The San Francisco 49ers, Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment and CAA have created Elevate Sports Ventures, an agency that will focus initially on premium seating, personal seat licences and corporate hospitality sales.
49ers President Al Guido will be CEO and managing partner of Elevate, while retaining his role with the team. HBSE CEO Scott O’Neil, CAA Sports co-heads Howard Nuchow and Michael Levine, and Paul Danforth, CAA Sports global head of sales, have been named co-managing partners of the new venture.
The company will have offices in Silicon Valley, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, New York and London.
“We believe the assets of the combined entities give us a strategic advantage,” said Guido, who has more than 15 years of experience in ticket pricing and packaging. “Our backgrounds are vast. I’ve spent a lot of time in the NFL, Scott has been in the NBA for a long time, and the CAA guys have been in the agency space for a while.”
The structure of the newly created company calls for equal ownership among the three partners.
The venture means greater competition within the premium ticket and corporate hospitality space, as Elevate now stands to compete with other established agencies, such as Legends. The deal also fits into HBSE’s strategy of adding more assets under its umbrella that includes the Philadelphia 76ers, New Jersey Devils and Prudential Center.
“HBSE is at [an] embryonic stage of building our foundation and putting the organizations under one umbrella has given us the impetus to grow,” O’Neil said, adding that the agency launch is “consistent to who we are and what we are trying to achieve.”
For CAA, the creation of Elevate represents a new business area for the company that has been involved in some of the biggest deals in sports.
“The one part of the stadium and team business that we haven’t dipped our toe into is ticket, PSL, and premium seat sales,” Levine said.
