For a Yale-trained corporate lawyer to seal a deal with a handshake rather than a contract in triplicate might seem at best risky, and at worst, plain dumb.
But Mark McCormack didn’t get much wrong, and the business he built from a handshake with its first client is 50-years-old this year and has spent the last half-century inventing and reinventing the global business of sport.
While McCormack died back in 2003 his company continues to occupy centre-stage across the world of sport. What started as an athlete representation business is now a multi-divisional, multi-skilled organisation with tentacles in every area of sport and much else beside.
What McCormack started was more than a business. It was a way of life and a way of doing business. And according to Michel Masquelier, who heads IMG Media, the company’s world-leading media rights and production division, IMG is still defined as much by its culture as its many successes.
“I’ve been with the company for nearly 30 years and what I have discovered is that our success is based on the people who work here and their shared commitment,” he says. “That commitment is key to the point where it stops being a business and becomes a lifestyle. The great thing about being part of IMG is that you are surrounded by committed colleagues who share your passion for what we do.”
It appears that Masquelier and IMG were made for each other. He’s a self-confessed sport nut who was organising cycling events back in his college days and helped set up the Belgian national bobsled team.
“Wherever I am in work the TV is always on. I am always looking to see what sports channels are doing,” he says. “I also still get excited at live events. And as I am on the road about 200 days each year I get to see a lot of them.”
Among his favourite live sports moments Masquelier lists the quarter-final of the 2007 Rugby World Cup in Marseille when England beat Australia; being with Team Alinghi when it captured the America’s Cup in 2003; watching MotoGP from the Ducati pit and the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008.
“There’s nothing to beat those moments, or a play-off at The Open [golf] or a thrilling five-set final at Wimbledon,” he adds.
But Masquelier is not only a lover of sport but an entrepreneur who, he says, finds himself in the company of equally driven souls at IMG: “It is an entrepreneurial business and I consider myself fortunate to have been able to build a team of like-minded entrepreneurial individuals who work hard and play hard.
“When I look at the people I have recruited I know that they are people who I would go on holiday with, not just work alongside. We share something in our DNA and when I look around I don’t see that elsewhere in the sector. Our commitment and closeness to each other is a key ingredient of our success and we can’t lose that.
Masquelier moved to London to work with commercial law firm Nabarro Nathanson where he worked on an IMG/McCormack project that whetted his appetite for the kind of business the company was doing.
Since then, aside from a period on secondment to the 1992 Albertville Winter Olympic Games organising committee, he has worked in every area of the company, created profitable joint-ventures and opened new offices in several countries around the world.
It’s a breadth of knowledge and experience which ideally equips him for his role at the head of what is arguably the highest-profile division of the company and one which positions him among the most senior of 3,000 or so employees.
When IMG launched, sports media consisted simply of radio and TV and the latter of which, even in the US, was predominantly still available only in black and white. Fast forward to today and it is a dynamic, complex and constantly evolving sector driven by technology and imagination in almost equal measure.
IMG Media is across the entire piece. Production to rights sales, TV to mobile and across every territory in the world, the company has an impact on what sport is available, how it is presented and how it is consumed.
“IMG Media is now the biggest sports production company in the world,” Masquelier explains. “We have managed - occasionally in partnership - some of the biggest and most challenging host broadcast operations in history including the Commonwealth Games, Asian Games, Ryder Cup, America’s Cup and the last Asian Winter Games in Kazakhstan. These have been landmarks in host broadcasting and we are extremely proud to have played a role.
“On top of that we are heavily involved in other major event production for properties including the [English] Premier League and FA Cup, Scottish Premier League for ESPN, snooker for the BBC and the IAAF World Championships this year for Channel 4 in the UK.
For the full interview see the latest edition of SportBusiness International published October 1.
