Sales and Sponsorship Course with AEG's Bill Pedigo

Over the past couple weeks, my classmates and I have truly been blessed with a priceless opportunity to learn about sales and sponsorship from the best in the business. This was no typical course, as our professor was Bill Pedigo, Director of Global Partnerships, Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG). Our first class was held at the Home Depot Center in Carson, CA, and the final two classes took place at the world-renowned Staples Center in Los Angeles, CA. We were continually engaged in group discussions and mini workshops throughout the duration of the course, which allowed us to get creative, voice our thoughts and opinions, and receive real-world feedback from the personal experiences Mr. Pedigo has had over the course of his career in sponsorship sales.

Sponsorship is a part of virtually all sports today, and whether we end up directly selling sponsorships or not, we will each interact with corporate sponsors at some level during the course of our careers. In fact, we sell every day whether we know it or not, so the goal of this course was to develop an approach to selling that at the end of the day satisfies the needs of clients, leads to sales, and most importantly, creates long-term relationships. The idea is that if we can break down the sales process for sponsorships, we can break it down in other areas of our lives as well, which can prove to be extremely instrumental over the long haul.

We knew from the moment we arrived at the Home Depot Center that we’d be in for a treat as the players from Chivas USA, an MLS franchise, came trotting by after practice. I had never been to the HDC before, and I have to admit, I’m a bit surprised that even my lofty expectations for this facility were exceeded. AEG developed and operates the Home Depot Center, a $150 million national training facility designated as an “Official U.S. Olympic Training Site” by the United States Olympic Committee. The site includes major facilities for soccer, tennis, track & field, cycling, lacrosse, rugby, action sports, beach volleyball, basketball and other sports. Once classes had concluded, we received a full tour of the compound and discussed the facility’s vast array of sponsorship inventory as Mr. Pedigo answered questions from the students as we reached each distinct venue.

The trip to the HDC was just the beginning of the first-class treatment Mr. Pedigo and AEG would offer us during the course. The following week, our classes were held inside the Staples Center in downtown LA. AEG’s Staples Center is world’s most profitable arena, conducting over 300 events annually. We began class on Thursday afternoon with a full tour of the Staples Center, again discussing the sponsorship inventory and explaining the way in which each corporate sponsor attempts to engage fans of the various franchises who call the facility home (Lakers, Clippers, Kings, Sparks, and Avengers). After the tour, we sat down in one of the special events suites to conduct the evening’s class, which concluded with an NHL game between the L.A. Kings and Florida Panthers. This was the first NHL game for many of the American students in class, and the first live hockey game for many of the international students.

Our assignment for the evening was to rate the top three in-game elements/experiences and describe the reasons for our rankings. Also, we were tasked with creating three new in-game sponsor activations for the L.A. Kings, specifying a target company or category for each. All-in-all, it was an unforgettable afternoon as the AEG-owned Kings held on to beat the Panthers in a thrilling 3-2 victory. I’d have to say that the “Toyota Human Spheres”, a sumo-suited hockey challenge on the ice, was my favorite experience.

The following morning, we received a surprise visit from the Director of Premium Sales at AEG who also shared his experiences and offered valuable insights into the processes and tactics used by AEG to leverage each of their operations. We had the opportunity to listen to a few excerpts from sales guru Greg Bennett, and we followed that up with some role playing among our classmates to practice what had just been preached. As someone who has been interested in sales and sponsorship since entering the SMBA program here at SDSU, this was perhaps my favorite and most beneficial experience throughout the entire year. I actually got to play one of the roles in the exercise, selling a fictional sponsorship for the Dodgers to Benedikt, my classmate from Germany, who was representing BMW. Bill Pedigo coached me during each part of the conversation, which made it an incredible experience.

We concluded our course with a trip outside to learn about AEG’s newest development, L.A. Live. L.A. Live is a $3 billion urban development project directly across from the Staples Center, and it will be home to the Nokia Theatre, 200 premier condos, 10 floors of a Marriott-Ritz Carlton five-star hotel, 11 restaurants, ESPN and its first live broadcasting outside Bristol, CT, headquarters for several large companies, and much more. The L.A. Live project is the beginning of turning downtown L.A. into a true tourist destination whether sporting events are being held or not. It is expected that more than 600 annual events will occur in the urban community with over 20 million eyeballs trafficking the area. The final project for the course is to identify two prospects that we feel would fill the last two L.A. Live Founding Partnership positions and explain why we chose each partner. We’re tasked with not only identifying companies that fit in with the business model and don’t conflict with existing exclusivities, but also coming up with a creative “signature element” of the sponsorship that will make it an ideal sponsorship for AEG’s corporate partners.

Corey Price (SDSU Sports MBA ’09)

About AEG

AEG, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Anschutz Company, is the world’s largest investor in entertainment and sports facilities; the world’s largest presenter of live sports and entertainment events; world’s largest owner of sports teams and sports events; owner of the most profitable sports and entertainment venues; world’s largest developer of sports and entertainment sponsorship and naming rights; has invested billions of dollars in sports, entertainment and media projects’ and reaches billions of people each year through its facilities, events, music, theater, festivals, sports, films and media assets. AEG has a long history of success in the global sports and entertainment industries including the STAPLES Center, Nokia Theatre Times Square, Nokia Theatre at Grand Prairie (TX), the El Rey Theatre (Hollywood, CA), the WaMu Theatre (Seattle, WA), Target Center (Minneapolis, MN), and three just opened arenas, Sprint Center (Kansas City, MO), Prudential Center (Newark, NJ) and The O2, a 28-acre development located in the eastern part of London along the Thames River which includes a 20,000 seat arena and over 650,000sf of leisure and entertainment use; sports fanchises throughout the world including the L.A. Kings, L.A. Riptide (MLL), the L.A. Galaxy and Houston Dynamo (MLS) in addition to overseeing privately held management shares of the L.A. Lakers (NBA).