Octagon Worldwide announces global soccer shake-up

Following a successful World Cup, the world’s largest sponsorship consulting practice, Octagon, has announced a comprehensive restructuring of its global marketing soccer team in order to better service its clients ahead of the 2014 Fifa World Cup in Brazil.

Regarding the overhaul of Octagon's new global soccer division, Octagon Worldwide president and chief executive officer, Rick Dudley, said, "Over the last 20 years Octagon’s global football experts have provided strategic consulting and activation for more than 30 corporate sponsors at six Fifa World Cup tournaments and four European Championships and have negotiated more than US$200 million in corporate sponsorships in Europe alone.

With the expertise and knowledge we developed in South Africa and with our recent investment into Brazil we are now well placed to provide a truly global, 360-degree service to meet client’s objectives,” Dudley added.

"Just about at the moment the clock ran down on the last match in South Africa people started looking towards 2014 and the World Cup there”         

Heading the division from the company's London offices will be Phil Carling, an 11-year veteran of Octagon and one of the world's leading experts on football marketing. Carling has previously served as the head of the FA's commercial department, a position he held for four years, and served for six years as Arsenal Football Club's commercial director.

Serving directly under Carling as the newly-expanded division's senior vice president will be Clay Smith. Most recently Smith managed a record six official Fifa partnerships at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa handling programmes for clients that included Anheuser Busch, Coca-Cola, Powerade, Kia, MTN and Sony.

Additionally Octagon has announced that a crucial member of Smith's World Cup activation team, Aykan Azar, will be relocated from South Africa to London to serve as the new soccer divisions account director.

Further members of Octagon's new global soccer division  include Alexandre Leitao, Lisa Murray, Qondisa Ngwenya, Joan Cusco, Derek Aframe, Simon Wardle, Andre Schunk and Mariano Torres.

In September 2010 Octagon purchased Brazilian agency B2S, renaming it Octagon Brazil. The move is already being considered a milestone moment in the sports industry and further evidence of the importance of the region in the coming years.

Speaking to SportsPro earlier in the year Dudley said, "We got to know this group B2S, led by Alexandre Leitao, and we pitched some business together, actually business that we delivered and executed together at the World Cup in South Africa. The more we got to know each other, we realised we were very much alike in terms of what they were doing and how they were doing it and what we were doing in the rest of the world, so it just became a natural fit.

"We had a previous partnership in South America that we ended two years ago, because they were going in one direction and we were going another direction. And we always intended to be back in South America. But as 2014 was announced and then the Olympics in 2016 were announced, it just reinforced the notion that we needed to get back there and in a bigger way sooner rather than later. And it really isn’t too early, because just about at the moment the clock ran down on the last match in South Africa people started looking towards 2014 and the World Cup there.”

A full interview with Rick Dudley will appear in the December/January edition of the magainze. To subscribe to SportsPro click here.