FIVE QUESTIONS WITH...Kevin Callanan
Vice President of IMG Racquet SportsFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Liza Horan
330 Third Ave.
New York,
212-682-6829
liza@tenniswire.org
05/01/06 -
"Five Questions With..." is a series featuring exclusive interviews with important industry people. You will learn something with each edition.
Callanan is Vice President of IMG Racquet Sports, and is primarily involved in corporate sponsorships and marketing. Recent projects include securing Pete Sampras’ endorsement of Royal Bank of Scotland, for which TV commercials ran during the 2005 U.S. Open); The Tennis Channel’s purchase of the Las Vegas tournament that became their namesake event held earlier this year; and the first live webcast of a pro match—an exhibition between Sampras and Robbie Ginepri during the River Oaks International in Houston--which ran last month on USTA.com (click here for highlights).
Q. How did the webcast come about?
Pete indicated an interest in playing some tennis back in January, and we have a relationship with the tournament director in Houston. So when this Houston opportunity came up with Pete's match, and realized there wasn't any TV coverage of the match or the tournament-- that decision is made locally--it was an opportunity that might make sense for a webcast.
We have a lot of resources throughout the company--it was very exciting to pull it all together.
We had to work quickly and it was a cooperative effort between the USTA, the tournament team in River Oaks, and even Pete, who sat for a special interview and participated in a press conference to promote the match. Jeff Volk (USTA Advanced Media) spirited the effort internally. He was the perfect guy to help get it organized internally and get the support we needed. And it dove-tailed nicely with the relaunch of their site. Who knows, maybe we’ll do more of those.
Q. How did you get into tennis—as a player, and then as a business man?
I started playing tennis after my father got tired of getting up for ice hockey practice at 5 a.m. on Saturday mornings in Boston. He just said, "Try tennis instead." A great decision by him.
And then my college tennis coach at Williams introduced me to a couple of guys at IMG, back when I was a senior in college. My first job was with Jim Westhall, who ran the Volvo International Tennis Tournament in Stratton, Vt. He wrote the famous book, "Nonsense at the Net," about his career as a tennis promoter.
I majored in economics and was headed toward the more traditional type of job--investment banking or consulting. I was very interested in staying involved in tennis and set my sights on IMG at some point, so I think it worked out pretty well.
Q. IMG is a large entity, with numerous areas of business, from fashion to art and sports, and with offices worldwide. We’ve seen the broadcast group, TransWorld International, become TWIi when the Internet came along, and now it’s been renamed to IMG Media. How much crossover exists?
One of our advantages is that we're very well diversified--there's a lot of synergy and teamwork. This webcast is an example. We worked with the team at IMG Media, and we both worked in various capacities with the USTA, and actually IMG Media helps run their website so there were a lot of us. So, not only we come up with the ideas, but we can implement them as well.
We're in the service business, so we have to be prepared, be attentive and be resourceful to our clients' needs at all times. My focus is not really on the tennis-playing clients as some of the corporate sponsors and marketing partners who support the various projects. You have to try and deliver for your client, whether it's a Pete Sampras or a Lexus.
Q. What do you think are key factors in the growth of the tennis business?
I think there's two components. One is the players themselves and their brand--the diversity of the unique characters, the personalities, on tour like Roger Federer, Venus Williams, Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova.
And the fact that it's a global game and attract an audience that's desirable to advertisers. You've got a lot of entrepreneurial people who are in business, who are trying to see the value of associating a company with a certain tennis property, whether it's Jim Westhall, Gene Scott, Jim Baugh, Kurt Kamperman, Mark McCormack, Stephanie Tolleson, Liza Horan, Billie Jean King, Ilana Kloss...There’s a long line of people who are progressive, seeing big ideas before everyone else and putting them into place.
Q. What are the perks of your job?
I get free tips from Nick Bollettieri on my Eastern forehand.
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