Phelps Seeks Gold Out Of The Water

来源:百度文库 编辑:神马文学网 时间:2024/03/29 14:14:34

If no one here was happier -- or busier -- than Michael Phelps this past week, his agent, Peter Carlisle, had to be a close second.

As he shuttled between meetings Saturday on the eve of Mr. Phelps's historic eighth Olympic gold medal, proposals for business opportunities streamed into the agent's BlackBerry. Some were appealing, others less so.

A man in Omaha, Neb., offered to sculpt a statue of the chiseled swimmer. As strange as that sounded, a similar offer came from China. Several book and movie deals were suddenly on the table. A dog-food idea was pitched, given Mr. Phelps's well-known love for his British bulldog, Herman.

And still more: bobblehead dolls, acrylic paintings, commemorative coins, car rims and tuxedos. Some just wanted to give him things, like all the pizza he could eat for a year or free dental work. And then some, like certain female celebrities and athletes, wanted an introduction from Mr. Carlisle.

The number of such messages started as a trickle on the first day of the Games, Mr. Carlisle said, but then grew with each successive gold. Five the first day, then 10, then 20, eventually around 50 a day over the weekend, he said. Mr. Phelps in recent days became the most-searched name on Facebook, surpassing teen singer Miley Cyrus and other celebs, he said. Both major U.S. political parties have requested public appearances as their nominating conventions draw near.

'I've been doing this for a while, and I didn't think I'd be super-surprised at what was going to happen here,' said the 40-year-old Mr. Carlisle, a managing director with Octagon Inc. 'But I am, actually.'

Mr. Phelps, his agent and his sponsors want to leverage his athletic feat to make him an international sports icon worth tens of millions of dollars, akin to Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods. Closely tied to that plan are Mr. Phelps's hopes of fulfilling his long-stated goal of raising the profile of swimming.

'I'm looking forward to just sitting, not moving,' Mr. Phelps, 23, said Sunday when asked about his plans shortly after his last race, having notched another world record, this time as a member of the men's 4x100-meter medley-relay team.

Not a chance.

The window for marketing Olympians, even those with the rising stature of Mr. Phelps, can close fast. Even though he will continue racing, many of the new legions of 'Phelps phans' likely won't see his muscled torso in a pool in a widely televised event again until the London Games in 2012, an eternity for advertisers.

First, Mr. Phelps will spend the rest of this week in Beijing making a series of appearances for sponsors such as Omega, Hilton Hotels Corp. and Visa Inc. Monday, he is scheduled to stop at the Omega pavilion on the Olympic Green; Tuesday he is to swim a lap in the pool at the Beijing Hilton at a party to promote swimming lessons in the inner city; Wednesday he returns to Omega for a formal event. Then there are satellite-TV interviews with U.S. media to promote other Hilton initiatives.

'This is about how big a halo Michael has,' said Jeff Diskin, senior vice president for brand management at Hilton, based in Beverly Hills, Calif. 'What he has done here will enable us to get our message out with a much bigger reach.'

As Stephen Urquhart, chief executive of watchmaker Omega, part of Swatch Group AG, said, 'He's a world legend now.'

Mr. Phelps, in fact, will begin promoting the next Summer Olympics just as this one is ending. Next Sunday, he flies to London from Beijing to begin his publicity for the London Games, according to a person familiar with his plans. He will take part in the traditional 'handover party,' celebrating the passing of the host city.

He will meet with British media for several days, before flying to New York, where he will likely make the rounds of late-night and morning-news television shows. From there, he travels to San Francisco for other events, including a party in his honor hosted by longtime sponsor Visa.

Even if all goes according to plan over the coming weeks and months, few expect Mr. Phelps to reach anywhere near the earnings of Mr. Woods, the golfer, who is estimated to make $100 million annually, from both his winnings and endorsements. By comparison, Mr. Phelps made an estimated $3 million to $5 million a year through his endorsements before these Games, a huge sum for an athlete in a sport rarely televised outside the Olympics.

