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VIDEOHarlem Globetrotters Slam-Dunk the Recession
Team's fancy footwork saves it from brink of bankruptcy.
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But less than 20 years ago, the world’s most recognizable basketball team almost went bankrupt.
After making history throughout the 1980s -- with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the signing of Lynette Woodard, the team’s first female player -- the Globetrotters were poised to climb even higher. But when International Broadcasting Corporation, the company that owned the franchise, went bankrupt in 1993, the team’s future looked uncertain.
Enter Mannie Jackson - former Globetrotter, graduate of Harvard’s advanced management program, and Honeywell’s (HON) first African-American senior executive. Jackson bought the Globetrotters for $6 million, thereby saving the brand; he sold an 80% stake in the Globetrotters to Shamrock Holdings in 2005.
Funded in 1998 by Roy Disney (Walt’s nephew and a former Disney (DIS) senior executive), Shamrock had already invested $550 million in American media and entertainment before making some high-profile hires, including Shawn Bryant, a Harvard Business School graduate with a sports marketing background, who was appointed team president and COO in 2006. Since then, Kurt Schneider, a former VP of Marketing at sports-entertainment giant World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), was brought in as CEO.
The comeback officially ramped up during the NBA All-Star Weekend in February. Globetrotter players were featured in the weekend festivities - part of the 5-year deal the team struck with the NBA’s international broadcast partners. Under its terms, the Globetrotters will appear at domestic NBA events, and the NBA will use the Globetrotters’ cachet overseas to expand its own influence.
Unsurprisingly, the team’s 2009 “Spinning the Globe” tour has been huge, with revenue up more than 18%. Fielding 2 separate Globetrotter teams on extensive touring schedules, they're slated to play 240 shows in over 200 cities by mid-April. In the tour’s first 8 weeks, the team broke 29 box-office records - and in some of the country’s largest markets, including Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Los Angeles. The tour also saw 7-figure sponsorships from companies like Campbell’s (CPB) and IHOP (DIN), and the team’s first-ever online video game, launched through Candystand.com.
The Globetrotters' success is even more incredible in light of the NBA's recent fiscal troubles: It recently distributed $200 million in aid to 12 struggling teams. There may not be a classic brand more ferociously slam-dunking the recession than the Harlem Globetrotters.
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