Editor's note: This story is revised from the print edition.
Two former NHL executives have broken away from the venture capital and advisory firm they helped launch last year to start their own sports media consultancy business.
Doug Perlman, a former executive with Accrue Sports and Entertainment Ventures, launched Sports Media Advisors in September. Steve Solomon, also a former executive at Accrue, will serve as a senior adviser in the new venture. The new company will consult on traditional and new media deals and strategies, and also is looking to invest in sports media companies, Perlman said.
DOUG PERLMAN
SPORTS MEDIA ADVISORS
FOUNDER
Initial clients include HBO Sports, Goldman Sachs, fantasy outfit Atomic Moguls and digital marketing outfit Omnigon Communications.
“The vision of the new business is really a tweak to the Accrue model,” Perlman said. “Whereas before, advisory was secondary, now the advisory piece is the focus. It is the focus of our time. It is the focus of our development efforts. We’re still looking for equity opportunities. But we’re looking for them on a deal-by-deal basis, as opposed to trying to invest through a committed pool of capital.”
As they did with Accrue, Perlman and Solomon intend to trade heavily off their relationships within the sports industry. Perlman, before joining Accrue early last year, had been with IMG Media, and Solomon previously worked for ABC Sports. The two also worked together at the NHL.
“We’ve done television deals. We understand digital media,” Perlman said. “There’s not a lot of folks out there who get both, and we think that’s really important, and is going to get more important.”
Solomon will retain his own existing advisory business, SJS Sports, and, officially, Perlman will run Sports Media Advisors and collaborate with Solomon on new business. Perlman intends to expand the shop to 12 to 15 employees during the next year, but said Sports Media Advisors will likely remain a boutique firm.
Accrue launched early last year, and after quickly running into the brunt of the national recession, made an undisclosed seven-figure investment in Los Angeles-based streaming media outfit RayV in March of this year. But as Accrue met over the summer to plan its next steps, it became clear that reaching full development was going to take much longer than originally projected.
“Our timing was comically bad,” Perlman said. “We were out there trying to raise a fund when the capital markets weren’t growing.”
Accrue is in the midst of a restructuring, and Bryant McBride, Accrue chief executive and founding partner, said he is nearing completion on several potential investment deals.
“With the economic situation out there, the macroeconomics we’re all dealing with, we all had to make some hard decisions about our future,” said McBride, who generated big returns for investors in the sales of Scouts Inc. and FanNation to ESPN and Sports Illustrated, respectively. “Doug is going out on his own, and I have no doubt that he is going to do good things for his clients.”
Paul Levy, a former New Jersey Nets corporate sales executive who also was involved in the formation of Accrue, remains on board as a founding partner.