Now that figure could double or more, as a result of his performance in Beijing, according to Mr. Carlisle.

'What is the value of eight golds in Beijing before a prime-time audience in the U.S.?' asked Mr. Carlisle, riding in the back of a Volkswagen minivan through the streets of Beijing on Saturday. 'I'd say $100 million over the course of his lifetime.'

Mr. Carlisle, who signed Mr. Phelps in 2002 after his first Olympics in Sydney, said that figure seemed more of a stretch a few days ago. While independent sports-marketing experts acknowledge that is a hefty sum, they said it is within reach.

'It's an aggressive number put out there by an aggressive agent,' said Paul Swangard, managing director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon in Eugene. 'But also eight gold medals was an aggressive number. Not a good idea to bet against the man right now.'

Speedo, the swimsuit maker that sponsors Mr. Phelps and offered him $1 million if he won seven gold medals, said its Phelps jerseys sold out in recent days -- tens of thousands of them at $24.99 a piece -- even though swimmers don't wear jerseys in their sport. That underscores Mr. Phelps's appeal beyond swimming.

Even the white Speedo parka that Mr. Phelps wore to the starting block before his races prompted consumer demand. Speedo had no intention of selling it to customers. Now it has begun ramping up production, said Craig Brommers, vice president of marketing for Speedo USA. 'People want a piece of history here,' Mr. Brommers said. 'We're trying to get this stuff out the door as fast as we can.'

The Olympics typically lead to a 5%-to-6% increase in people swimming in the months after the Games, he said. This year, Speedo expects several times that as a result of Mr. Phelps's feat. Speedo plans to have a number of different versions of the LZR Racer suit worn by Mr. Phelps, which retails for $550, in stores by the holidays, Mr. Brommers said.

Even Speedo's parent company, Warnaco Group Inc., which licenses the Speedo brand in North America from Pentland Group in the U.K., wants a piece of the action. In the coming weeks, Warnaco will begin advertising its association with Speedo. 'That connection will be tightened, which we think will serve shareholders well,' Mr. Brommers said.

While no one could be certain that Mr. Phelps would make history in Beijing, Messrs. Carlisle and Phelps began planning their China strategy shortly after the 2004 Athens Games, at which he won six gold medals in his first attempt to break U.S. swimmer Mark Spitz's record seven golds at one Olympics.

Things got started on the wrong foot, though. Mr. Phelps pleaded guilty to driving while impaired by alcohol several months after the Athens Games. He was sentenced to 18 months' probation, profusely apologized and then, on Mr. Carlisle's advice, dropped relatively out of sight.

They continued with a plan that would allow Mr. Phelps to exploit the location of the 2008 Games in the world's most populous market. The first step Mr. Carlisle took was exposing Mr. Phelps to the Chinese consumers through an Asian company, rather than an American one. Mr. Carlisle struck a deal in the fall of 2004, just months after the Athens Games, with Matsunichi, a Hong Kong-based maker of MP3 players. That was followed up with three visits to China by Mr. Phelps, first in 2005, again in early 2007, and then a year before the Games in August 2007.

The idea over this period was to gradually build up the sponsorships, rather than sign a number quickly tied to the Beijing Games.

'What you want to avoid is the more transactional deal that emerges right before the Games and afterwards and then evaporates,' he said. 'That doesn't provide a platform to launch some of these other creative programs.'

How long will Phelps mania last, particularly now that he won't be swimming on television this evening, or anytime soon?

Mr. Phelps's record-tying seventh gold was announced at the Yankees game in New York on Friday night, prompting a standing ovation. His record-breaking race was shown in its entirety to wild cheering Saturday night at the end of an exhibition American football game of his hometown Baltimore Ravens.

But those crowds turned back to their games once the race ended. 'They're going to have to figure out a way pretty quickly to make him relevant on land,' said Mr. Swangard, the Oregon sports-marketing professor.