The Sports Entrepreneurs Podcast by Marcus Luer
Episodes
Thursday Oct 28, 2021
Hide Arai, ”Japanese Influence in Sports”
Thursday Oct 28, 2021
Thursday Oct 28, 2021
From his two decades with DENTSU Sports to now 17 years with FIFA, Hide Arai has been at the heart of the Japanese presence in sports marketing globally for decades. Great stories and insights into the Japanese Advertising Giant’s influence in global sports for the last 40 years, driven by the emergence of Japanese super brands. And a short discussion about FIFA’s state of play, with several sensitive topics appropriately edited.
Key Highlights
How it all started in the mid 80s, producing Japanese TV commercials at Dentsu Advertising
Dentsu’s first foray into sports marketing started in 1982 at the FIFA World Cup in Spain and 1984 LA Olympics – two Japanese Dentsu executives (Hartori & Takahashi) started to build a close bond with Horst Dassler, the powerful German businessman who controlled adidas and had launched ISL Marketing.
Coinciding with the growth of Japanese brands globally. Dentsu taking on calculated risk to acquire the rights to certain packages and then selling it to one of it’s 3,000 clients.
Dentsu’s investment in ISL Marketing (49%) in 1984 and playing a significant role for decades
ISL Marketing taking the FIFA rights away from Coca-Cola which were managed by West Nally at that time. Host Dassler cutting a deal with FIFA’s President Joao Havelange
First role at Dentsu Sports Division in 1990, sponsorship sales and rights activations
World Championship of Track and Field in 1993, Stuttgart, Germany – we were both there. Mike Powell story and Panasonic package size
1992, Barcelona Olympics – strong Japanese sponsor presence
Fuji & Kodak rivalry (FIFA vs IOC sponsorships) , Sony (Playstation, FIFA ) and Panasonic (Olympic TOP program) stories
His ISL Marketing years as “Dentsu Rep” (or Spy as his colleagues jokingly called it)” and some Papa Diack stories
His perspective on how the ISL powerhouse crumbled – loss of key management, wrong investments and missed IPO (Heinz Schurtenberger)
Loss of CEO may put on brakes at ISL (sportsbusinessjournal.com)
Back into Dentsu for the World Cup 1998 in France and then back to Japan to set up a new Media Rights trading division
Buying FIFA World Cup, Italian League (Canal+), Bundesliga (UFA Sports) buying rights for Japan territory
Growth of MLB rights in Japan due to Japanese players playing in the League since the 90s (NHK largest MLB broadcaster in the world)
Dentsu’s stake in World Sports Group (AFC Marketing agency for two decades) (Seamus O’Brien & Jack Sakazaki, JSM)
FIFA role from 2004 till now – Deputy Director, Business Development, sales & distribution of Media rights (partnering again with Jerome Valcke)
Difference between Agency life and life at a Federation. Different type of stakeholders and their needs
ISL and Kirch Media Bankruptcies endangering FIFA – on the back FIFA Marketing AG was created, FIFA taking commercial rights in-house, massive growth of fees (driven by Jerome)
Mastercard vs VISA drama
Growth of FIFA from 30-40 staff in the 90s to now 1,000 staff globally, all brought in-house, from ticketing, security to other areas
About Hide Arai
An avid baseball fan has turned into a sports business marketeer, Hide Arai’s association with the sports business has started in the early 80s when he joined Dentsu, the advertising giant in Japan and was subsequently assigned to ISL Worldwide in Switzerland during early 90s. As VP at ISL, his activities had entailed sponsorship sales to Japanese global brands including Canon, Fujifilm, Panasonic and Toyota, as well as sponsors activations surrounding FIFA World Cup, Olympic Games, and IAAF (now World Athletics) World Athletic Championships.
Back at Dentsu’s Sports Division from the late 90s to early 2000s, Hide Arai had driven scores of major sports rights deals as GM of the Division, including FIFA World Cups 2002-2006, Major League Baseball, English Premier League, Serie A, The Open (Golf).
After 22 years of tenure at Dentsu, he switched his career and geographical base to a sport governing body, FIFA at Zurich, Switzerland in 2004. Hide has been involved in sales and distribution of FIFA’s media rights, covering the entire Asian and African regions, as well as host broadcast production for the last 17 years.
