Next Level Sports Marketing

Former Arizona State and Nebraska quarterback Sam Keller is suing the NCAA and its video-game partner, EA Sports, claiming they’ve gone too far in using the likenesses of college players who are prohibited from sharing in the games’ profits. The class-action antitrust suit, filed this week in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, claims the [...]

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Extreme Sports Marketing, Inc. (Pink Sheets:EXSA), a sports marketing and holding company focused on one of the fastest growing sports — Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) — today announced that its MMA Advertising Network has seen substantial gains in the number of impressions registered over the first four months of 2009. Total impressions for the 2009 [...]

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Endorsement deals have been falling off the face of the earth, but a woman golfer, who hasn’t made a single cut in the four LPGA tournaments she has played in this year, recently picked up a pretty big deal. Her name is Anna Rawson. She’s a 27-year-old Australian beauty turned pro golfer and the fact [...]

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Tony Ponturo, the former vice president of global sports and entertainment marketing at Anheuser-Busch, announced today that his newly formed Ponturo Management Company will make a minority investment in sports marketing firm Leverage Agency that will make Ponturo the chairman of Leverage. We sat down with Ponturo and Ben Sturner, the CEO of Leverage, to [...]

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Not that the NHL would ever admit it cheers for certain teams, but the league must be beaming at the results of the playoffs so far. Because in terms of marketing the sport to casual fans, Gary Bettman and his buddies are looking at a huge summer. The only Stanley Cup final permutation right now [...]

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Former Boston Red Sox executive Michael Dee has been named as Chief Executive Officer of the Miami Dolphins and Dolphin Stadium, it was announced today by Dolphins owner and managing general partner Stephen M. Ross. In his new role, Dee will be responsible for the business development and growth of both entities and to position [...]

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The Quail Hollow Championship, a PGA Tour event that sold out six straight years, is an unlikely candidate to be suffering from an identity crisis. While Tiger Woods and other players walk past signs that say “Quail Hollow,” ticket holders have stubs bearing logos of Wells Fargo & Co.’s Wachovia bank. The scenes around the [...]

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Westwood One has picked Steve Harrison for the newly created post of VP/Director of Sports Sales & Marketing. He arrives from International Speedway Corp., where he’s been Sr. Director/Partnership Marketing and earlier served as VP of ISC’s MRN Radio, working with more than 700 affiliate stations. “It is our pleasure to welcome Steve Harrison to [...]

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InBev, the Belgian company that bought Anheuser-Busch last fall, has cut jobs, revamped the compensation system, dropped longstanding perks for managers and told vendors that it wants to take up to 120 days to pay bills, David Kesmodel and Suzanne Vranica report. It also has begun making drastic changes in its relationships with ad agencies, [...]

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Sports radio stations working with mobile marketing leader HipCricket have increased cumulative audience (cume) and time spent listening, built robust remarketable databases and consistently recorded the most text messaging activity among HipCricket’s hundreds of stations. By nature a highly interactive medium—first with call-in programs and later with e-mail and Web sites—sports radio has always embraced [...]

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