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The Olympics Don't Take American Express (The Ultimate Guide to Salesmanship)
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The Olympics Don't Take American Express (The Ultimate Guide to Salesmanship)

The Birth of Megasports Sponsorships

Rob Prazmark
Rob Prazmark, 2023

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Editorial Rating

8

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Recommendation

A former ad salesman for the ABC television network, Rob Prazmark became the first marketer to recruit corporate underwriters for the Global Olympics Programme, starting with the 1988 Winter Games. The original sponsors paid many millions of dollars for exclusive rights to use the Games to promote their products and services. This turning point fortified the Games financially. For the first time, the International Olympic Committee also allowed commercial use of the five-ringed Olympic logo. The 1988 Winter Olympics marked the birth of today’s massive sports sponsorships, leaving Prazmark with a continuing and justified sense of pride since such sponsorships make large-scale athletic competitions financially possible.

Summary

Rob Prazmark sold commercial time for NBC and the ABC network before joining a sports marketing firm.

Rob Prazmark was born in Buffalo, New York, attended a Jesuit college, and sold Xerox copy machines. The company transferred him to Washington, DC, and he left Xerox to sell airtime at a local television station, WDCA-TV.  In 1977, he moved to New York City to sell ads for a group of five NBC television stations.

Prazmark joined the ABC television network in 1982 to persuade major advertisers to buy pricey media sponsorships on such programs as World News Tonight, Nightline, and 20/20.

From an article in Advertising Age, a trade publication, Prazmark learned about a business in Lucerne, Switzerland called International Sports Leisure Marketing (ISL). German businessman Horst Dassler founded the company, which won the global marketing rights to the Olympic Winter Games in Calgary, Canada, and the Olympic Summer Games in Seoul, South Korea, in 1988. Prazmark and a colleague quit their jobs at ABC to join ISL and open its US branch.

Prazmark met with a representative of the International...

About the Author

Rob Prazmark spent 40 years in multimillion-dollar marketing and dealmaking, recording $3.8 billion of revenue for the properties he represented. He is writing a sequel to this book, Innovators, Imitators and Idiots, which picks up in 2010 and goes through 2024, covering the Sochi and Rio Olympic Games, America’s Cup, Special Olympics International, and America250, the national celebration of America’s 250th anniversary. 

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