Across the experiential and sports agency space this week, there was an absolute cacophony of reaction to Nick Kelly departing the top sponsorship job at Verizon after 27 months to establish his own brand-side shop: Encore Sports & Entertainment.
Reaction in the agency buzzosphere varied from surprise to bewilderment, with many questioning why he would leave what they termed “the top job in sponsorship.” Certainly, it’s one of the biggest on the brand side.
Verizon, with around $135 billion in annual revenue, is normally referenced within this newsletter as one of the largest -- if not the biggest -- domestic sports media spenders. Its sponsorship portfolio is also one of the largest, and it includes rights with the NFL, FIFA World Cup, NASCAR, NHL, Team Penske in IndyCar (along with the Indianapolis 500) and scores of team and venue deals.
How tough is it to walk away from a marketing arsenal armed with so many megatons? Especially when you helped build up supply?
Kelly, a member of the SBJ Forty Under 40 Hall of Fame, received calls this week after the news broke from a number of agency heads, extraordinarily curious about his plans to switch sides of table and enter their business. Surely, they coveted his skills and client connections, but some felt it was the wrong direction.
Inventing and manufacturing his own widgets was a principal force behind Kelly leaving a company with around 100,000 employees. “Working for myself was a driving factor,” Kelly told me yesterday.
Kelly says he’s opening with clients in hand, but has thus far been mum on those identities. It’s difficult to believe that he won’t eventually get some business from Verizon, if not also from Anheuser-Busch InBev, where he once headed U.S. sports marketing.
While Momentum Worldwide has a longtime agency relationship with Verizon, and executed its recent Super Bowl FanFest, Kelly also hired a half-dozen or more agencies to work on other parts of the Verizon portfolio.
Some, or all, of those will certainly be anxious as to their future with Verizon. An exec at one of those shops questioned, “How can he hire all of these agencies and then compete with them?”
It’s an unusual situation, at best.
Singular focus
Maybe Kelly should have called his new agency “Brands Only” instead. “The role I’m looking at is a brand consultancy within the word of sports, but focused on the buy side, so there are no conflicts. And given where I’m coming from, the focus is on working with the marketing leads,” he said. “The hope is to assist brands with sponsorships directly from conception to budget sign-off from senior management.”
By all accounts, Kelly left Verizon in the good graces of that senior management. An email making the rounds at Verizon agencies from CMO Leslie Berland declared in part, “I am so grateful for [Nick’s] many contributions over the last two years and excited to see him embark on his next chapter. Nick and his team transformed how customers engage with our brand by creating industry-first experiences, like Super Bowl FanFest and Barbie StreamHouse, as well as relaunching Verizon Access. They also led the way for Verizon to become the official network of the FIFA World Cup and expanded our partnerships with the NFL, NH, Live Nation and NASCAR, whole also honing other partnerships to maximize value and ROI.”
Kelly cited Genesco Sports Enterprises, which services Verizon’s NFL and 2026 FIFA World Cup activations, as a model he’s following, since that agency is solely focused on brands and eschews selling properties. Worthy of note: Genesco is not part of a holding company Tower of Babel.
Despite the excess of private equity financing eager (maybe even desperate?) to get into sports, Kelly said it’s too soon to dilute his embryonic agency ownership position.
Moving from buy side to sell side, as Kelly is attempting, is always a precarious proposition, even if you headed two of the biggest sponsorship organizations in the land. Kelly promises more details on his offering and clients sometime down the road. In the meantime, “The one sales pitch we have right now is that you get me,” he said, with a laugh.
We’ll find out if that’s enough for Kelly’s Encore.