Hide Arai holds a BA (1981) in Political Science from Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan and an MBA (1987) from the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, US.
His current personal pursuits are scuba-diving in South Pacific and occasional golfing.
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Thursday Oct 07, 2021
Murray Barnett, ”Media & Sponsorship Unpacked”
Thursday Oct 07, 2021
Thursday Oct 07, 2021
Great stories and learning from Murray Barnett’s illustrious career across NBA, ISL, World Rugby and F1 to turning entrepreneur with his own boutique consulting agency during the pandemic. Lots of wisdom and great sharing from his journey over the past 2 decades.
Key Highlights
Starting at Orbit, Satellite TV space in Rome, Italy and some Italian House Music
From Rome to Budapest to the NBA Europe in Paris – plan, plan and plan again – amazing level of detail, great lessons from David Stern
Lessons from being at ISL Marketing for the final years of the agency handling FINA & FIBA accounts. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true (ATP disaster)
Next stop ESPN, Russell Wolf offering a role as Employee #1 in ESPN’s Disney office in London
His focus at ESPN International – selling rights portfolio to other broadcasters, supervising ESPN channels in Middle East & Africa , identifying new opportunities to build the brand
Big international expansion and ESPN UK (Premier League rights for one cycle) – what worked and didn’t work
Success stories, ESPN Middle East, growing to 3 channels on ART and growth of ESPN Latin America and learning from top Disney/ESPN executives
ESPN MVNO (ESPN The Phone) – culture of trying lots of new things and turning failure into learning to pivot into new areas
World Rugby (IRB), Chief Commercial Officer role, from TV to sponsorship to hospitality. Rugby World Cup 2015 in England and other competitions (HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series deal)
Rugby’s different philosophy as a sport and significance of rebranding the sport to World Rugby, Olympic inclusion for Rugby Sevens
Rugby World Cup scale and size – US$250 million per event & Maradona visiting Twickenham story
Private Equity in sports - bringing external “influencers” to push change in sports, the role of “outsiders” like CVC and similar groups investing and coming into sports with a different perspective
Formula One Management – Head of Global Sponsorship & Commercial Partnerships – track side and hospitality packages
Massive ten year deal with Aramco (largest company in the world, Saudi Oil giant) and how AWS (Amazon Web Services) came into the sport
Aramco deal unpacked and how the deal happened. And the big difference between selling TV rights and sponsorship deals.
F1 Esports, fan festivals and other new innovations
Founding 26West Sport during the Pandemic , boutique sports consultancy specializing in TV rights, sponsorship and commercial development
“Learning” being an entrepreneur the past year
About Murray Barnett
Murray Barnett is a Sports Marketing professional with over 20 years’ experience in Media, Marketing & Sponsorship worldwide. He has uniquely worked for sports leagues, governing bodies, TV/media companies and sports marketing agencies.
Starting out in Italy and Hungary with Orbit and Nethold respectively, Murray worked on two international TV start-ups in marketing, sales and programming capacities.
Upon leaving Hungary, he was employed by NBA Europe to manage marketing partnerships & programme development with NBA Broadcast partners. From there he was headhunted by ISL to manage TV accounts for FIBA basketball and Fina swimming.
Amongst ISL TV’s sales portfolio were also IAAF, FIFA and ATP Tennis which Murray sold across a number of European territories. From there, he was asked to join ESPN to launch their European TV Sales operations which included 3 channel brands and over 10,000 hours of content sales. Murray was also part of the launch team for ESPN UK which broadcast English Premier League, Rugby and US Sports for four seasons.
After 11 years at ESPN, Murray was recruited for the role of Chief Commercial Officer at World Rugby, the governing body for the sport. His many responsibilities include all TV sales, content development, sponsorship & commercial agreements, licensing and hospitality.
Following the change of ownership at F1, Murray was asked to join the management team as Director of Global Sponsorship & Commercial Partnerships tasked with developing and growing commercial opportunities for partners within F1.
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To get in touch, please email us at podcast@marcusluer.com
Feel Good by MusicbyAden https://soundcloud.com/musicbyadenCreative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported — CC BY-SA 3.0Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/_feel-goodMusic promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/bvgIqqRStcQ