Passion Drives Princeton Panelist Bob Reif
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Princeton hosted its second annual Sports Symposium last Friday, bringing together world-renowned leaders from the coaching, management and business sectors of the sports world to provide the University community with a glimpse behind the scenes of t
his industry.
The elite group of panelists for the event included, among many others,
Bob Reif
, President of Audible Marketing & Sports, Athletics Director Gary Walters '67, Patriot League Executive Director Carolyn Femovich, Southeastern Conference Commissioner Mike Slive and principal and founding partner of Velocity Sports and Entertainment Mike Reisman.
The attraction of the sports industry over other professional career paths was one of the main topics for the symposium, which pushed the question of "for love or for money" to the forefront of the discussion.
Despite the talk about passion and the love for sports, though, the last line in any industry is still the bottom line. The panel of well-known leaders in the sports industry's financial offices drew by far the largest crowd, and the panelists were asked many questions about the prospects for the sports industry in the domestic and international markets.
"Sports is no different from any other business. The companies need to tailor their marketing strategies to the social demographics of a constantly changing world," IMG Sports and Entertainment President George Pyne said.
Citing the Memphis Grizzlies and New Orleans Hornets as examples of the faltering domestic
demand for certain athletic venues, Reisman presented international marketing as an inevitability for the future of the American sports industry.
"We need to export our strong points such as football, but in a way that the rest of the world can accept and a way that is profitable," Reisman said. "We've had success with basketball and China, but there's a lot more that could be accomplished."
Bob Reif agreed that sports had a constantly changing potential for expansion.
"We tried to export football on the international market," Audible President Bob Reif '89 said. "We had NFL Europe, and it went on for 17 years, but now it's over. But that doesn't mean we quit. Now we're just going to try to market it another way. We have the products; we have the consumers — now we just have to find some way to link the two together."
As the panel showed, for those sports-oriented members of the Princeton community, vast opportunities await.