For action sports to become powerhouses, promoters will have to put aside their traditional stubborn individualism and work together and with corporate America, according to numerous panelists at SportsBusiness Journal's second annual Action Sports Summit last week in Marina Del Rey, Calif. The following quotes, from panelists, elaborate on this theme.
— Bill Carter
President, Fuse Integrated Sports Marketing
I need other [action-sports] agencies or properties to be successful, or I don't have a business. And fortunately, I don't see as much unnecessary competition among properties and agencies as I did a year ago. But the challenges are still somewhat as they were the last couple of years: There's still only one athlete [Tony Hawk] that's recognizable to moms buying soda in Iowa, and there's still only one property [the X Games] that moms know the name of, and that's a difficult marketplace to bring corporate brands into and use as a marketing platform. That's the biggest challenge. We need a long-term marketplace with more athletes and events to connect with.
— Don Meek
President, Gravity Games
It's kind of funny to me that people expect us to see [the] Vans [Triple Crown] and the X Games as competition. We see them as vital parts of the ecosystem around action sports. Just like Wimbledon needs the French Open as part of the Grand Slam series, we need these properties to be successful and expand the market. I hope they have a killer event in Los Angeles in August. I don't think there's anything stopping some [corporation] from putting out a bonus for somebody who wins the X Games vert and the Gravity Games vert and calling it "The Big Deuce" and paying them in the way they would a [horse racing] winner. I mean, I think Visa wanted to pay $5 million to Funny Cide to win the Triple Crown. This isn't about events, it's about needing athletes to become iconic. We need our next Tony Hawk.
— Julie Roehm
Director of MarketingCommunications, Dodge
I get a vibe [in action sports] that being a corporation, we're the evil empire, a necessary evil, but I think that we can be looked on more favorably. While we are large and do have a lot of the baggage that comes along with being a big corporation, there's a lot of benefit to us in terms of helping your sports grow, without upsetting the balance [between authenticity and progress], because we have this share of voice.
— Mike Joyce
Senior Marketing Director, SoBe Beverages
Corporate America gets a hard time, especially in action sports. All the risk is really on corporations to put money into these sports, and a lot of the time it feels like there's not really enough push by the ESPNs, the ABCs and NBCs to put more of their skin into the game. They're all getting the benefits of these corporations paying millions of dollars, yet you have ESPN running the same content over and over and over again.
