Making sport a business enterprise

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32430, 17 October 1970, Page 13

Making sport a business enterprise

(By

SIMON KAVANAUGH)

Mark McCormack was in London looking like an overstated advertisement for himself. Six feet four, an electric blue mohair suit failing to conceal muscle, guileless blue eyes in a clean-cut tanned face, McCormack sat by the telephones in his graceful Park Street office as though only a sense of duty kept him from the golf links or the tennis courts.

Mr McCormack lives sport from the moment

he starts work at eight in the morning till he packs up near midnight. But several million dollars and 70 of the hottest properties in international sports stand between him and the changing room. Mr McCormack is the Cleveland lawyer who took hold of sport and made it a business proposition for the players. Ten years ago Mr McCormack, saw a professional golfer’s contract for> the first time. “I was appalled. Those golfers were right over a barrel with some of the clauses.” Today, at 39, he has made millionaires of three golfers and has sewn up the careers of top men in sports as contrasting as skiing and cricket by the simple expedient of treating them as marketable commodities. Tony Jacklin “He’s attractive, humble, says the right things at the right time and has so many years ahead,” he enthused over the British golfer, Tony Jacklin, earlier this year. “Being so personable from a business standpoint he has everything a company could want.” Being described as a product might not be flattering to a sportsman, but Mr McCormack’s assessment that Jacklin could earn half a million pounds sterling over the next five years was probably adequate compensation. Gary Player says, “But for Mark I’d have just been peanuts,” and if it sounds like a testimonial in a sports magazine it may be because that’s the kind of thinking Mr McCormack fosters. “The best job” “We represent professional sportsmen and try to do the best job for them by getting the tnqst out of their careers

and talents financially,” says Me McCormack. “People like Joe Louis have been champions in a particular area and wake up one morning unable to be champions and with ho money.” When you speak to Mr McCormack of the general decline in sportsmanship he looks like a property tycoon being asked to comment on Monopoly. Playing to win “This is not to say I don’t believe in sportsmanship, but I think these days the whole world involves competition. You play a game to win. You play fairly, but to win. I think if you get an unjust call you should protest. Just as in business if some one breaches a contract you go to a lawyer. It’s nice to be friendly, but at the same time to pretend that inside the people shaking hands there isn’t a fierce desire to win is just unrealistic, and there’s nothing the matter with showing that fierce desire to win.” Mr McCormack has offices in Johannesburg, Tokyo, Sydney and in Canada and New Zealand, aa well as in

London and Cleveland. He represents racing driver, Jackie Stewart, and the show-jumpers, David Broome and Nelson Pessoa, cricketer, Geoff Boycott and skier, Jean Killy. He even has Jean Shrimpton, the model, on his books. His cut is said to be nearer 25 per cent than the customary 10 per cent, and he’s long since a millionaire. But none of his clients complain. Sources of revenue He reckons many sportsmen ought to be able to earn more outside their sport sponsoring goods, modelling and so on than they can from actually performing. “A tennis player ought to earn more, a top one. A golfer certainly will, a skier certainly will, a motor-racing driver ought to come close to it though they make an awful lot of money in their sport as well. “The big exception of course is (association) football. Footballers don’t make much money inside or outside their sport which to me is kind of ridiculous. There is a singular lack of imaginative and creative abilities behind the exploitation of the world’s football stars, especially Britain’s. In America footballers make vast money.” Europe is catching up with

America in the exploitation of sportsmen, Mr McCormack considers, and though he does not say so, it is clear that he has been largely responsible for it. “Proportionately the percentage growth in golf, for example, has been greater in Britain than in America recently. Golf may be peaking in the United States in terms of interest, but in the rest of the world it’s growing.” Huge staff Mr McCormack is constantly catching jets to the next conference, arranging for toothpaste advertisements for Jacklin, tailoring advertisements for the United States golfer, Dave Marr, checking contracts. He has a huge staff and his telephones are always ringing. “I like sport gnd I’ve always been a sports fan”—he is a good amateur golfer—“but what we do is a business enterprise. “Sport is very similar to showbusiness. People often have very short memories. Their careers change and they forget how it was when they had nothing. All of a sudden they think the world owes them a living, “There are some pretty good athletes in the United States and in Britain who, when they hang it up, are not going to have very much except memories.”

Palmer, Nicklaus, Player, Charles and now Jacklin. These are the great names of modem golf: and the man behind them, Mark McCormack, must also rank among the outstanding .figures in a pastime which has become a multi-million dollar business. Mr McCormack has a string of top players under his management, and world-wide interests. One of his next ventures brings Jacklin, the current United States champion, to play Charles at Waitiklri on November 8.