Have you ever wondered how Visa became the official payment partner for the FIFA World Cup, or how the Coca-Cola Corner became known for parties and Mets tickets at Citi Field?
Many of the sports brand partnerships we’re accustomed to seeing are built on the work Michael Cheney (MAcc ’86) did for Coca-Cola and other companies. Cheney helped shift sports marketing from outfield signage and jersey patches to brand partnerships that let brands tap into fans’ passion for their teams and build excitement.
Today, Cheney — whose career branched from accounting to sports marketing to tech startups — serves as founding president of the UGA Alumni Sports Industry Council.
The council is celebrating eight years of connecting sport management students in the Mary Frances Early College of Education with leaders at professional sports leagues, team organizations, and professionals who work behind the scenes in the sports business.
“Students in sport management come in, and they say, ‘I want to work in sports,” Cheney said.
“Well, what does that mean? Do you want to sell tickets? Do you want to work for a governing body? Do you want to work for Coca-Cola and do sports marketing? Do you want to work for an agency? From the beginning, we wanted to inform students of the opportunities.”
It’s the kind of guidance that might have helped Cheney find his niche in the sports business earlier.
Cheney never thought he would work in sports. He graduated with a Master of Accountancy from the University of Georgia J.M. Tull School of Accounting in 1986 and worked for a large accounting firm before securing an international financial systems role at The Coca-Cola Company.
He worked across 40 different countries in three different roles during the ’90s but came home to Atlanta to be on the team that reworked the mega-brand’s strategy around sports marketing and strategic partnerships as a director of marketing business affairs.
“One day, I’m working as a CPA in the audit department of a big firm. The next day, I’m in Poland at Coca-Cola, helping start a new business in Eastern Europe, and working all over the world,” he said. “Then I land back in Atlanta negotiating with the NHL or NBA. No one could draw that line, but I found something I was passionate about.”
In his career at Coca-Cola, he helped negotiate partnerships with the NBA, the NHL, multiple professional sports teams, the U.S. Open, Pebble Beach, Burton, Intrawest and portions of Coke’s activation of the 2002 Winter Olympics. After leaving Coca-Cola to work as a corporate partnership consultant for Visa and other firms, he was called back for a couple of years to commercialize sports marketing programs with properties like the 2018 Winter Olympics and the NCAA.
“The average person in the early 2000s saw a Coke trademark, product or brand six times a day,” Cheney said. “We didn’t need more signs in the stadiums. We needed more activation. We needed something more meaningful, something to help the brand build loyalty and grow volume.”
He helped implement the soft drink giant’s new sponsorship strategy and had tough conversations with stadium operators about how the company was no longer buying a long list of available assets, instead building a marketing plan and buying what was necessary to execute it.
This new world of marketing partnerships was a field of business and sports he hadn’t considered while he was in school. But, planned or not, he excelled and became known as the guy who could make connections.
He pulled out the Rolodex he built during the years when he came to Athens and started working with Department of Kinesiology associate professor Steven Salaga to set up the UGA Alumni Sports Industry Council.
“I had a good initial network of people that I convinced to be on this UGA Alumni Sports Industry Council,” Cheney said. “The first year, we had seven or eight. We had a core group, and we just kind of built the plane as we were taking off.”
From the beginning, the focus was to teach UGA’s sport management students how to network, highlight the different fields and roles that fall under sport management, connect students to internships and fund scholarships. The council also supports an on-campus intern each year.
“We talk about our career paths and the people that you can meet. We invite kids to connect with us on LinkedIn. We help them get internships,” Cheney said. “We do everything we can to build their base of knowledge and act as an accelerator for kids who want to have a career in sport management or sports business.”
The students have gone on to work for companies like Deloitte, Coca-Cola and many professional sports organizations — and sometimes they even return to serve on the council.
Noah Decker, who graduated in May with a BSEd in kinesiology and MS in sport management through the Double Dawg program, is heading to the Cardozo School of Law with hopes of becoming a talent management lawyer.
It was guidance from the UGA Alumni Sports Industry Council that helped him to map out his path to that goal.
“The council members have been mentors to me,” Decker said. “They’re always available to push you or connect you with someone outside of the council. These are the connections you need to make your own connections, to find the job you want. They want to help.”