its 1-year-old media contract with ESPN. The new terms, signed off on last week by the network and the conference, elevate the ACC’s media revenue to $3.6 billion over the next 15 years ...
Tags: Media
Wasserman expanding golf business
Wasserman Media Group is expanding its golf business by forming Wasserman Golf, giving the practice its own balance sheet while pressing forward with new hires and potentially new lines of business within the sport, such as event management and ownership, media rights and content creation. In the ...
Tags: Labor and Agents
Players Championship gets hip
Matt Rapp, The Players Championship’s executive director, wants the new concession space near the famous 17th hole to remind fans of a New York-style lounge. One obvious missing element will be the loud, thumping music. “Well, think New York lounge … on a golf course,” Ra ...
Tags: Facilities
Lacrosse makes it to big screen
The script for the first lacrosse-oriented motion picture had been on and off Mitchell Peck’s desk for more than 15 years. There were times when the Hollywood producer shopped it around, unsuccessfully seeking the funding from major studios that told him there wasn’t enough mainstream ...
Luxury plays well at Masters
Some of golf’s most expensive on-site hospitality tickets — to Berckmans Place at Augusta National — have sold out a year before the private club is scheduled to open. The coveted Berckmans Place passes, which sold for $6,000 apiece, are good for a week at the Masters beginning ...
Tags: Facilities
