The Gold Behind the Glitz and Glory

Michael Jordan slams home a game-winning dunk. Steffi Graf obliterates her opponent with a devastating overhand smash. Jerry Rice dives to make an impossible end-zone catch.
While millions of fans thrill to these flashbulb moments, few people know much about the sports-marketing industry that fuels both amateur and professional sports at a rate of a quarter-trillion-dollars per year. Anyone seeking such knowledge need look no further than the University of Oregon's James H. Warsaw Sports Marketing Center, the first comprehensive sports-marketing program located in an American college of business.
"Our students are headed for careers in an exciting field, with opportunities to work with innovators like Microsoft, Pepsi, Nike, and ESPN," says Warsaw center founding director Mike Ritchey. "To prepare them to meet the challenges, we've put together a program unrivaled in the nation."
What is sports marketing? Ritchey explains that it includes activities designed to sell products that meet the needs of sports consumers. Its two major thrusts are the marketing of sports products and services directly to consumers and the marketing of other products through the use of sports promotions.
"For example," says assistant professor of marketing Robert Madrigal, a member of the Warsaw center faculty, "Coca-Cola just spent $40 million for the rights to be a sponsor of the '96 Summer Olympics and another $300 million in promotions and advertisements telling the world about it. The company is hoping that the goodwill associated with the games will rub off on Coke, thus enhancing brand image," Madrigal says.

A key strategy contributing to the Warsaw center's success, according to Ritchey, is its extensive use of industry professionals and their real-world knowledge alongside more traditional academic study. The center's assistant director is Rick Burton, who previously worked for Performance Properties, a sports-marketing agency whose clients include Reebok, NFL Properties, Gillette, and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Burton served as the advertising manager for Miller Lite's award-winning "Tastes Great--Less Filling" advertising campaign.
The center also lures top industry experts to campus to expose students to up-to-the-minute trends in sports marketing. Recent speakers have included representatives from Adidas, the Oakland A's, the Los Angeles Lakers, Nike, Microsoft, and the Walt Disney World Resort. In May, a group of more than 240 students, professors, and professionals gathered to hear a panel discussion titled "Preparing for the Growth of Women's Sports: Women as Participants, Marketers, and Consumers."
Ritchey explains that another avenue used to achieve the center's primary purpose of preparing students for real jobs is an aggressive internship program.
"Behind the scenes at Oregon's top sports venues last summer," he says, "were more than a dozen students and graduates of our program." Warsaw center students landed internships with such organizations as the Portland Trail Blazers, Mt. Bachelor Ski and Summer Resort, the United States Basketball Academy, the National Football League, and the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Five Warsaw center students are working for the Nike World Masters Games, helping to promote the event that is expected to draw 25,000 athletes to Oregon in summer 1998.
Like all programs associated with the Charles H. Lundquist College of Business, the Warsaw center has the green light to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities. Last year, the center's students and faculty members created and delivered the first sponsored cybercast (live audio delivered over the Internet) of the Oregon-Illinois football game. This year, plans call for all the Duck football games as well as both men's and women's basketball games to be cybercast.
Center students are experimenting further with the entrepreneurial use of the Internet with Duckmail, a service that replaces a subscriber's E-mail address with one ending @GoDucks.com.
"This is a good example of the creatively aggressive thinking we try to instill in students at the Warsaw center," Ritchey says. "We don't just teach about sports marketing, we take it to new places."

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