SPORTS NEWS YOU CAN USE

Issue 5--Sports Television Production Companies

The last several issues have dealt with sports promoters and television production. This issue will take a closer look at television production companies of various sizes. Some companies start out as event promoters and then expand into television production; others start out as producers and expand into event promotion.

• The biggest independent sports television production company in the world is Trans World International, a division of the biggest sports management company in the world, International Management Group. TWI was started in 1967. It produces more than 2,000 hours of original sports shows each year, for sale to both American networks and cable stations and to broadcasters in 118 countries.

For example, during the 1991 Super Bowl weekend, it had about 10 hours of programming on ABC, NBC, and CBS, including two John Madden specials, the Senior Skins golf game, and the World Professional Figure Skating competition.

IMG generally represents the athletes, creates the event, and has TWI produce the television coverage. A typical effort for TWI was their 1990 "Norman Challenge," pitting Wayne Gretzky, Ivan Lendl, and Larry Bird against Greg Norman in a golf game (all four were clients of IMG). TWI bought four hours on CBS, paid production costs, and put up $100,000, for a total investment of $1.5 million.

• Raycom, with sales exceeding $100 million a year, was started in 1979 by Rick Ray. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1971 with a degree in radio, television, and motion pictures. He became program director at a Charlotte television station, where he learned which programs a local station would and would not buy. Jobs at other North Carolina stations followed. He became broadcast operations manager at a non-network-affiliated station in 1978, which meant he had considerable responsibility over programming and operations. "It was like putting on a television station from scratch."(1)

He realized that stations had trouble obtaining regional sports coverage. His first effort was filming a three-day college basketball tournament in Alaska featuring a North Carolina team. The following year he left the station and, with $5000, started his production company.

Raycom's first break came in 1982 when it acquired the broadcast rights to ACC basketball in partnership Jefferson-Pilot, another Charlotte-based production company. JP Sports handled production and Raycom the marketing and syndication.

Then Raycom acquired the broadcast rights for the Southwest and Big Eight football and basketball games. By 1985 it was the country's biggest sports syndicator.

In 1990 it created its own college football event, the Blockbuster Bowl (later called the Carquest Bowl).

And in 1992 it began producing college basketball games for ABC. (See Sports News-Issue 4)

Ray retired as president of Raycom in 1995 after the company was purchased in 1994 by Ellis Communications.

• Golden Gate Productions, GGP, is this country's number one producer of ski events. It got into the production business in 1975 when Bob Horowitz, the company's current president, was a junior at the University of California at Berkeley. At that time GGP was a company which owned the local World Team Tennis franchise, the Golden Gaters.

According to Horowitz, "I wanted to put the tennis matches on the radio. I went out and took 44 tennis matches and put together a radio package. I sold the time and hired the broadcasters. It was successful and as a result, I became a full-time employee" in 1976. (2) The team folded in 1978 and GGP focused on television packaging.

"In 1983, the year before the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, we decided to do skiing, and we went out and purchased rights to a couple of World Cup events," said Horowitz. "I started calling stations to use a skiing package to promote the '84 Olympics, and 150 of them said yes. That was the birth of our national syndication." (3) GGP produced six hours of ski programming during 1983 and 1984 which it sold on a barter basis.

From Corte Madera in Marin County outside of San Francisco, the company currently produces over 40 hours of programming a year. "People will say, 'Shouldn't you be in Los Angeles or New York? But there are no distractions here," said Horowitz. The company has found its niche by focusing on sports ignored by other production companies. "Ones where we can be one of one, not one of many. We're involved now with a triathlon we're calling 'Escape From Alcatraz.'

"We're a one-stop shop for stations and sponsors. We use what we call vertical integration. From one source, we can stage an event, market it to an advertiser, produce the TV show and handle the distribution." (4)

In addition to World Cup skiing, GGP has produced John Madden's Super Bowl specials, Olympics preview shows, college football and basketball preview shows, and World Cup soccer.

• Dynocomm Sports was started in 1982 by Alan Gibby when the cable production company he worked for folded. He decided to strike out on his own because he had no college degree, but did have a family to support. In 1983, at the age of 25, Gibby produced his first nationally televised event, the OP Pro Surfing Championship.

ESPN began contracting with Dynocomm. By 1993, the company had produced and directed more than 300 national and worldwide sports specials, with revenues ranging from $25,000 to $80,000 per show. In addition to surfing, Dynocomm's coverage has included the following sports: sailboarding, windsurfing, bodyboarding, jet skiing, snowboarding, canoeing, roller hockey, skateboarding, motocross, and mountain biking.

• Off the Front Productions Inc. was started by a mountain bike racer, Jerry Martin. He felt the sport offered a lot of drama which wasn't being captured. He began producing "Fat Tire Journal" for Prime Network. He had a degree in theater from the University of Colorado and borrowed video equipment from the school to get started. In 1994 he reported that, "My partner and I have put everything we have into the business. We're still in the red. And we have to do the marketing while we're producing. It's way beyond a full-time job." (5)

But his efforts paid off in terms of attracting sponsors to the sport. "When I started doing my TV show it gave mountain biking national and international exposure."

 

1 Business North Carolina, June 1992.
2 Broadcasting & Cable, January 31, 1994.
3 San Francisco Examiner, March 7, 1990.
4 San Francisco Examiner, March 7, 1990.
5 Boulder County Business, April 1994.

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