OCTOBER 27, 2004

Who are these iSe guys?

The announcement by the GPWC that it has appointed International Sports and Entertainment (iSe) AG to prepare for the planned new Grand Prix Championship in 2008 has led to much noise about how it will never work but one needs to take a look at the organization chosen to see that the GPWC is actually very serious.

International Sports and Entertainment (iSe) AG is an international sports marketing firm which was established at the end of 2002 as a joint venture between Japan's Dentsu and France's Publicis. Each of these huge marketing companies owns 45% of the business with the remaining 10% being owned by New York-based sports marketing and consulting agency Sports Mondial Inc. The aim was for Dentsu to contribute its sports marketing expertise and Publicis to supply the global client service network that it had developed. iSe AG is based in Switzerland and is run by chief executive George Taylor, the founder of Sports Mondial Inc.

The company has already established a number of subsidiaries, the most important of which is iSe-Hospitality AG, which is headed by France's Jacques Lambert. He is a former prefect of the Savoie region of France who became involved in sports management during the Winter Olympics at Albertville and went on to head the organising committee of the World Cup in Paris in 1998. A graduate of the Ecole Nationale d'Administration, Lambert is a highly-experienced sports manager. His chief operating officer is American Hank Steinbrecher, one of the pioneers of soccer marketing in the United States after spending six years as a sports marketing executive with Gatorade. He organized the World Cup in the United States in 1994.

The company has already been appointed to run operations for FIFA for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Germany competition.