August 23, 2016
The BB&T Center for the Study of Capitalism was delighted to have Mr. Ben Sutton speak to the MA students on Monday, August 15, 2016.
Ben C. Sutton, Jr. is Chairman Emeritus of IMG College, the largest collegiate sports marketing company in the nation. IMG College employs more than 700 people in nearly 100 offices throughout the United States. The Division manages multi-media rights for many leading universities and collegiate athletic conferences, which includes corporate sponsorships, experiential platforms, radio and television, publishing, digital platforms, and managing official athletic websites. It also serves as the exclusive licensing agency for more than 200 collegiate properties, including the Bowl Championship Series, The Rose Bowl, the Heisman Trophy and the NCAA. IMG College Seating now serves more than 130 school partners, and through a joint venture with Learfield, IMG Learfield Ticket Solutions is the leading outbound sales company serving more than 30 collegiate partners.
Prior to IMG, which in 2014 was acquired by WME, the world’s leading entertainment and media agency, Sutton founded ISP Sports in April of 1992 and grew the business from its first partner in Wake Forest to more than 60 NCAA colleges and conferences. With this dramatic growth, ISP became the nation’s leader in collegiate sports marketing and Sutton’s innovations in cultivating and growing the value of collegiate sports multi-media assets became common place in the industry.
In the summer of 2010, Sutton helped lead the acquisition of ISP Sports by IMG Worldwide. The merger combined the nation’s largest collegiate sports marketing company in ISP, with a strong stable of collegiate brands in IMG’s existing college division to form not only the largest collegiate sports marketing company in America, but one of the biggest companies in all of sports business.
Before he founded ISP, Sutton spent nine years at Wake Forest University, earning national attention for developing one of the most proactive sports marketing programs in the country and for helping to initiate the Atlantic Coast Conference collective marketing effort.
A graduate of Wake Forest and the Wake Forest School of Law, Sutton serves on numerous boards, including those for Wake Forest University, The Reagan Foundation, and Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.