Winner Takes All

Everyone Loves a Winner

Especially when the winner is a six-foot-tall blonde who can hit a serve at 120 miles per hour. That’s what tennis fans saw in 2004, when Maria Sharapova waltzed onto the court at Wimbledon and knocked reigning queen Serena Williams off her block. What goes around may come around, and one year’s winner on the court may be the next year’s “also ran.” But one thing is sure. When it comes to making the most of the good years and beyond, Sharapova comes in second to none.

At just 17 years old, Sharapova became the third youngest Wimbledon champion in history. Three years later, with two Grand Slam championships under Sharapova’s belt, Maria Mania shows no signs of slowing down. Earning an estimated $20 million from endorsement deals alone, Sharapova has been listed by Forbes as one of the richest female athletes in the world. People magazine counted her among the “50 Most Beautiful People” in its 2005 issue. She’s appeared on Jay Leno, Regis and Kelly, and MTV. She’s been featured on the covers of Teen Vogue and Sports Illustrated. It takes shrewd and careful planning to keep the career of a global sports megastar on track, and behind the accolades, offers, and general chaos is Sharapova’s longtime agent, Max Eisenbud. He and Sharapova share a common vision for her future, one grounded in the game that made her famous. After all, Sharapova didn’t forsake her childhood and teen years of grueling six-hour practices to succumb to a whirlwind of parties and modeling gigs. After she won Wimbledon, she was as hungry as ever, telling the press she wanted to be number one in the world and that she wanted to win Wimbledon “many, many times.”

It’s not easy balancing Sharapova’s tennis game with her marketing game, but Eisenbud has negotiated it so successfully that Harvard Business School has launched a case study to analyze the “marketing of Maria.” Eisenbud says the process involves a small army. “I get a lot of credit because I’m her agent, but my job is to try to get all the experts moving. That’s the one thing that I did. We just have a lot of great people, and it’s really the genius of the International Marketing Group (IMG).”

IMG is a powerhouse media, sports, and entertainment agency that counts among its clients some of the world’s most famous brands, media outlets, athletes, entertainers, models, and fashion designers. With more than 2,600 employees in more than 30 countries, IMG wields its influence over sponsorships, media programming, brand management, rights representation, sports marketing, and global licensing and sales.

Early Promise

Growing up a prodigy is an atypical experience, and Sharapova is matter-of-fact about having missed out on the normal childhood and teenage experiences. “It’s hard to miss it when you’ve never really had it,” she told Forbes in 2005. Instead of having homeroom and boyfriends, Sharapova grew up on the court, committing to long hours of practice and training, nursing the occasional injury, and chasing wins. It was an unlikely existence for a girl who was born in Nyagan, Siberia, a town not exactly famous for turning out tennis superstars in 1987. Yet Sharapova’s father, Yuri, put a racket in her hand when she was a toddler, and at the tender age of six she traveled to Moscow to participate in an intensive tennis clinic. Although he worked construction, Yuri was better off than most families in Nyagan. He spent the small fortune of $700 to fly with his daughter to the U.S. They had no contacts and knew almost no English. Sharapova would not see her mother (who was unable to obtain a visa) for the next two years. All they had was the name of a famous tennis program in Florida. The Nick Bollettieri Academy, an IMG-owned breeding ground for elite tennis players, was famous for its alumni: Agassi, Seles, and Sampras. When she first applied, however, she was turned away. Sorry, too young.

For the next two years, Yuri scraped by, taking whatever jobs he could and using most of the money to pay for tennis lessons here and there. In 1995 they went back to Bollettieri. Sharapova was 9 years old and thin as a rail, but her skills were superior to everyone in her peer group. The academy offered her a full scholarship for training, coaching, and room and board. She was quickly able to hold her own against players nearly a decade older. They didn’t like that much, but according to Bollettieri, Sharapova was “tough as can be.” He saw in her the potential of a Monica Seles or Steffi Graf.

Agent, Meet Client

Max Eisenbud has a work ethic not unlike his famous client. He spent 11 months “begging” his way into a job at IMG. When he approached them, he was operating his own company, managing rock bands and promoting concerts. He had played tennis in college, and he itched to get back to the sport. At one of his own charity events, he met some agents from IMG. He read up on the company and became hooked. This was what he wanted. He called the IMG offices again and again, asking for a chance. “I think, finally, they were like, ‘Hire him and he’ll leave us alone.’”

A few months after he was hired, IMG sent him to Bollettieri to check out the junior tennis program. There, he met an 11-year-old girl. She was clearly a standout player. “Very, very skinny. Very special. Very driven. Unbelievable work ethic. Have you ever seen a video of Tiger Woods hitting golf balls when he was a young kid? [Maria] was like that.”

