Chris Chaney's 2008 Princeton Sports Symposium A Home Run

On December 5 Chris Chaney, President and Founder of Chaney Sports Group, assembled an impressive list of sports business VIP’s at the third annual Princeton Sports Symposium at Princeton University to discuss important issues and trends in the sports industry.  Besides providing a forum for students and sports professionals to interact and discuss the current challenges facing college grads looking to break into the business, the event also featured another major topic of discussion: the effects of the economic recession on the sports industry, and how creative, out-of-the-box thinking about sponsorships may enable sports marketers to outrun the downturn.

At this year’s symposium - which Chaney founded in 2007 - discussions about the economic challenges facing the sports business included:

-How small market teams will struggle against large market teams for dwindling access to corporate sponsorships and media revenue critical to paying escalating player salaries

-Corporate sponsors backing out of long term commitments and locked-in sponsorship deals, and instead demanding flexible ‘pay as you go’ performance-based models

-How sports marketers must 'overdeliver' and work harder than ever before on deepening the connection between corporate America and their brands, and the ‘emotional transcendence’ of sports

One of the highlights was a keynote panel discussion between Tom Verducci, Senior Writer at Sports Illustrated, Mark Shapiro, Executive Vice President and General Manager of the Cleveland Indians, and Ronald Shapiro, Co-Founder and Chairman of the Shapiro Negotiations Institute.

“There are underlying international economic factors that make this recession different for us than any in the past, and smaller market teams will be dealing with difficult economic realities,” said Mark Shapiro.

Ronald Shapiro said he’s “seen it all economically over the past fifty years, and I don’t think I’ve seen anything quite like this. The guys who bought naming rights to the big stadiums are trying to figure out if any people are going to be working at their companies next year.”

Perhaps the most telling observation about the current challenges came from Bill Susetka, Chief Marketing Officer of the Ladies Professional Golf Association.

“How does a company sign an athlete for ten million dollars then ask the federal government for a bailout?  It defies the PR and logic sense of what’s going on in the world right now,” he said.

On a positive note, properties like American Express, sponsor of the US Open Tennis Tournament for over twenty years, and the Tostitos-sponsored Fiesta Bowl, will most likely keep their sponsorship dollars right where they are.

"When there's a brand like American Express that has a lot of equity in their partnership with us, and spent a lot of money over the years developing their brand with us, they usually don't walk away," said Gary Jacobus, Managing Director of Corporate Sponsorships for the United States Tennis Association.

"But I probably have about ten or twelve companies standing near the finish line, waiting to hear from their CEO whether their budgets will allow them to partner with us next year," he added.