Thanks: 
Likes: 
Dislikes: 
Leonard Ellerbe background and bio- 2017!
Not sure if this has been posted as yet, but I find Leonard Ellerbe's actions behind and in front of the screen for Mayweather Promotions to be one of distinction and top-tier service.
He may be able to handle his own after Mayweather. If I had a Fortune 500 I would hire him. He has a talent. Floyd and the Mayweather family chose right in working with Ellerbe.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ceo-l...emane-cpa-cma/
CEO: Leonard Ellerbe: The driver behind Mayweather Promotions
Published on February 28, 2017
Senay Yemane CPA, CMA
For those not so familiar with boxing, Mayweather Promotions is a promotion company funded by eleven-time world champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. The promotion company began in 2007 after Floyd had a fallout with boxing kingpin Bob Arum and Top Rank Promotions. In a shrewd business move, Floyd Mayweather spent $750,000 to get himself out of his contract with Top Rank Promotions.
As the story goes. Leonard Ellerbe long-time confidante and CEO of Mayweather Promotions, states “Floyd walked into Top Rank’s office, handed them a check and the rest is history.” CEO Leonard Ellerbe and his adviser Al Haymon tore up the blueprint on boxing economics, and now Mayweather essentially functions as his own promoter. The motto of Mayweather promotions is ‘The Past, Present & Future of Sports’ and in this blog post I will focus on the strategy & execution undertaken by CEO Leonard Ellerbe to take Mayweather Promotions to extreme heights in the business of sports.
Accomplishments of Mayweather Promotions
· Forbes has named Mayweather the top-earning athlete in the world
· The fight of century between Floyd and Manny Pacqiao is believed to have sold around 5.2 million PPV and generated close to 700 million in revenue. Mayweather cut of that is 60%, so 420 million.
· Mayweather’s Sept. 2013 bout against Canelo Alvarez. The fight had 2.25 million PPV buys and $153 million in PPV revenue. Mayweather had a guarantee of $41.5 million and earned more than $30 million on top of that from his cut of the fight’s revenue.
· Not including earnings from the fight of the century, Mayweather has netted over $420 million in earnings during his career. More than 90% of that total earned since he started calling his own shots.
· The company has generated more than $1 billion in pay-per-view revenues.
· Mayweather Promotions makes money off every ticket, beer and hot dog sold in the MGM Grand, every pay-per-view sale, every movie theater providing a closed-circuit broadcast, not to mention lucrative foreign rights
· What makes this so remarkable: Ellerbe — “This isn’t a sport that everybody watches. People get to see Floyd twice a year. But we got a model that works”
Quotes
mas·ter·mind
ˈmastərˌmīnd/
noun
noun: mastermind; plural noun: masterminds
a person with an outstanding intellect
“It takes brains to want to surround yourself with brains” This a quote often said by Mayweather.
Mayweather said in a recent interview. “I want to surround myself with the best businessmen that I can possibly surround myself with. “
“Leonard is a very shrewd businessman.” — Floyd
Leonard Ellerbe
Ellerbe’s own business background isn’t clear. He says he earned a master’s degree in business but doesn’t say from where. “I don’t like to reveal everything about myself,” he said, noting that much of his acumen stems from on-the-job experience. This differs from the expectation that someone in his role would have a degree or MBA from an Ivy league school. He’s a businessman with an unconventional background. I don’t believe we will see another CEO in the business of sports that worked his way from the ground up.
He grew up in Northeast Washington, off Benning Road, in a two-bedroom, first-floor apartment. He slept head-to-toe in the same bed with a younger brother. His mother cleaned other people’s houses and his father cleaned other people’s cars. After highschool, it is written that he enlisted in the Air Force. It is still unknown if he went to college. After the Air Force, he returned to the DC area to start personal training clients. It was during this time he build his relationship with the Mayweather family.
Mayweather explained "[Ellerbe] left a six-figure paying job to come work for me,”. He would fly out to Vegas on his own dime to help train the young fighter, eventually rolling the dice and relocating permanently “Could’ve been making $3,000 a month. Now, he’s a multimillionaire now.”
