Learfield IMG College CEO Greg Brown Stepping Down

Learfield IMG College’s longtime President & CEO Greg Brown has stepped aside, clearing the way for Cole Gahagan to move into the top job as the college sports marketing giant transforms into a media- and tech-focused company.

Brown, 58, has been a fixture in the college community, starting his career at Learfield in '84 and running it as chief executive since '09. Gahagan, 43, was hired in December to lead new initiatives in social media, content, digital and data analytics with the expectation that he would be Brown’s successor at some point. It just wasn’t expected to happen this quickly. Brown has been on SBJ’s top 50 “Most Influential” list for three straight years. Gahagan was in the '17 class of SBJ’s “Forty Under 40.”

Brown and Gahagan said the timing was impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. They decided to make the leadership transition now, effective immediately, to cause the disruption while the sports industry already is on pause. 

Gahagan told SBJ: “Conventional wisdom might tell you that this is not the time to be making this kind of change. It's an opportunity for me to step in and hopefully have a meaningful impact on the business at a time when it will matter most. And I think that coming out of this global and economic calamity, it's going to give our entire company an opportunity to get excited about what the next era of this business is going to look like.”

Learfield IMG College, based in Plano, Texas, has 2,200 full-time employees plus part-timers spread across 300 offices nationwide. Atairos Group and Endeavor are the majority owners. In the transition, Brown has shifted into a new role as co-Chair of Learfield IMG College’s board and advisor to the company.

Brown has spent his entire professional life building Learfield from its roots in radio to a massive, multipronged company that owns the multimedia rights to 200 universities and operates across an array of verticals including sponsorship sales, ticketing, official school websites, licensing, branding and LED video boards. As President & CEO, Brown led the acquisition of 12 companies from '14-17, and engineered the $2B merger with IMG College in '18.

Brown said Gahagan will bring a fresh perspective to the job. “Cole is incredibly bright,” Brown said. “He looks at things differently than I do and that will be good for the company. He has a real gift for all things, social, digital and data, and the business really needs that.”

Gahagan will shepherd Learfield IMG College into a new direction with a focus on being much more of a media and tech company. Gahagan, who joined Learfield IMG College after serving as CCO at Fanatics, said aggregating data to learn more about college sports fans will be one of his top priorities. He also identified digital marketing and content creation through social media and podcasts as areas for immense growth.

Learfield IMG College’s sweet spot traditionally has been sponsorship and advertising sales, which will continue to be a staple of the business, but Gahagan, whose background includes a stint at Ticketmaster, is clear that the shift to digital and tech will be a full-fledged transformation, not a tweak.

"Our mission of leading in college athletics doesn’t change," Gahagan said. "It’s up to us as an emerging media and tech company to innovate and move this industry into a new era. We’re not only focused on this evolution, we’re accelerating it. That’s part of our responsibility to our university partners."
 
Gahagan takes the reins of a company trying to navigate through the pandemic without college sports. “The business is holding up fairly well,” Gahagan said. “We’re at the moment trying to unwind the challenges we’re all facing with the loss of spring sports and the basketball tournament. We’ll be working on that in the coming months, but we also have an optimistic eye on the fall sports and playing football. If there are changes or delays in that schedule, we’re building contingency plans for what that world will look like.”

For more on the transition and Brown's legacy, make sure to read this coming Monday's issue of Sports Business Journal.