A flurry of M&A activity has reshaped the collegiate multimedia rights business. While larger companies like IMG College and Learfield Sports dominate the space, Rockbridge Sports Group, which started in 2011, is attempting to carve out its own position. Co-principal David Johnston, a U.S. Army veteran, has spent the last dozen years in the business, mostly with CBS Collegiate Sports Properties. At Rockbridge, he and co-principal Rich Klein are working with Troy, St. Bonaventure, Stetson and the Western Athletic Conference, as well as with several state high school athletic associations, as they try to find their place among the bigger companies.
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People are recognizing that, if you go on any campus today, they really are municipalities. They’re small cities, and in some cases bigger cities. Think about the economics: It’s enormous.”
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Photo: COURTESY OF ROCKBRIDGE SPORTS GROUP
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On the growth of Rockbridge: The fundamentals of what we do are revenue generation and building and growing assets. We consulted at West Virginia and we’ve worked with a few others in the digital space as we were planting the seeds of the business, but we never set out to be consultants.
On where the next generation of revenue will come from: You can always add layers of signage, but how much more stuff can we put on the basketball stanchion? I don’t think it’s going to come in the form of more signage. Sometimes, less is more, and there will be a point where people will start to push back. I think it could be something else, whether it’s content or digital or the data piece. The question becomes, What’s it worth?
On finding and cultivating the untapped potential for revenue: Athletics is part of it, but there’s also a much larger play with campus assets. We saw that at Kentucky, with its new deal that includes campus assets. Are universities willing to have more open dialogue about assets that have been traditionally off limits, as budgets go down and funds are cut? It will be interesting to see where those conversations will go.
On the potential for schools to bring their multimedia rights in-house: There’s certainly value in what people like us have been doing for the last 15-plus years. You’re taking a huge risk by simply bringing rights back in-house. But there’s a history of business on the books, and if schools believe they can generate that revenue without being tied into a larger national network, that might undo the fear. Right now, I think most of them are afraid they won’t get access to big brands, people, technology — that they’re going to be left out if they’re using an in-house model. … I’ve been saying this for a few years, but the definition of in-house is changing. I think we’ll probably see some sort of hybrid in the future.
