After a period during which
CAA Sports used acquisitions to enter or expand its corporate hospitality, talent representation, licensing, stadium and arena project management, and corporate consulting businesses, it’s now entering sports executive search, an area dominated by specialized, largely boutique firms.
For the time being, at least, there’s no acquisition involved in the latest CAA build-out. Sources tell us CAA Sports already has hired several executives from Odgers Berndtson, including Asher Simons, who headed Odgers’ U.S. sports practice out of New York City until recently.
Since large sports agencies have little or no history in the executive search business, sports executive recruitment specialists expressed surprise at the move.
“This is a fairly crowded space, but it tells me sports agencies are trying to diversify their businesses even more,” said Buffy Filippell, who founded TeamWork Consulting, the first sports-focused executive search firm, in 1987. “We’ve always seen some of the big search firms dabble in sports, so it’s always been competitive, but obviously this a different sort of competition.”
Added Dany Berghoff, a principal at RSR Partners, Greenwich, Conn.: “Generally, the big agencies have operated on the other side of the business, representing athlete and broadcast talent. Search has relatively low startup costs, but it has to be about who you know outside of sports more than what and who you know inside to find job candidates who can really be transformational.”
Whenever CAA Sports acts, there’s generally an equal, if not opposite, reaction from WME-IMG, so we await that likely development.
> LICENSING LAB: As Fanatics’ skein of rights acquisitions rapidly transforms North America’s $14 billion sports licensing business into an oligopoly, we’re intrigued to discover that some forces within a licensor as large as the NBA are heading in the opposite direction, helping to propagate a number of small licensees within an incubator of sorts called “NBA Lab.”
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An NBA incubator is conducting licensee experiments.
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A document distributed to licensees described the project as a “disruptive research and development incubator aimed at innovative design, imaginative concepts and strategic partnerships that take the art of basketball off the court and into fans’ homes.”
The top men wearing white coats at NBA Lab have 50 years plus of sports-licensing experience between them: longtime NBA licensing czar Sal LaRocca, the league’s president of global partnerships; and Bill Fickett, who helped the NBA licensing business grow from millions to billions in retail sales during the 1990s, as a force behind seminal apparel licensee Salem Sportswear.
We’re told a roster of five to 10 licensees is producing products that will be launched next year, likely around the NBA’s annual club retail meetings in January. To be sure, none of those being incubated will be selling products of concern to the league’s largest on-court licensees, like Nike and Spalding. Instead, they are in decidedly nontraditional product categories. For example, Refried Tees is developing a line of NBA-team-logoed skirts and other women’s apparel. NBA skateboards from Shut, backpacks from Sprayground and pins from Pintrill are also in the works, along with basketball-inspired art, including painted backboards and basketballs, which Fickett has been behind for around a year, along with artist Billi Kid, under the “Art of Basketball” and “In the Paint” labels.
At a minimum, NBA Lab should push some unique product into the market, while allowing room for smaller licensees, at a time when large guarantees and retail consolidation have made it difficult for those looking to enter the market.
“We’re trying to foster innovation and build a mechanism to constantly create new products and appeal to a wide base of fans,” LaRocca said.
The ultimate goal is to have some of these smaller companies turn into full-fledged licensees.
As for the incubation portion of the equation? LaRocca stressed there is no financial commitment to the licensees by the league. So for now, Fanatics is closer to an IPO.
Terry Lefton can be reached at tlefton@sportsbusinessjournal.com.