What does the CEO of Mayweather Promotion do?
Ellerbe handles the operations, which include oversight of finance and accounting as well as day-to-day details of the company’s different portfolios (sports, entertainment, personal appearances, apparel, etc.), while Haymon has an advisory role but is involved in every business negotiation for fights as well as divisions of the company. Promoters such as Bob Arum were used as a tool to learn the business of boxing.
Business Acumen
The two skills I feel Ellerbe employs to be successful as CEO:
· Vision
· Leverage
Vision
It is the vision Ellerbe and Mayweather have shared together since those early days — a $100 million payday for one night of boxing.
“I had a vision early on what Floyd could accomplish,” Ellerbe said. “We talked about him being the first fighter to make $100 million in a night. We talked about this 15 years ago.”
Floyd's old promoter wanted him to be the next Oscar De La Hoya but he didn’t want to be the next De La Hoya. Mayweather became one of the first fighters to have his own promotion.
Ellerbe is credited with helping Mayweather graduate from boxer to brand, extending the fighter’s profile beyond the sport with spots on “Dancing with the Stars” and WWE broadcasts. He had encouraged Mayweather to go on “Dancing With the Stars” in 2007 to broaden his appeal beyond boxing fans. With an understanding of the power of his brand, Mayweather was part of WrestleMania the following year. Mayweather built a massive social media following that now counts 7.1 million Twitter and 10 million Facebook fans and a social networking team so that he is in constant contact with his fans. “It was created from a marketing perspective. Like All Access on Showtime, it’s another way to share what he is doing. He is in tune with his fans,” says Ellerbe. “He’s the face of everything we do.” And it is no secret; he’s making a lot of money in the process.
When Mayweather was dancing on prime-time TV, Ellerbe was backstage picking the brain of Mark Cuban, another contestant. “We would get lunch every day [with Cuban]. Everybody else spent their time going to various places to eat. [Mayweather] and I sat in the next trailer with Mark Cuban every day".
Leverage
Floyd Mayweather spent his majority of his early boxing career being build up by HBO as the ‘pretty boy’ Mayweather. It was when Mayweather broke off Bob Arum he was able to change his brand to the controversial ‘Money Mayweather’ character. Moreover, HBO promoted the De La Hoya fight with Floyd that shattered records with 2.4 million buys. On the 24/7 tv show surrounding for De La Hoya Vs Mayweather, he introduced the world to Money Mayweather. Entertaining the viewers with various stunts such as stealing De La Hoya gym bag. Mayweather victory in the fight was a key to becoming one of the biggest names in sports.
I am going to give Ellerbe credit for recognizing that Showtime was willing to pay more than HBO to secure Mayweather and gain market share over their rival HBO in the world of combat sports.
After some negotiations with both HBO and Showtime, Mayweather promotions landed a blockbuster six-fight deal with Showtime. The deal, with an estimated value of $200 million to $250 million, includes promotional tie-ins to CBS (Showtime’s parent company) entities including the NCAA Tournament and the Final Four. Mayweather also receives executive producer control of his own All Access show and a number of other incentives tied to the deal. The pact guaranteed him at least $32 million for each fight with potentially much more and will go down as the richest contract in the history of sports. The move was a no-brainer for Showtime, which was trying to raise the stakes in its blood feud with HBO.
I love this tweet because it shows how masterful Ellerbe can be when it comes to negotiating the best deal for the parties he’s representing. A Harvard grad represents one of the finest educations in America. A lawyer with a Harvard background should be able to out-maneuver someone with a hidden educational background that worked his way up the company. Ellerbe stated in an interview that Boxing doesn’t have a handbook you just have to learn by attending events and picking things up from the right people.
In 2017, I expect more big things as they sold out their first promoted event at the Barclay Center in Brooklyn, New York. One of their signed fighters Gervonta “Tank” Davis became one of the youngest current champion in the world. Another Mayweather Promotion fighter Badou Jack had a potential fight of the year and is looking to carry that momentum into a bigger fights at the light heavyweight division. Not to mention, there is lots of chatter for a potential billion-dollar fight between Connor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather.
 |
|
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Freedom
Bookmarks