By Chen Yi
With the coming of the Olympics, global enterprises in connection with sports have spotted new commercial opportunities in the Games. "We will not only pay close attention to sports and games in China, but also introduce the best Chinese sports to the whole world" said Martin Jolly of IMG when he was signing a 20-year exclusive cooperation agreement with CCTV in Beijing a few days ago.
Martin Jolly, Senior Vice President and General Manager of IMG Asia Pacific, told the reporter that IMG was founded in 1979, headquartered in Cleveland. After nearly 30 years of development, IMG has grown into the largest sports management and marketing company in the world with 70 branches in 30 countries and regions. It has signed contract with many world famous athletes including Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Barkley, Michael Johnson, Pete Sampras, Maria Sharapova, Venus Williams etc. With the production of television programs as one of its main business, IMG provides over 200 countries and regions with a total of 6,500 hours of sports programs every day. In addition, IMG Sports Institute owns the world's most advanced diversified sports training and educational institutions, which provide world-class sports training to over 12,000 young people, college students, adult and professional athletes every year.
At present, the sports industry has become a new growth engine of national economy in the western developed countries. Although the sports industry in China has just started, it has attracted vast attention from people in the industry. Still, a huge challenge faced is that Chinese sports industry has an urgent need for a large number of managerial talents who are familiar with the operation of sports economy. These are people who know the rules and processes of international sports industry, possess foreign language communication skills, and are good at exploring business opportunities in the sports industry. Over the years, IMG keeps expanding its market in the sports industry, and has accumulated abundant practical experience in the fields of sports sponsorship, sports TV broadcasting rights, and the development of intangible assets in large events etc. Therefore, the cooperation with such a foreign sports managerial and marketing enterprise like IMG, will no doubt increase the commercial value of the Chinese sports games to a certain extent, and is beneficial to the deep development of intangible assets for China's sports.
It is understood that, IMG's outstanding achievement lies in the integration of sports games and television program. IMG has always been acting as agent in promoting and organizing some of the world-renowned sports events, including Wimbledon Championships (one of the four grand slams of tennis) and U.S. Open golf etc. IMG has also found a lot of sponsors and partners for the Pro Tournament of golf and tennis, and has played a key role in the globalization and popularity of the two events. In fact, during the 70s and 80s of the last century, IMG was the only "engine" in the field of professional sports. Besides, IMG has made full use of the television to promote their brands. IMG has made tremendous contribution to the development of contemporary Olympic Games. As the first one to broadcast the Olympic Games in television, IMG greatly boost the popularity of the Olympic Games.
IMG's advantage is to attract the attention of the world to sports events in all sorts of ways. Where, then, does IMG focus on during Beijing Olympic Games? Martin Jolly mentioned that they would keep attentive watch on a few prominent market spots. The first one is to find a new hot spot from the television broadcasting of the sports events. For example, the first commercial opportunities they are seeking would be to identify those popular and successful sports events. The second is to pay close attentions to the games during the Olympics. Every Olympic Games in the history produced new stars. IMG will therefore pay close attention to the sports made popular by these new stars. For example, volleyball gains much attention, so IMG would consider volleyball a good choice to promote.
Martin Jolly emphasized that one of IMG's focal point in China is to present Chinese characteristic sports to the Western countries. IMG have been exploring a new platform that would attract the world's attention to China. They hope that through this international platform more Chinese sport events can be open to the world, so that the world could better understand China, then more large-scale international events would be held in China, and foreign media would report more about China. "The secret of our success is that we have commercialized the sports very well. We will make more efforts on this aspect, and discuss with our partners about the projects which have aroused their interest in sponsorship. That is one of the driving forces for our future commercial development. "
