North America Sports Media Expands

• 
  SAVE
• 
  SHARE
• 
  TEXT SIZE
• 
  PRINT
• 
  COMMENT
• 
  PDF

. October 14, 2008

NEW YORK, NY, DECEMBER 15, 2006. North America Sports Media Inc. (NASM) is officially announcing the acquisition of Premiere Sports Travel L.L.C., Premiere Plus L.L.C. and Gotickets.com L.L.C., affiliated companies that sell travel, hospitality and ticket packages for major sporting and entertainment events worldwide. NASM is a sports marketing company that was formed by private equity firm Pfingsten Partners, L.L.C., and veteran sports marketing specialist Christopher J. Brennan in 2004.

Premiere Sports Travel (www.sportstravel.com) assembles and markets NASCAR, college football, college bowl game and other sports event packages to individual fans and university alumni. Premiere Plus is dedicated primarily to selling NASCAR packages to the corporate hospitality market. Gotickets.com (www.gotickets.com) is one of the country's top online secondary ticket brokers with an emphasis on sports and entertainment tickets.

Premiere's operations complement and significantly expand the product and customer base of NASM's Tuchman Sports Enterprises, Inc. (TSE) division, a provider of customized incentive and brand-building sports marketing programs for Fortune 1000 clients with a focus on Super Bowl, Kentucky Derby, Masters Golf Tournament and NCAA Final Four offerings.

The addition of Premiere's NASCAR and college sports packages will provide year-round cross-selling opportunities to corporate customers, while Premiere and Gotickets' concentration on consumer sales through the Internet will extend NASM's reach to the retail channel.

The acquisition will triple NASM's revenues, yield potential ticket procurement savings through Gotickets.com, provide an outlet for helping corporate customers liquidate excess season tickets, and expand the company's purchasing power in areas such as tickets, hotels, transportation and catering.

"The acquisition of TSE in January 2006 was the first step in building a broad multimedia platform for sports promotion and marketing. This transaction is our next step in executing that strategy, and it makes us one of the major players in the industry," said Brennan, NASM's president and CEO. "With the Premiere group of companies, we are gaining important new product offerings, a new customer channel, and key synergies that will accelerate the growth of our business. This is clearly a case where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts."

"Bigger is better in this industry if you have the right partner," said Scott Jernigan, founder of the Premiere group of companies. "North America Sports Media is an ideal fit for us, both because of Chris Brennan's sports marketing experience and because its TSE division has offerings and customers that complement but do not duplicate our own."

"Joining forces with NASM, TSE and Pfingsten will strengthen our product line, and provide volume savings and capital that will help us take the company to the next level," said Brian Wilder, president of Premiere Sports Travel. "This is a strong partnership that will significantly raise our profile in the industry."

The Premiere group of companies was recently named one of the 50 fastest-growing private companies in the North Carolina Research Triangle by Triangle Publications, PriceWaterhouseCoopers and The Council of Entrepreneurial Development.

All three companies in the Premiere group will retain their current management and staff, and continue to operate from their headquarters in Cary, North Carolina. The acquisition closed on November 22. Terms were not disclosed.