Sport Marheting Quarterly, 2006,15, 133-137, & 2006 West Virginia University

Name: Peter CarlisleTitle: Director—Olympics & Action Sports, OctagonEducation: B.A. from Bates (English major, Philosophy minor)

Juris Doctor, University of MaineCareer: Founder, Carlisle Sports Management (purchased by Octagon

in 2001)Attorney, Preti, Flaherty, Beliveau, Pachios, and Haley

Peter CarHsle has quickly become one of the mostprominent Olympic and Action sports agents. His cur-rent roster of clients includes swimmers MichaelPhelps, Ian Crocker, and Lenny Krazelburg, and snow-boarders Ross Powers, Kelly Clark, Danny Kass, andSeth Wescott. Carlisle has also been influential in thecreation of Disney's "Swim with the Stars," the first-ever post-Olympics swimming tour. Additionally, he isthe Fxecutive Producer of "Unfiltered," a documentaryfilm that explores the lives and rivalry of Phelps andCrocker. He is also responsible for signing the largestever multi-year Olympic endorsement deal {betweenPhelps and Matsunichi) and the world's largest swim-ming endorsement deal (between Phelps and Speedo).In a five-month span, he signed world championswimmers Katie Hoff and Ryan Lochte each to record10-year Speedo deals, the longest individual deals inthe history of the brand.

In reading your bio, you actually started off repre-senting athletes while you were working for a law firm.Could you talk a little bit about your progressionfrom working in a law firm to working with actionand Olympic sports athletes?

I started with some local athletes. I did some workwith AHL athletes on the marketing side, but that wasshort lived. Soon after I started experimenting withthat, I got into the individual sports which are muchbetter for marketing. From skiing to snowboarding—alot of the sports that are up in the Northeast.

Could you talk a little bit about how you saw anopportunity in the action sport space and went after it?

The X Games had been going on for a little while.When you look at the "Fxtreme Games" that ESPNstarted down in Newport, initially you would tune inbecause it was like watching cliff diving on "WideWorld of Sports". It was more of a novelty assembly ofthese sports. But, over time, the core sports that hadlegitimacy lived on and the X Games became a packag-ing of very real, and somewhat novel sports. As this wasdeveloping, there was talk of snowboarding becomingan Olympic sport. You could kind of see the writing on

the wall once FIS (the international federation for ski-ing) brought snowboarding into the Olympics. Youcould see where it was headed. I felt these action sportswere going to become the individual Olympic sports ofthe future, of the next generation.

1 am not sure though that I would have made the leapif the Gen Y demographic phenomenon was not goingon at the same time. It was creating a sense of urgencyamong marketers that if they did not have a strategy tohit the very elusive Gen Y strategy, it would hurt busi-ness in the future. I saw the convergence of action sportsentering tbe Olympics and the corporate desire to reachGen Y as providing a huge opportunity for me becausethere really wasn't a whole lot going on in the agencyindustry with respect to action sports. I felt that I hadsome experience—it was a lot of what I had been doingon tbe legal side of things—I felt that I could probablymake some headway into that area and develop a busi-ness out of action sports and ride the momentum as itgrew, assuming my theory was right that it would grow.I was fortunate and lucky that it did.

It seems like action sports in particular are prettyripe for targeting by corporations. But, it is a challeng-ing sector to go after for a variety of reasons. Couldyou talk about how it is to represent some of theseathletes and market them to corporations? Do corpo-rations understand what you are saying to them? Didthey understand when you first went to them? Is itmore challenging because action sports are so new?

It's definitely challenging. They want to understand.They really did not understand back then and I stillfeel very few of them understand as well as they needto. The best ones understand that they don't under-stand and they are the ones that succeed because theywill either bring people on that do understand or theywill defer to the athletes. The athletes are a goodbarometer of what will work from a marketingangle/campaign. But, it is very challenging. Actionsports athletes got into these sports in a way because itwas sort of counter culture. They got into it for reasonsthat had nothing to do with business, for reasons that

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had nothing to do with fame or success. It was a reallyindividual endeavor about expression and it was sort ofagainst the grain. And now all of a sudden the sports ina very short period of time became more like tradition-al sports. They became marketable and the athletesstarted to make money. But, the culture and the ath-letes' attitudes and priorities did not evolve as quickly.

So, you had this situation where companies wouldwant to throw money at a campaign to get into snow-boarding and they would offer ten times what theseathletes were making in that same category throughtheir other sponsor and the athletes wanted nothing todo with it. I think that is fairly unique. Image tookprecedence over economics. Image is so important forthese athletes that it creates challenges for the mar-keters, marketers that have always succeeded.Typically, marketers have been able to get into a spaceas long as they have a budget. In action sports, that isnot the case. Money won't do it. You really have tohave the good idea, and you have to show commit-ment and genuine interest in these sports. If you don't,the athletes will call you out on it.

