Passion into Profit

The annals of business history abound with tales of enterprising individuals who translated a passion into profit. But when it comes to proverbial rags-to-riches stories, few rival Robert Tuchman’s for cultural insightfulness.

Tuchman, the CEO of TSE Sports and Entertainment, built a million-dollar company on the realization that large numbers of people were so drawn to the spectacle of sport that they would pay charitably for the chance to attend high-profile athletic events.

Tuchman attended Boston University, where his passion for sports and dreams of becoming a sportscaster began. After graduation, he worked by day as a stockbroker trainee in Manhattan and by night as an announcer on SportsPhone, a pre-Internet era, telephone-based update service. Wanting to be more connected to the action, Tuchman ditched his day job and, in 1996, started one of the first companies to focus on sports and entertainment travel.

The business began as a one-man operation out of Tuchman’s New York apartment. That first year, TSE served 100 clients and generated $300,000 in revenue with trips for the well-heeled to the Super Bowl, Final Four, and Masters golf tournament. Ten years later, and after an expansion into athletic and celebrity marketing, event planning, and promotional work, TSE serves more than 3,000 guests and generates revenues approaching $20 million. The company also hosts programs at the Academy Awards, on the U.S. film festival circuit, and for a slew of other premier entertainment events. In 2003, Inc. magazine named TSE one of the 500 fastest-growing companies in the U.S.; in 2005, Special Events Magazine named it to its list of the top 50 event-planning companies.

Fresh from soirees at the Final Four, the Masters, and the Kentucky Derby, Tuchman agreed to sit down with Hemispheres and field a few questions about what life is like for the beautiful people, the best way for fans to score good tickets, and seeing Tug McGraw in his underwear.

Q: Your events cater to people with a taste for the finer things in life. How do you entertain and impress a group with that background at something like the World Series?

A: The series is an interesting and tough event because it all happens so late. You never know who’s going to be in it. So what we do is wait until the All-Star break and see which teams are in first place. We’ll go out and reserve hotels in all their cities in the event that any of those teams get in. This is all done four months in advance—in July. Then we’ll start developing different packages.

Q: Such as?

A: Some packages might include a celebrity golf or poker tournament, depending on the weather where we’ll be. Obviously, if they’re playing in New York, golf might not work. And we’ll contact some legends who played for the teams to set up meet-and-greets. Say it’s the Mets in the series; we might bring in Keith Hernandez and Mookie Wilson. Then we’ll shuttle people in a luxury motor coach or limousine to the game, and we always set up the hotel and meals and have some type of gift bag that will include a baseball they can get autographed by those players. For most of our World Series programs, we secure two games, and we’ll give the person the option of catching a game in the host city or the first away game during the week.

Q: So ease and access are as big a draw as caviar and champagne?

A: Exactly. That’s our basic package, and that’s for the person who just wants to go to the game and have everything taken care of for them. Now we do have clients who say, “We want a luxury box, and we want to be staying at the Ritz-Carlton, and we want to have dinner at so-and-so,” and we’ll create those upscale, high-end programs. We really can customize for the clients exactly how they want it.

Q: Who are the lucky VIPs who get to indulge in these trips?

A: It’s mostly vice president level and above. We’ve had everyone from general salespeople to CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. You also have the wealthy individuals who might want to take their friends or family to the event. But for the most part, it’s corporations entertaining clients or rewarding their own people.

Q: When celebrity athletes stop by one of your meet-and-greets, what kind of money do they take home?

A: Depending upon who they are, a lot of former players can earn between $5,000 and $10,000 for two hours of work. Some of the older names might only get $3,000. If it’s a big-time player, like Derek Jeter or Barry Bonds in baseball, or Joe Montana or Jim Kelly in football, you’re looking at $30,000 to $80,000. It’s a wide range. Sometimes we’re able to get big names for a few thousand dollars just because they’re already coming to the event.

Q: And what does it cost for your clients to live the high life?