Winning Wimbledon

Sharapova, of course, turned out to be a dream client. In March of 2002, at age 14, she debuted on the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) rankings at 532. By the end of the year, she had closed the gap to 186. The next year she became the youngest winner on the WTA Tour, and by 2004 she was ranked among the top 25 players in the world. In fact, 2004 turned out to be a banner year all around. In April her world ranking hit 19. She was still relatively unknown when she arrived at Wimbledon, where she spent one hour and 14 minutes sparring with six-time Grand Slam champion Serena Williams. No matter how skilled, most players tremble when Williams walks onto a court decked out in what she calls her “gladiator dress.” But despite a sore throat that had her in a panic the night before the big game, Sharapova projected nothing but confidence during the match. An audience of 13,000 tennis fans watched, amazed, as Sharapova served up a game fierce enough to make the reigning champ fall once on her rear end and smash the ball into her own nose during a volley.

“She played her best tennis today,” Williams told the Sunday Herald following the game. “She doesn’t back off. She keeps giving it her all.” (Their rivalry continues to this day. In January, Williams, now 25, beat Sharapova at the Australian Open, securing her first title in two years.)

Sharapova’s stunning Wimbledon win opened the media floodgates. The next day, Eisenbud’s phone blew up with calls from fashion magazines wanting photo shoots, talk shows wanting interviews, and companies wanting endorsements. The hundreds of phone calls were just a taste of the chaos that goes along with repping a global superstar, but Eisenbud was more than up for the challenge. After Sharapova had won her first adult tournament in Japan at age 16, he gradually built up her platform. To avoid premature exposure, he booked few interviews and held off on seeking deals. But even Eisenbud figured Sharapova wouldn’t have a shot at Wimbledon until at least age 19. No matter – his groundwork left Sharapova poised to take immediate advantage of her abrupt celebrity status.

“We have a Global Sales Group at IMG with a group of 20 or 30 executives around the world,” Eisenbud explains. “Their whole responsibility is to have relationships with corporations. So, these guys are out selling IMG assets. That’s really the reason we were able to do a good job with Maria, because we were prepared for this moment. We were educating companies. We were educating Canon, which is one of her sponsors. We were educating Tag Heuer. All of these companies knew who Maria was, so the minute she won Wimbledon, they were ready to act.”

The selection of sponsors was part of the careful management of Sharapova’s image. “We wanted to associate Maria with companies that stand for the same qualities that she stands for. Companies that are cool and hip. Champions with style and grace. We identify companies that fit that.” Currently Sharapova has deals with 11 companies, including Nike, Prince, Motorola, Canon, Tag Heuer, Tropicana, Landrover, Colgate, Samantha Thavasa (a Japanese fashion designer), and Gatorade. Recently she paired with Parlux Fragrances to launch her own eponymous perfume ($49 for 3.4 fluid ounces) made from English rose petals, pomegranate, vanilla, and Wimbledon grass (yes, actual Wimbledon grass).

The Art of Saying “No”

When it comes to promoting herself, Sharapova displays a rare maturity and focus. True, she’s appeared on her share of magazine covers and television shows. But she’s rejected far more offers than she’s accepted. Some very cool offers, too. Red carpet appearances. Trips on private jets. Celebrity-studded parties.

“Maria was able to say ‘no’ because she knew if she was doing all of those things, she’d be distracted and she wouldn’t be able to focus on her tennis,” Eisenbud explains. “And that’s Maria. That’s really her heart, at her core. That’s the reason she has been able to be successful on and off the court. It’s the reason she was able to win Wimbledon at 17 and then become number one in the world 17 months later, and then two years later win another Grand Slam. Because she stayed true to that schedule. If you’re doing well on the court, the off-the-court stuff comes. She was smart enough at a young age to know that.”

And the trail is littered with would-be greats who let fame get in the way of their game. The industry tsk-tsks the early overexposure of Jennifer Capriati. Hard-core tennis fans turn their noses up at Anna Kournikova for letting her performance slip to pursue modeling and acting jobs. In fact, the initial comparisons to Kournikova – a fellow blond, Russian beauty – seemed to irk Sharapova. In her post-Wimbledon interviews, she told reporters she didn’t “want to have to answer to those comparisons anymore.” Eisenbud has rebuffed countless offers from magazines wanting to feature Sharapova on their covers. “You can imagine the offers we had for her to do shoots in bathing suits.”