The other thing that is unique about the space is thatcertain companies that initially convinced the athletesthey were committed have failed. Nike is a good exam-ple in snowboarding. Ten years ago they made a strongpush into snowboarding and had a decent stable ofathletes and they did TV ads that were actually prettygood. But in the end, the campaign did not work eventhough Nike is a brilliant marketing company. It didnot work in this space because action sports is such afickle space. In the end, the action sports core was notconvinced that Nike cared about these sports. They feltlike Nike was just in action sports to position them-selves and make money. They really weren't authenti-cally supportive of the sport.

That was one of my questions. Is marketing athletesin an Olympic sport like swimming significantly easierbecause it is more established and people are moreaccepting?

I think it is. I am not sure there are necessarily moreopportunities, but the approach is much simpler.Swimming is an Olympic play from a marketing stand-point. Ninety percent of all opportunities in swimmingare because of the Olympics. You might have to be cre-ative and develop new vehicles to make swimmingmore attractive from a marketing standpoint. Whereaswith action sports, they are both an Olympic play, butthey also have a whole family of sponsors that werethere before the Olympics mattered, that derive mostof their value through action sports events, whether itbe the X Games, Vans Triple Crown, the US Open, orthe other events that are important within each actionsports industry. That is a totally different strategy. In a

sense, it is more complicated, but there are alsoarguably more opportunities if you can figure out howto navigate your way through the industry. Whereaswith the Olympics, there are a lot of big opportunitiesobviously, but in a way it is a simpler, more pre-dictable approach.

It sounds like with things such as image beingimportant and with athletes sometitnes serving asgatekeepers and saying "no" to lucrative endorsementdeals, the action sports space is a really challengingone to be in. Can you delve into what you mean byimage? From some of the work I have done, it seemsthat that the sponsor needs to be authenticallyinvolved with the event.

They either have to be that way or to be perceived asthat way. What I mean by image is this—when theseathletes hire an agency, they are looking for compensa-ble opportunities through marketing. They also,whether it be swimming, gymnastics, or action sports,in general, these athletes want the same thing. Back inthe day, it was a little different—athletes were skepticalof being associated with a mainstream brand or cam-paign. Now it is totally different. Even the action sportsathletes want the out-of-industry deal. They want to beon TV. They want to transcend their own sport andindustry and get into the mainstream because that iswhere the bigger opportunities are.

But the difference becomes when I bring a swimmeran opportunity from the mainstream, tbey think "this isgreat. We are helping to change swimming. We aremaking it more popular. 1 am going to be compensatedthrough this. I am going to increase my exposure in themainstream. This is a great opportunity." Beyond thatis, "what is the actual campaign? How are they going toportray me?" And it is not that it does not really matter,it is just much further down the list. And while wealways have approval rights over these things, it hasnever been a concern. Very rarely does an athlete inswimming or any of these other traditional athletes say"I don't like that because it is going to affect my image."

In sports like snowboarding or skateboarding, themainstream does not really understand the industry.So, if you take a cereal box that a company has invest-ed a lot of money in designing and developing thiscampaign that they think is going to reach the broadestdemo of their target consumers, and they show it to us,it may look fine to me. It may look fine to me becauseit shows them in their sport, it is a good shot where theathlete is going to like the way they are portrayed, andthe text is good, the athlete might say "there is no wayI am going to do this. That is a shot from last year andthere is no way I want a shot from last year on thisbox." It is not going to matter to the mainstream mar-ket, and it is probably not going to matter to the

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endemic market, yet it is so important to that actionsports athlete because that is the way tliis whole culturehas evolved. That program could be killed right thenand there. That happens nine times out of 10. Whereasin other sports, it might not happen at all.

I would like to move to some of the interesting waysthat you have been involved with marketing athletesand marketing the sports they participate in. The firstthing I saw was that the snowboarders created a groupcalled the "Collection". It seems like it was created sothat they could maintain the integrity of the snow-boarders' sponsors as it related to competition withsponsors of the US Ski and Snowboard Association.Could you talk a little bit about that?

First of all, when snowboarding started, there weredifferent tours and it was a very individual sport. Inorder to become a World Cup sport and ultimately getinto the Olympics, the sport needed a NationalGoverning Body and an International Federation. TheInternational Olympic Committee (IOC) requiressports to be governed by a strong international federa-tion and that makes it easier to get the sport into theOlympics. FIS, the international federation for skiing,is a strong federation and it made the most sense toput the sport in that federation. So the choice after thatwas whether or not to have a separate NGB for snow-boarding or does it go in with skiing?

