Ron Seaver Talks about the National Sports Forum

We first talked to Ron Seaver about two years ago in November of 1999 as he prepared for the 2000 National Sports Forum.

The Sports Forum has grown and thrived since then, and we caught up with Ron again for a quick hit of what's happening at the 2002 Sports Forum in Houston.

We initially planned to replace the interview this month with the Best of 2001 awards, but as a bonus we have added this quick 5 questions with Ron Seaver, President of the National Sports Forum.

Gameops.com: Sports Forum in Houston, Texas January 20-22...what should people be looking forward to?

Seaver: I always think that the best part of each Forum is the networking - it's the only place in the industry where you'll get a chance to meet and share ideas with literally hundreds of other marketing, fan entertainment, sales and promotions people from all across the Major Leagues, Minor Leagues, Colleges and Associations.

Now that said, our attendees tell us that their favorite part of each Forum are the "Behind the Scenes" Tours. And this year's Tours will be exceptional! Our attendees will get a first-hand look of the NFL Houston Texans Reliant Stadium. In fact, it's so new...it's not even finished yet! The next night, we're delighted to be the guests of the Houston Astros for a great evening at Enron Field. We'll wrap up on that Tuesday afternoon, (Jan. 22nd), with our first-ever "Behind the Scenes" look at a University. We'll be the guests of the University of Houston Cougars and the Greater Houston Convention & Visitors Bureau for a look at the Cougars outstanding athletic facilities.

Gameops.com: What's new at this years forum?
Seaver: I can't think of anything brand new that'll be introduced at this year's Conference; however, we're bringing back a couple of things that started last January in Cleveland that went over extremely well. One was a special Panel Discussion called "A View from the Top." The panel is moderated by Sports Business Daily editor, Abe Madkour, and each year will feature four of the top, most respected executives from the major leagues. This year -- we'll be featuring Pam Gardner, President of Business Operations for the Houston Astros, Len Komoroski, Senior VP of Marketing & Administration for the Philadelphia Eagles, Scott Carmichael, the NHL's VP of Club Marketing and Bruce Guthrie, Vice President of Marketing for the San Antonio Spurs.

The other "tradition" we look to continue will be the presentation of the annual NSF "Hall of Fame Award." This award, which was established at our fifth annual conference will be presented each year to the individual that our alumni feels has done an exemplary job of "raising the bar" of the sports business to the evolved state it is today. By way of explanation, I read a survey recently that stated that world-wide, teams/event sponsorship is a $21-billion a year industry! That's a staggering amount of money, and that's just sponsorship. As an industry, we have come so far in such a comparatively short period of time, but as one who has spent the better part of my working life in this industry can tell you, we haven't reached this stage by "accident," and certainly haven't grown this large over night. There have been a lot of unique and talented individuals that have dedicated their lives to helping us to get to where we are today, and the NSF "Hall of Fame Award" is our way of recognizing and saluting those individuals.

Gameops.com: You always have top-notch speakers...How about a run-down of the heavy hitters speaking this year?

Seaver: I think this year's roster of speakers will be, without a doubt, our best, most senior group of team executives we've ever had the good fortune to bring together. We mentioned our "View from the Top" panelists above -- to this, we're delighted to have such outstanding speakers as: Pat Gallagher, President of the San Francisco Giants Enterprises leading one of our sessions, Richard Krezwick, President of the FleetCenter and the Boston Bruins, Lee Stacey, VP Marketing for the NY Jets, Chris Overholt, VP Sales & Service for the Toronto Maple Leafs and Raptors, Bryan Pettigrew, VP of Corporate Sales for the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, Doug Pirnie, Jr., Executive VP of IMG, Jim Loria, President of the Sioux Falls Stampede, Jamey Rootes, Sr. VP & CMO of the Houston Texans, Greg McElroy, VP of the American Airlines Center in Dallas ... and that's just a few of our speakers!

Our Keynote Speakers this year will truly deliver the full flavor of what sports are all about in Houston. Starting with Steve Patterson, Sr. VP of the soon-to-launch Houston Texans, we're also proud to present Houston Astros Chairman & CEO, Drayton McLane, Jr., George Postolos, the Chief Operating Officer for the Houston Rockets and Houston Comets and legendary Head Coach, Bill Yeoman of the University of Houston.

Gameops.com: Tell me about the Trade Show. How many booths and can you tease us with a few of the people we can meet this year?

Seaver: We keep our Trade Show intentionally small -- just 44 spaces. We want to keep it limited so that our vendors won't have a lot of competition for our Attendee's attention. And because of that, we tend to "hand-pick" our vendors -- they've got to be the best of their class. In fact, we've had the good fortune to have several Gameops.com readers vend at our conference, those folks just seem to "get it" better than most. Some of our favorites like New Tier, Sports Magic Team and Market Identity will be back, but each year, we always have at least two dozen new companies on site. I'm pretty excited by what I've seen and heard of such vendors as Studio Vertu, (I saw their "product" at another conference a couple of years ago and thought their work was outstanding. I'm delighted that they're coming!), Smart Button Associates -- which offers cutting edge customer attraction and retention technology, Winstead -- one of the "comers" in the naming rights agency niche, and a whole host of others. There's a really nice "mix," this year, I believe -- specialists in fan entertainment, ticket marketing, fan tracking, internet marketing, special fan attraction design, new promotional products to pique fan interest -- you name it!

Gameops.com: A lot of these forums serve cold coffee and stale doughnuts. What kind of food will you have this year at the forum? And tell us where we can get more information on signing up.

Seaver: Cold coffee and stale doughnuts -- sounds awful! We try our best to avoid both! Half of our conference is "social" in nature and food/drink are critical to these occasions. The Astros, Texans and University of Houston are each hosting a special "Behind the Scenes" meal, and each strive to be the attendees favorites. It'll be good!

As for signing up, we try to make that as easy as possible. The best way is to jump up onto our Web Site at: www.sports-forum.com. Not only will you get a chance to see exactly what will be going on, but right from there, you can register for the conference as either an Attendee or a Trade Vendor. You can even sign up for our special four-hour pre-Conference with Jon Spoelstra on "Marketing Outrageously." Jon is easily one of the smartest, most creative sports marketers that has ever graced our business -- and he's outdone himself with this new book. The pre-Conference (Sat. Jan. 19th) is always packed when Jon is our leader, and we can already see it'll be another "full house" for Jon in Houston.

Interested executives can also give Dominic Giammarinaro a call here at the office to get more information or to register. Our toll-free number is: (800) 232-3133.

Thanks and good luck to Dominic and Ron at the Sports Forum.

www.sports-forum.com

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