Gregory Moore, commissioner, Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC) is a former athlete, sports attorney, author, and minor league sports executive. This introduction is a mouthful. It highlights the exact level of experience that an organization like the SIAC needs to advance and strengthen their strategic objectives. The objectives are to increase enrollment and member school visibility, identify new revenue opportunities, maximize student-athlete experience and engage fans in its 400,000 alumni pool.
In the first year of his tenure, Moore achieved some noteworthy accomplishments including:
- Increasing SIAC Basketball Tournament attendance almost ten fold (from 1200 in 2009 to over 11,000 in 2010)
- Increasing SIAC Championship game attendance from 200 in 2009 to 4000 to 2010
- Re-newing corporate partnership with Coca-Cola for three years.
- Launching a new www.siac.com website
- Creating of new media platforms (0-over 3000 combined fans and followers on Facebook and Twitter) and over 70 SIAC videos on YouTube approaching 20,000 views.
- Spearheading rebranding of SIAC (New Logo, Tag Line, PSA’s, etc.)
- Bringing back the Pioneer Bowl
Moore attended IEG’s annual conference in Chicago where he highlighted his objectives to continue to advance SIAC’s mission. Read what he has to say:
How do conferences like IEG align with best practices to benefit SIAC?
In my view, its critically important to periodically attend conferences like the IEG Sponsorship Summit and listen to industry thought leaders discuss cutting edge topics related to maximizing opportunities related to both marketing and securing sponsor support for SIAC institutions within the context of today’s economic climate.
Name three reasons why it benefits your business to attend the conference.
1) To listen to what prospective rights holders have to say about what they look for when evaluating sponsorship opportunities.
2) To get a ” macro” sense of the current industry climate and learn about emerging trends that properties need to be aware of in order to position their assets in a manner that allow the property to both retain and enhance its value proposition to prospective sponsors.
3) Relationship building with a purpose. To hopefully create and cultivate relationships that can be monetized in the near and long term future.
What special sponsorship projects has the SIAC undertaken this year?
Recently, the SIAC became the first NCAA conference to maintain all member school websites on a common digital platform. By aggregating the unique visitors the come to all 14 school websites. We are able to deliver an audience of over 100,000 unique visitors per month to potential sponsors and over one million visitors per year.
This is a major accomplishment and much credit must be accorded to the SIAC Council of Presidents who voted unanimously to support this groundbreaking initiative. This year we were able to attract Lowe’s, a Fortune 50 corporation as one of the first sponsors to support the platform.
What is the mission of the SIAC brand?
The overarching mission of the SIAC is to reinforce the critical role SIAC member schools and their student-athletes play in communities throughout the Southeastern United States. Not only do HBCU sporting events such as football classics bring communities, families and alumni together year after year but our schools have a combined economic impact of over 1 billion dollars in the Southeast alone. This fact is extremely important in view of the fact that according the the United States Census, the poverty rate increased from 13.1 percent in 2000 to 15.1 percent in 2010. Distressingly however, approximately 64% of this 2% increase occurred in the Southeastern part of the United States, and interestingly enough, the exact footprint where SIAC schools are making their most significant economic impact.
Do you envision a day when HBCU’s will compete for an win NCAA national championships?
I absolutely believe it will happen. The SIAC has over a dozen former players in the NFL including most recent Baltimore Raven Super Bowl starters Jacoby Jones (Lane College) and Ramon Harewood (Morehouse College). Last month, Sammie Hill out of Stillman College, signed a $8 million contract with the Tennessee Titans.