So, all of the sudden the skiing NGB began to governsnowboarding in America at least as it related to WorldCup competition and World Championships and thenthe Olympics. But, because actions sports are so differ-ent, most of the best athletes never went to the WorldChampionships, they would not go to nationals. Theyjust didn't care—that wasn't the heart and soul of thesport. There were other events that were way moreimportant to the athletes—the US Open, Vans TripleCrown, and many others. So, some athletes would jointhe US Team, USSA, because the USSA would recruitathletes and make overtures to the team because that iswhat they are built to do and they need to maintaintheir own credibility within the international federa-tion. They would recruit a lot of the younger athleteslike Ross Powers. Way back when Ross was 15, the USTeam invited him to be a part of it. The reason hewould do it at that point is that he was so young thatparents would like their kids to be in a program thatwas well organized, that was established, that you hadgrown ups looking after these kids when they weretraveling abroad.

When Ross went to Nagano and won a bronze medal(in snowboarding) at the age of 18, he hired an agent. Istarted working with him right after Nagano in 1998.At that point he was very, very marketable. It became aconflict almost for him to be on the US Team because

of the way the US team is structured. All of the mem-bers of the US Team, whether it be skiing or snow-boarding, sign a team membership agreement thatessentially gives the right for the team to marketthrough group licensing deals. Once an athletebecomes marketable, they are losing money if they stayon the team. So the moment Ross became marketable,it made sense for Ross to leave the team. A good exam-ple of that was the US Team was sponsored byPhoenix. Their snowboarding brand at tbe time wasXnix and Polo Ralph Lauren aggressively recruitedRoss to endorse their brand in 1998. It was a fantasticopportunity, one that lasted four years and he wouldnot been able to do that if he were on the team. So,Ross left the US team and competed on his own, whichis really what most of the athletes do. Very few of theOlympic athletes that you see during the Olympics areactually on the US team. So, as that happened between1998 and 2002, all of the other action sports athletes,the moment they became marketable, they would leavethe US Team. Kelly Clark, she was young, sort of thesame path that Ross took. In 2002, she won a goldmedal and became very marketable. She left the team.Gretchen Bleiler left the team.

But, there were certain elements of the team thatwere valuable to these athletes: the ability to have otherpeople organizing your travel plans, the benefit ofgroup insurance, the idea of coaching and havingtrainers, and the feeling you are participating as part ofa group and you are not just out there on your owngave these athletes some confidence. Unfortunately,those things did not offset the loss in income these ath-letes would suffer if these athletes rejoined the team.

In addition to that, when we were marketing theseathletes, we would compete against USSA who wasselling its team sponsorship. So, let's say you are goingto sell something to Kodak. You are marketing theseindividual athletes and USSA is marketing this teamprogram that offers certain marketing opportunitiesyou can only have with a team, like certain turnkeyopportunities, bigger programs, that a company mightfind attractive because it will have a bigger impact andit won't mean managing these individual athletes. So, Isaid, "If there is something you would like with theteam concept, let's see if we can create it." The expenseof doing that can be offset by the fact that we can com-pete now with the US team by offering another groupmarketing opportunity that the athletes own ratherthan the NGB. So, in essence once we created theCollection, the athletes have their individual marketingrights to give to a sponsor of their choosing, and theyaiso now have group marketing rights. That is whatyou see with Snickers. These companies find it veryattractive that they can do a deal with the Collection

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and get a bunch of athletes that the Collection has anduse these athletes together and then also maybe dosome individual deals with them if they want to usethem in a different way.

It seems that one of the advantages you have in mar-keting action sports is that there are a lot more eventsfrom which they can gain visibility. Whereas whenyou are marketing more mainstream Olympic ath-letes, they are only visible once every four years. I aminterested in some of the things you have done to keepmainstream Olympic athletes visible and relevantwhen the Olympics are not going on.

That is the challenge. That is really what we are tyingto do between and during the games. You have thisrelatively small window on this great platform, so youbetter start launching stuff that will carry you into thefour years between the games. "Swim with the Stars" isa good example. We used immediate post-Athens tocreate not just this tour, but this property that wouldhave legs that would carry us between the games andkeep the sport relevant. It is a real challenge, but ulti-mately that is what we are trying to do.

Can we make a sport like swimming relevant to themainstream between the games? I am convinced, ormaybe just optimistic if you change the packaging ofsome of these sports, they can become more relevantbetween the games. They are never going to be theNFL, but that doesn't mean you can't make progress.Take a sport like swimming. I find the swimming finalsat a major meet one of the most dramatic events youcan go to. The packaging is great, too. The finals hap-pen between 6 and 8 at night. It is a great event, anexcellent spectator sport. The problem is that Americaonly sees it once every four years and they don't seewhat I feel. Why do I love swimming now? Why do Ithink swimming is dramatic? Why would I rather watchswimming than a baseball game? Because these swim-mers are people to me, they are relevant to me. 1 under-stand what is riding on this. I understand the differentrivalries. But, that is what America doesn't see becauseswimming has been packaged the same way forever.