A: A basic Super Bowl package will cost anywhere from $5,000 to $7,500 per person. And then you can add things like a party or maybe a dinner with a former NFL great, so it can climb up. A little less expensive are the World Series, the baseball All-Star game, the Final Four. Those packages range from about $3,000 to $5,000 per person, but of course you can still get a lot of add-ons.

Q: What accounts for the price range for the different events?

A: The Super Bowl’s the premier event. Events that attract the eyeballs of advertisers—the Super Bowl, the Masters, the Daytona 500—are just bigger events. But you could get a World Series, say, with the Yankees and Mets that could be bigger than the Super Bowl. With the championships, it’s all about which teams are playing.

Q: You’re mixing folks from two different worlds—jocks from the locker room and CEOs from the boardroom. Do you coach the athletes on what they should say and how they should act when they’re around your clients?

A: Most of these guys are so well-schooled in talking to corporate America they just know what to do. But we have to know who the right person is for the situation, one who will do well at a trade show, who will do well with clients, who’s the big motivational speaker. The name will get the clients there, like “Yogi Berra’s going to show up.” But it’s much more important to have a person who deals with the client correctly than a big name, because there have been occasions where we’ve had some big names at events who have been awful.

Q: How do you get your hands on all those tickets?

A: We work with the teams, the leagues, and the individual players and coaches. That’s really the key in terms of finding access. It’s funny, but getting tickets is probably the second-hardest thing. The hardest is the hotel space for the major events. We go out five, six years in advance. We’re already getting a hotel for Miami the next time the Super Bowl is there in 2010. The tickets will always be out there. You might not know the cost, but you can always get tickets. With the hotels, that means putting down the deposits now, which obviously is difficult on cash flow, but we have to do that for the events like the Final Four, the Super Bowl, and the Daytona 500.

Q: When you first started, was it more difficult getting tickets?

A: Definitely. This business is really all about connections, knowing the right people, knowing who to trust, knowing who can get things done for you. When I was starting out, I took a lot of lumps in terms of dealing with people I thought could deliver certain things that, come game time, didn’t happen. We’ve never failed to deliver a seat or a package for an event, but there have been times when we’ve had to go out-of-pocket for hundreds of thousands of dollars just to make sure a client was happy.

Q: How exciting is it for you to be able to watch fans mingle with the athletes they worship?

A: That’s my favorite part. We’ve had Johnny Bench, Gary Carter, Cal Ripken. We had Tug McGraw a bunch of times before he passed away. And he was such a character. He showed up at one of our events in his underwear, which was pretty funny. He was totally out of his mind, but he was just such a good person, and everyone took a liking to him.

Q: What events are the most memorable for you?

A: There’ve been a bunch, but by far our Masters golf tournament just blows me away. Since there really are no major hotels in Augusta, our lodging solution is to put people in deluxe private homes, million-dollar mansions. We’ve had everyone from the CEO of a major Fortune 500 corporation to [The Who’s] Roger Daltry. It’s really the high end of the high end.

Q: Is there a difference between the people who engage you to package a trip for them to the World Series versus those who want to go to the Super Bowl?

A: The Super Bowl is a corporate event, so the fans are much more corporate, not leaning either way. With a World Series or a Final Four, on the other hand, you get a lot more fan influence. Clients can be corporate types or just individuals, but they have a fan interest in terms of cheering for one of the teams. Then there’s golf. It’s very corporate, but there’s a lot of passion there because these people follow golf. That’s their market.

Q: Is it safe to say your job beats being a stockbroker?

A: You know what? When I first started, that’s exactly what I said. And my friends would say, “Oh, you get to go to this; you get to go to that.” But what they don’t understand is that while we’re there, if someone wants golf times or they want cigars at 3 in the morning, whatever it is, we’re taking care of the client. We’re on for four or five days. But I definitely can’t complain. I love being around sports and especially the excitement from these events. As I always say, I’d rather be doing this than unloading crates at the dock.