About Us
Athlete360 is a talent agency that encompasses a 360° perspective of athletics through agents and athletes who have experience and knowledge in a wide range of sports including football, hockey, golf, basketball, baseball, and soccer. In addition, our agency prides itself on having a diverse and inclusive environment for our agents and the athletes we represent. As such, we take an intersectional approach by representing athletes from several different backgrounds, sexual orientations and identities. For instance, some athletes we represent from different races include Leremy Jin, an asian NBA player, Christina Dunn, a black National Women’s Soccer League player, and Stitch Marner, a caucasian NHL player. Our diversity is also seen in the representation of athletes with different sexual orientations and identities, including Jerome Guy a homosexual soccer player, and Beamer Baffin who is the first transgender athlete in the MLB. Our employees also constitute these different categories of diversity. At Athlete360, we incorporate diversity through a work environment that provides equal opportunity to everyone involved, regardless of individual differences. We focus heavily on differences that are socially meaningful, such as gender, sexual orientation, race, to name a few. Focussing on meaningful differences allows us to influence how people treat others which positively influences operations within our company. Inclusion is incorporated through our policies and leadership that encourage differences so staff and clients are identified as unique individuals, but all together are part of a larger group. In tandem, diversity and inclusiveness allow us to be desirable and have high retention of athletes and employees, enhanced decision making, and better group processes. (1)
Another feature of Athlete360 that separates us from other companies alike is our Sport for Development and Peace program for the empowerment of women. This is a one year internship opportunity for a young woman in her early twenties to work and learn from our agents on organizational management within our system. This program was inspired by the United Nations through their acknowledgment of how sport can contribute to the empowerment of women, and developed using their policies. Athlete360 adopted this in order to increase gender equality, not only within our agency, but within the broader spectrum of sports, altogether. (2)
Our agency uses a combination of scientific management and human relations strategies, or organizational behaviour, to run our business successfully.At Athlete360, we consider our agency as a family. We have a full time mental health professional that is available to our staff and clients because we understand the importance of their well being on the successes they have. Our managers at Athlete360 know each of our employees on a personal level, which cannot be said for all sports agencies. We have great leaders in our agency, and they understand that the best way to motivate their employees is to care for them and empower them through the way they treat the people in our company. (3)
Here at Athlete360 we focus specifically on brand/image development of our clients. We believe that the best way to add value to our clients is through their personal brand development. By enhancing our athlete’s brand we can increase the regularity of and diversity of revenue streams. (4) For instance, promoting our client’s image as wholesome and holistic leads to more attractive sponsorship opportunities. As an organization we achieve this brand development through our product-centric sports marketing framework where our client is the product. This framework is founded on four fundamental areas of consideration with the goal of providing the most effective representation for our clients. (5)
The first aspect of our framework is the identification of marketing opportunities. This consists of in depth analysis of all potential organizations including the internal and external environments of said organizations. A part of this is taking into consideration the consumer market that a specific organization draws from and the relative competitiveness of the market based on other organizations’ proximity.
The second aspect of our framework is determining an athlete specific marketing strategy. This means identifying our clients strengths and deciding whether we are targeting an organization’s management or the surrounding consumer market with promotional exposure in order to increase our athlete’s value.
The third aspect of the framework is planning an athlete specific marketing mix using what we refer to as “the four P’s”; price, product, promotion and place. (6) When considering price and product the first step is to assess what we have as a product and assign a minimum value as to what we believe our athlete is worth in the market. Once we have established what our athlete is worth as a team we determine promotional efforts and advertising strategies to improve our client’s value.
The final step to the planning phase of our framework is finding the best place possible for our athlete. This means finding an organization that is competitive in comfort, competition and compensation ensuring our athletes will experience success athletically and financially. The final aspect of our framework is the implementation and oversight of the athlete specific marketing strategy. This entire process is headed by one of our sport specialized agents who is familiar with the current climate of our client’s sport. Because of the universality and adaptability of this framework to meet desired outcomes of each individual client, it allows us at Athlete360 to achieve the marketing goals of a wide range of athletes across demographics of race, gender and sexual orientation.
​
​
Sources Cited
1. https://owl.uwo.ca/access/content/group/bbf21b89-cc56-4a7a-a76e-cdf80caca8d4/Diversity.pdf
4. https://owl.uwo.ca/access/content/group/bbf21b89-cc56-4a7a-a76e-cdf80caca8d4/Brand%20Activation.pdf