Negotiating is an important part of
any sporting event. Just putting players
on the field starts with the negotiation of a player contract or as we have
seen recently in the NBA and the NFL, the art of negotiation gets players and
owners to work out each other’s positions to have a season. Endurance Running is no different; the Race
Director negotiates with Elite Runners, with Sponsors, with hotels for expo
locations and even runners themselves when issues on either side arise.
This
week I had a great opportunity to interview two people from the PGA Tour who
negotiate everyday in their jobs. Dana Welch is a PGA Tour Producer and Thomas Spence is the Footage Licensing Manager
at the PGA Tour.
Dana
Welch works with Sponsors and Tour Talent to create advertisements and news
stories to be used in telecasts of PGA Tournaments. Her largest struggle when
negotiating with Talent and Sponsors is to remember to separate the people from
the problem. Since sponsors are at times
providing more than $10 million dollars to the PGA Tour she has to remember
that without the sponsors she wouldn’t be producing a spot. She reminders herself often that they are
busier than she is and they are doing something great for the PGA Organization
by donating to the charitable organizations.
If issues arise she is lucky to have the opportunity to pull aside a
“handler” for help in the negotiation of the moment. Sometimes it takes a lot of “being fake” to
ensure that she builds a relationship to get what she wants.
Thomas
Spence’s negotiating skills are a bite different. As the Footage Licensing Manger he often
works with organizations like HBO Sports to negotiating pricing on existing
footage that the PGA Tour owns. Thomas
always starts out with providing a rate sheet before beginning the negotiation
process. He often sees organizations try
to use status as a negotiation factor but recognizes this as not a positive
method for many of these companies when they indicate they don’t have a
budget. Their excuse of little budget is
often contradictory to their status or previous negotiations with the PGA
Tour.
One
memorable negotiation that didn’t go particularly in Thomas’ favor was a
request to the Masters Tournament in Augusta, Georgia. They mentioned a price and knowing that the
PGA Tour didn’t have a BATNA (Best alternative to a negotiated agreement) the
Masters held strong in their position and an agreement was not made, putting
Thomas into a position where the project couldn’t move forward.
Getting
the opportunity to talk with others in the Sports Industry was a wonderful
experience and helped me to realize that regardless of your industry we all
have similar issues and things we have to deal with. We all use the same methods to negotiate our
position and the sports industry provides more challenges for overcoming egos
in negotiations in a sponsor, a player, an event location or our own
negotiations with ourselves.