Somehow we have to get into who these people areas people, what the rivalries are, what the stories are.Wby this race matters. If we can do that, by the timewe get to the Olympics, by the time American publicsees Ian Thorpe line up against Michael Phelps, theyare going to care more. If they care more, then we havea platform to build off of. Where WorldChampionships might matter or private events that wecreate might matter. To me that is the hope andopportunity in a sport like swimming and that is whatwe are trying to do in swimming. The athletes them-selves give us that charge—that is what they have allsaid—"we want to make swimming more popular."

It seems like the documentary film "Unfiltered" cer-tainly plays into this as well. Could you talk a littleabout the creation of the film as you were theExecutive Producer on the film? Perhaps you couldshed some insight as to how that was developed andwhat the goals and mission of the film were.

The goal and mission was exactly what I just said—essentially to try to change the way swimming is pack-aged and perceived, and expand the audience to whichswimming is relevant. One of the things that is verycompelling to people watching swimming is the rival-ries, the stories behind the blocks, outside of the pool.It would be hard to do a documentary on swimmingthat would be appealing to the general public. So, wetried to focus on the rivalries and we tried to focus onthe compelling biographical stories and less about splittimes. To me, split times are irrelevant. It is about whowins. It is about gold medals and it is about rivalries.So, in "Unfiltered," we wanted tt) provide a little bitmore insight into what these athletes do to prepare forthe World Championships, to prepare for theOlympics. What their life is like. Why do they want towin so badly and what happens when they don't? Wejust try to tell a story that has not been told. Like a lotof what we do, there is absolutely no roadmap for this.Both with the Disney "Swim with the Stars" Tour andthe Documentary, people closest to swimming thoughtwe were crazy to even try it.

How do you measure the success of these efforts?With the "Swim with the Stars" and "Unfiltered," doyou have benchmarks or objectives in place that youmeasure your success against?

1 would define success by making a difference in howthe sport is perceived and making it more popular to abroader audience. You are not going to be able tomeasure that in the short term. That is going to bemeasured over time when you have a kid that is com-peting in the Olympics and they say "I played basket-ball but when 'Swim of the Stars' came to town, I wentwith my cousin who was a swimmer and I got into it.And here I am." You have just changed swimming alittle bit there. Can we make swimming available tomore people? Absolutely.

We have sold broadcasting rights for "Unfiltered" inGreat Britain. It was aired in prime time and will beaired in prime time between now and Beijing. We arein negotiation with five different international airlinecarriers to show a 48-minute "Unfiltered" package inflight. If you take something like "Unfiltered," and say"was it successful?" based on just the superficial meas-urement, clearly it was. Now, if we spent $1 million todo it, would that be successful? Probably not, becausethe athletes have hired us to create opportunities andthey need to be paid. We are a tor-profit business and

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we need to be paid if we are going to continue to takethese risky marketing ventures to change the sport. Inthe case of "Unfiltered," I think we made a real differ-ence and continue to make a difference. It is hard tomeasure, but we have made a difference. And also, ithas been financially successful. By those two measure-ments, there is no question it has been successful. Ifthe athletes are going to spend their time doing this,we like for them to be paid for it and see it as animmediate economic opportunity. Everything we havedone with "Swim with the Stars" has been that.

You have signed a deal that is the largest multi-yearathlete endorsement deal ever, the deal betweenMatsunichi and Michael Phelps. Could you talk a littleabout that? I am particularly interested in the fact thatthis is a Chinese company sponsoring an Americanswimmer in the lead up to the Beijing Olympics.

After Athens, because Michael had a pretty completeportfolio of sponsors going into Athens and because ofthe lifestyle that swimmers have, particularly swimmersthat have the lifestyle that Michael does (there is onlyso much time), we had reached capacity in terms of hisAmerican sponsors. Because Beijing was going to besuch a significant business opportunity for these ath-letes, the strategy immediately turned in Athens toestablishing Michael internationally, especially inChina. So we signed two deals after Athens, one withMatsunichi, which is based in Hong Kong. The otherwas with TV Asahi, which is a Japanese network thatwe felt would help us establish Michael in Asia. WithMatsunichi, a couple things came into play. One,Michael was potentially becoming the most decoratedOlympic athlete of all time. He had certainly achievedmore media exposure and commercial success thanany other Olympic athlete had, so Matsunichi felt,"Hey this is a guy we can really use between now andBeijing." Also, he is appealing to a younger demo-graphic. He is probably appealing to everyone between10 and 25, and most appealing in the 10-15 age group.Michael was very appealing to that demo, soMatsunichi thought he would be the perfect personand they felt that appeal would increase heading into2008. It also worked well for us. Part of the deal was toget Michael over there to do these tours and events sothat we could establish him long before he gets toBeijing to compete.

Interview conducted by Jay Gladden, University ofMassachusetts-Amherst

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