FAVORITE SPORTS EVENT EVER ATTENDED
“The ones that transcended sports, like the World Series and Super Bowl after 9/11. You could really see a lifting of the country’s spirit through sports.”
FAVORITE DEAL
“The last time we did the Super Bowl exclusive. In a matter of weeks [in 2006], we did three major, $250 million deals with Fox, NBC and CBS, which not only included Super Bowls through 2012, but a lot of other sports elements as well. We did all those in a matter ofweeks, and I know we left [A-B] in very good shape.”
FAVORITE DEAL THAT DIDN’T GET DONE
“There were two. Just before Michael Jordan burst on the scene, we tried to do a deal with the Bulls for a big number, but we wanted right of first refusal on a renewal, and [Bulls owner Jerry] Reinsdorf wouldn’t do that. We each stuck to principles. But six Bulls championships later, that was one we wished we had done.
“We also lost the Dallas Cowboys [to Miller] awhile back. I don’t think there is anything else we could have done differently, but late one night in the process, we ended up doing Jell-O shots with [Cowboys Executive Vice President/COO] Stephen Jones, so the joke then was that we’d sacrificed our bodies for the company and still not gotten the deal.”
GROWTH POTENTIAL IN U.S. SPORTS
“Sports are still an amazing passion for people, and marketers will continue to be attracted as long as consumers are. The growth will be wherever this increasingly diverse population decides it is. America’s got a growing base of Asians and Hispanics, and we just have to wait and see what sports they prefer. You’d like to think soccer, because it’s so huge and generates such passion globally that it will become big here, but we are sitting four months from the World Cup, and I’m still not hearing or reading about it, so I still think we’re a long way from that.”
Ponturo’s favorite A-B ad is “Heartland,” which aired during the 1984 Olympic Games.
FAVORITE A-B AD
Heartland: A 1984 spot featuring alone runner carrying an Olympic torch across farmland.
“That really captured what we did, as we wrapped ourselves around the Olympics and the flag. And at that time, the [Olympic] torch relay really was that small in a lot of places.”
