Sadly to say I would have to deal with more ugly human realities over the course of the next year in the Mall San Pablo and have to buy a ticket for a Dutch girl that was fired by Millennium, one of the companies that was partnered with Claude. The girl was the mother of three children that was verified by her former employer, another client of mine at Royal Sports in Curacao.
As for business my main responsibility in Costa Rica during May of 2001 was to present to Claude a national electronic media campaign. I went down to the VIP room and Claude was as usual very quiet and stoic. I presented him with the Jim Rome Show, Fox Sports Radio and support by local radio with strategy of using all of their brands to fill up category limits for online gaming companies advertising on the stations to eliminate the competition along with utilizing the top local talent again eliminating competition while getting the first right of refusal for 2002. Neither, Claude or Shaun had any idea who Jim Rome was so I explained to them their familiarity with Rome was irrelevant and all that mattered was the 2 million avid sports junkies that listened to Rome every week. Then I compared Rome to print media that meant more than two issues of Maxim Magazine which had about a 750,000 circulation back then and the monthly costs for doing Rome was less than Maxim. That caught their interest and upon completing my proposal Claude lifted one finger and immediately Shaun gasped with eyes bulging out stunned that I had just gotten a one million dollar budget. Seconds later Claude raised a second than a third finger. I went down there really just hoping to get the budget for The Jim Rome Show of $500,000. I didn’t want to be embarrassed like I was in 1999 with Time Warner and Sports Illustrated. Getting $3,000,000 was beyond my wildest dreams and I was pre-planning in my mind to buy a house in the south bay of Los Angeles and taking my girlfriend and her son on vacation once I completed the 2001 campaign. My agreement with Claude was I would get 10% cash commission off of the top and I would get paid once the media was paid. The media was to be paid directly. The normal agency commission was 15% but my proposal with figures I received from the media were just too impressive. I believed this was going to be a financially lucrative year for all of the sacrifices I had made in the past for my business.
One thing for sure when it came to working with sports celebrities the Ripner’s were clueless. They requested a national endorser for the Rome show. I originally brought them the “Golden Boy”; NFL Hall of Famer, former Heisman Trophy winner out of Notre Dame and Vince Lombardi favorite Paul Hornung. When I first left Paul Hornung a message and he called back I immediately answered his every question with “Mr. Hornung”. The guy is a legend and I was in awe. All football fans should know him and those involved in sports gambling should know Paul Hornung since he was suspended for a season in the 1960’s for gambling. I told Shaun and Claude, Hornung wanted $100,000 for the endorsement deal but I had a hunch he would settle for $50,000. Shaun started laughing saying that no one was worth $100,000 to endorse and that they could get handicappers from Las Vegas to endorse BOS for a fraction of the price. This is true but then again you get what you pay for. Pay a premium for Paul Hornung who can make national news at anytime during the football season as the voice of Notre Dame Football or get Jim Fiest the annoying little fella that sends out obnoxious mailers to prospective gamblers around the country that has gotten more than a few guys in trouble from wives, parents and girlfriends.
Shaun and Claude had no idea who I was talking about in Paul Hornung and I am not sure they knew anything about Heisman Trophies, Notre Dame, the Packers or Vince Lombardi. To make matters worse Claude had this love affair for a Las Vegas handicapper with a slicked back thick head of hair and a cable television show with the production quality on par with the Saturday Night Live skit, “Wayne’s World”. The handicapper named Wayne allegedly got lucky with one of the customer service girls and Doogie would constantly ask the girl, “How was Wayne’s root?” With Mr. Las Vegas on the horizon my mind was now working hard to convince Claude to go with option number two, Steve “Mongo” McMichael. Mongo was fresh off an all-pro NFL career and was the top afternoon radio sports talk show host in Chicago after playing for years with the Bears. “Mongo” achieved national broadcasting fame with the World Wrestling Federation watched by millions on TNT and TBS. I ended up getting my way with a bit of concessions. The concessions were Mr. Las Vegas would do the television endorsements and Randy White the former Hall of Fame Defensive Tackle from the Dallas Cowboys would split the Rome show spots with “Mongo”. Now Randy has great football credentials but when it came to personality even in Texas, “Mongo” a former All-American at the University of Texas outdistanced Randy White by about 100-1 when it came to signing up new customers. As for the Mr. Vegas television experiment, it failed so miserably that BOS failed to capitalize on the power of television advertising which would launch Party Poker to the top of the food chain in the world of online gaming while BOS would plummet in the years to come after a key event in 2003. Had television shown signs of prominence than I believe Claude would have invested heavily into television. I made it a point to stay away from television due to the strategy which was similar to the early radio with bland ad creative. TV though in my opinion is the ultimate medium for gaining social acceptance in the US market.
No comments:
Post a Comment