• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, November 25, 2013

Omnicom Media Group has promoted Tom McGovern to president of its sports media and marketing division, Optimum Sports.

McGovern was a founding staffer of the unit which was launched ten years ago as the sports arm of media shop OMD. He has led the division as Managing Director since 2009 and before that co-led the unit. Since 2009, under his sole leadership the unit has grown billings by 40%.

Today, Optimum Sports, now a separate unit within Omnicom Media Group, manages about $1.5 billion annually in sports media and sponsorships for a roster of clients including Pepsi, Visa, FedEx, McDonalds, Gatorade, Frito-Lay, Dick’s Sporting Goods among others.

Many clients are shared with OMD although Optimum Sports also has a growing stable of clients that signed on first with the sports unit including Under Armour and Dick’s Sporting Goods, and which have since added other Omnicom services.

“If you look at the history of Optimum Sports over the past 10 years, there are two constants,” said OMG North America CEO Page Thompson, “double-digit annual growth and Tom McGovern. There’s no one better qualified to lead Optimum into its second decade.”

Prior to joining Optimum Sports McGovern was Director of Sports Marketing at OMD. Before that he was with sibling agency BBDO, which he joined in 1988 as an assistant National TV Buyer, rising through the ranks to svp, associate media director.

Technology, said McGovern, has been the biggest game-changer in his tenure at Optimum. It has added significantly more “bandwidth” for both brands and media companies to exploit in the sports marketing arena. “It has enabled sports properties to become media platforms,” he said. “And it has enabled media companies to offer much deeper packages to build and create greater engagement in the live content” arena.

“In a world of fragmented media and entertainment options, the live sporting event is the pinnacle in terms of valued content,” added McGovern. “The challenge and the opportunity for marketers and agencies becomes leveraging the ever expanding array of devices, platforms and technologies that deliver and augment that content and finding the proper voice for each environment.”