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| Bill Marolt has made good use of his experience on the slopes and in the office to turn the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association into a powerhouse. |
As president and CEO of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association, Bill Marolt has seen success on and off the slopes. A student at the University of Colorado in the early ’60s, he won four individual NCAA ski titles and was a member of the 1964 U.S. Olympic team. He later returned to his alma mater as coach (where his teams won seven consecutive NCAA titles) and then athletic director. In between, he served six years as director of the U.S. Alpine program, which captured five medals at the 1984 Olympics. Named to his current position with the USSA in 1996, Marolt brought leadership skills and fiscal discipline while setting lofty goals for the organization as it prepares for the 2006 Winter Games. Marolt spoke recently with SportsBusiness Journal New York bureau chief Jerry
Kavanagh.
Education: B.A., marketing, University of Colorado
Favorite movie: “Patton”
Favorite piece of music: Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” really stirs my soul.
Favorite author: Michael Crichton. “Timeline” is a great read.
Last book read: “The World Is Flat” by Thomas Friedman
Favorite vacation spot: New Zealand
Basic business philosophy: Have a good plan and get better in what you do every day.
Best new idea in sports: You’re talking to an old traditionalist here. The best way to answer that is: How do we as sports people do a better job of telling our story?
What was your mission when you joined USSA?
Marolt: Through the years [USSA] was a lot of things. It was at one point a fund-raising organization; at other times it was an event organization. But what it is really is an athletic organization with events, marketing and sales and fund raising that support the athletic mission. We try to provide our athletes with a positive environment to be the best in the world. That sounds trite and simplistic, but my challenge was to provide the leadership and the understanding of what we were trying to get done.
What are your challenges now?
Marolt: You hear a lot of times that organizations are just trying to sustain or maintain themselves. I believe that you can’t do that. You’re either growing and moving forward or you’re shrinking and moving backward. Our challenges now are to increase the revenue base, sponsorships, contributions and Olympic support so that we can continue to fund our elite and development programs and to look for better athletic results.
As a former NCAA champion and Olympian, you have first-hand experience in the sport. How valuable has that been to you?
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| Setting high goals motivates the team and builds confidence, Marolt says. |
Marolt: It’s been invaluable. If you look at my background as a competitor, that really started my career. From there I went into coaching. And when I became AD at Colorado, that’s really where I learned about the business, about television and marketing and sales, fund raising and PR — all the incremental parts. It was on-the-job training and very difficult for the first two or three years.
The combination of being a competitor, a coach and having an opportunity on the business side almost uniquely prepared me for this job because I do really understand skiing and I understand the sport side and the business side of it. I had a lot of contacts that I retained when I was gone from skiing for a period of 12 years.
That has to enhance your credibility within the organization, especially with the athletes, when you state your goals.
Marolt: Credibility and confidence are as important as anything. I did bring a certain level of both, and we’ve been able to build off that.
Your avowed goal is to be “Best in the world. The time is now.” That’s not just a slogan, is it?
Marolt: No. Back in the spring of 1997, we talked about what we wanted this organization to be and where we wanted to take it. We set some goals. We wanted to win 10 medals in 2002, and as we got closer to that, we started to think about what we wanted the organization to look like in 2006. We really refined the vision. First, it was the best in the world. Then, it was best in the world by 2006. That’s been the glue that’s really held the organization together; it’s been the motivation that’s pushed everybody.
The sport has been dominated in the past by Europeans. What’s the key to the U.S. team achieving that goal?
Marolt: Alpine and Nordic [skiing] particularly were sports that had their origins in central Europe and Scandinavia. If you look at snowboarding and freestyle, those are really programs that were developed here in North America, primarily in the United States. But the secret for us to accomplish this goal is we have to have success across the board. It will take 18 to 20 gold medals to accomplish our goal. That’s historically the number it’s going to take for the nation that wins the most medals.
Your goal of 10 medals in the 2002 Olympics was scoffed at in some quarters at the time. But the U.S. team did win 10 medals. That got everybody’s attention. Has it made your pitch more receptive within the sport and with advertisers and sponsors?
Marolt: The whole idea of setting goals and making them public is … people are not necessarily comfortable when you do that. But if you are going to set a goal and you believe in it and you are committed to it, then you shouldn’t have any trouble talking about it. It’s motivating and positive. Most business people are really 1-A personality types. They want to challenge themselves and they want to have success. And if they have partners who see it the same way, they like those kind of relationships. That has been a strong selling point for our partners and sponsors.
Does aiming high like that, in a paradoxical way, take some of the pressure off?
Marolt: Yeah. It’s motivating and it builds confidence. Ultimately, the whole idea of competition is that the environment is one of pressure. You can’t lessen it and you can’t take it away, so you might as well say, this is what it is and we’re going to go after it in a positive way.
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| Marolt says athletes such as Bode Miller are great on the course and in front of a camera. |
Are there unique obstacles in selling and marketing winter sports, especially an Olympic team?
Marolt: What is interesting about USSA and the U.S. Ski team and USA Snowboarding is that we have national teams that we fund on an annual basis. And our teams travel and compete in their respective World Cup schedules on an annual basis. When we sit down and talk with a sponsor, we can talk about an ongoing relationship for a period of one, two, three or four years or longer. We have signed an agreement with Spyder, for example, that goes out to 2011. We have long-term agreements with Chevrolet, Sprint and Visa, and that’s because we can offer programs and events every year. We have television properties. So, we have an ongoing program that our sponsors and partners can buy into and we can build on those relationships.
I read that the USSA has tripled its athletic funding over the last nine years and that sponsor revenue for the 2005-06 season is at $13 million. That seems like a healthy body.
Marolt: It is a healthy body. It’s a lean one, because we’ve got the four different sports plus our paralympic program. We have a lot of athletes and a big staff to fund. We’re always looking to grow so we can provide incremental support. If you look back, for the last 10 years, we operated with a small surplus at the end of each year, which we wanted because we want to show that we had the fiscal discipline to manage within a budget. It sends a good message to our supporters and our sponsors. It sends a good message to the bank because we need to have lines of credit and so forth in order to manage through the ups and downs of cash flow.
The elite members of the team are being marketed toward a national audience to build sponsorship revenue. How is that going?
Marolt: It’s going well because our elite athletes are high-profile people. If you look at Bode Miller, one of our Alpine stars, or Daron Rahlves or Jeremy Bloom, the freestyle moguls skier and football player, or Lindsey Jacobellis — these are all bright, attractive people who are not only outstanding athletes but are also confident and able to stand up in front of the media and give a great interview or tell a good story.
Look for more of this conversation in our sister publication, SportsBusiness Daily, located at www.sportsbusinessdaily.com.
