The Atlanta Sports Council, the organization well known for helping lure Super Bowls and Final Fours to the city, has shifted its focus and expanded its targets.
While still committed to recruiting mega-events, the organization is increasingly seeking to advocate for the sports entities already here and looking to bring an array of lower-profile events to the metro area.
"I'd call it a broadening of focus," said Jeff Genthner, the Fox Sports South executive who is chairman of the Sports Council's board of directors. "We have cast a wider net."
Sports Council executive director Dan Corso noted that while downtown Atlanta annually hosts the SEC football championship game and often welcomes college basketball tournaments, the 28-county metro area could accommodate championship events in many other collegiate sports. He mentioned soccer, softball, swimming, lacrosse, golf, baseball and "on and on and on."
Such events "may not be conducive for downtown, but they are conducive to an outlying county or facility," Corso said. "And it's still impactful to the metro Atlanta region."
The push for more events at more venues is one of several shifts in direction by the Sports Council –- a division of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce -- since a leadership change in March 2010.
Gary Stokan, who had held dual positions as president of the Sports Council and president of the Chick-fil-A Bowl, left his Sports Council post to focus on the bowl (and its related events) and Atlanta's planned College Football Hall of Fame. Corso, 43, the son of former football coach and famed ESPN analyst Lee Corso, took over as head of the Sports Council after 12 years on Stokan's staff.
In his first year-plus as executive director, Corso said the council's staff of six has focused on "re-engaging" with other divisions of the Chamber of Commerce, strengthening the "advocacy" for Atlanta's existing sports teams and events, and working "collaboratively" with other groups across the region, such as the convention and visitors bureaus in Gwinnett and Cobb counties.
"I'm very pleased," said Derek Schiller, the Braves' executive vice president of sales and marketing, "with the way [Corso and his staff] have focused attention toward the ... professional, college and annual sports events already in town, as well as those events we are hoping will come to Atlanta."
Schiller said the Sports Council can use its place within the Chamber of Commerce to be "a great voice" in advocating for the city's teams and events on both a business-to-business and business-to-public basis.
"It's obviously an ongoing effort, not something that happens overnight, but I think the Sports Council has taken on that role quite well," he said.
One ongoing issue the council doesn't feel it can influence is whether the Thrashers stay in Atlanta or move to Winnipeg.
"When it gets to that point, whether you're going to go or not go, that's a team-league issue," said Genthner, senior vice president and general manager of Atlanta-based cable networks Fox Sports South and SportSouth. "It's a much bigger issue than a sports council alone can influence."
In general, a shift in the council's strategy was a necessary evolution at this point in the sports cycle of a city that in the past two decades has hosted the Olympics, two Super Bowls and all-star games in three professional sports.
"I think there was a time when the Atlanta Sports Council ... did over-focus on those types of one-off opportunities and we had to understand those types of things are very rare," said Schiller, who is among the 45 executives from Atlanta's business and sports communities on the council's board of directors. "You can only host a Super Bowl or an NHL, NBA or Major League Baseball all-star game every so often. ... It was important to recognize that we have a tremendous number of events that are already here -- the regular seasons of the sports teams, the annual events from the Peachtree Road Race to NASCAR."
Genthner, in his fourth year as chairman, says "It's a very different sports council than it was four years ago," less consumed by an agenda of big events to land. He said both approaches were correct "at the time."
Atlanta has some marquee events committed for the next few years –- the PGA Championship this summer, the ACC basketball tournament in 2012, the Final Four in 2013 -- and will continue to seek such headliners. But lower-profile events also are being emphasized.
Genthner, Corso and Sports Council vice president Ken Chin met with ACC commissioner John Swofford and SEC commissioner Mike Slive to pitch metro Atlanta for a variety of sports, advocating for venues such as the Gwinnett Braves' baseball stadium and Kennesaw State's soccer stadium. They hope to see results as the conferences award events over the next few years.
"It's a long process, but both meetings ended with [the commissioners] saying, ‘I had no idea,'" Genthner said. "People thought, ‘Oh, if it's Atlanta, it's got to be downtown at the [Georgia] Dome or Philips [Arena] or Centennial Park.' But ... part of the outreach is to embrace the 20-plus communities of metro Atlanta and not focus exclusively on just getting the biggest fish in the pond to come to the biggest venues you have to offer."