Eventually they agreed to an offer from Sports Illustrated, for the annual swimsuit issue. “She’s an athlete,” says Eisenbud. “And that’s the place you do it if you’re going to do it. It was very important for us to stay very classy and elegant.” When asked about how she feels about her looks, Sharapova heads the conversation off at the pass, saying bluntly that she can’t control the opinions or thoughts of others. In one interview a reporter asked her directly what her favorite part of her body was. Her long legs, perhaps? She simply smiled and said, “my brain.”

Eisenbud admits that it was difficult to turn away magazines that offered the cover in 60 countries, with total creative control. “That’s tough to lay off of,” he says. “It’s pretty powerful. But we just stayed very true to what we know she is about. I think that’s really important when you’re marketing.”

Knowing who you are and what you’re about is paramount in order to avoid even the subtlest marketing missteps. It’s a mistake Andre Agassi said he made when he signed an endorsement deal with Canon years ago. In 2000, he admitted to the Cincinnati Enquirer that he wished he had thought harder about what it meant to sign on to their slogan “Image Is Everything,” saying it didn’t truly reflect who he was as a player or person. Even while shooting the campaign, he said, it “never quite occurred to me what was being said or expressed.” Eisenbud does his best to make sure that Sharapova, who has also signed a deal with Canon, doesn’t learn such lessons the hard way.

Eisenbud still spends a fair amount of time fielding proposals from companies wanting a face for endorsements, but anyone who doesn’t bend to her schedule or fit the right profile gets the ax. “There are a lot of companies that negotiate for more days,” says Eisenbud. “But we’re up-front. We say, ‘Listen, Maria’s objective is to win the Grand Slam, and she can only give you two or three days. Some companies needed six days, and those deals didn’t work. But the companies that got Maria’s vision were able to work it.”

The Time Factor

Her endorsements alone could be a full-time job, but Eisenberg is meticulous about striking a balance between business and sports commitments. Long before the Wimbledon win, Eisenbud sought the advice of fellow IMG agent Mark Steinberg, who skillfully navigates the high-flying career of Tiger Woods.

“Mark was nice enough to spend enough time with me to explain some of the things he does with Tiger,” Eisenbud says. “I think the main thing I asked Mark is, ‘How do you guys maintain the time factor so he can continue to play great golf and be this great champion?’ Because that’s what Maria wanted. Maria wants to be number one in the world, and continue to win Grand Slams.”

Following the Woods model, Eisenbud laid out a calendar and crossed out every week Sharapova would be playing tournaments. Then he crossed out every week before and after each tournament.

“All of those weeks crossed out are weeks that she won’t do photo shoots,” he says. “Then we saw that there are probably anywhere between 12 to 15 days a year that Maria can give to sponsors that wouldn’t conflict with her tennis and her training and her desire to be number one in the world.” That leaves each sponsor two or three days to work with the tennis idol. Each year Eisenbud organizes a retreat for the sponsors, where they “make sure nobody is tripping over each other.”

“Everybody knows each other,” he says. “Everybody is rooting for everyone. If Nike does a commercial, it helps Canon. Everybody is helping each other.”

Aside from the glitz and the high-profile showdowns at the net, Sharapova shares a lot in common with any teenage girl. In red-carpet photos, Sharapova emanates a confident and cool grace, but her diary-like confessionals on her Website (www.maria sharapova.com) are full of exclamation points, the occasional misspelling, and many “haha!”s. On the site, Sharapova seems willing to share almost anything with her fans. She discusses her injuries, losses on the court, security searches at the airport, trips to museums, stealing burgers off her coach’s plate at dinner, conversations with her parents, and what she thinks about the latest novel she’s reading. Although she’s fearless on the court, she has the normal insecurities. She wrote on her site that she was “shocked” to be invited to the Vanity Fair Oscar party, and “petrified that no one would even know who I was when I would get out of the car.” (They knew.) Eisenbud says candor and sincerity are in her genes. “When she goes to interviews, she tells the truth,” he says. “Sometimes she says things that maybe aren’t what you are supposed to say, but she says it how it is.”

She is also dauntingly positive and forward-thinking. In interviews, she often bemoans a loss and in the next breath talks about upcoming games with optimism. She emanates a down-to-earth and grounded attitude that fans and marketers both respond to.

Eisenbud believes Sharapova’s dedication to the sport that made her famous is what keeps everyone enamored. “Honestly, [she’s] a millionaire over and over,” Eisenbud says. “But when you see her on the court, she’s scraping and falling and fighting. People who are working 12-hour days and watching this girl on the court just playing for everything—that’s the reason they like her. She’s committed to being a great champion.”