History
IMG was founded by Mark McCormack, an American lawyer who spotted the potential for athletes to make large incomes from endorsement in the television age; he signed golfer Arnold Palmer as his first client. McCormack died in 2003. In 2004 Forstmann Little led by Theodore J. Forstmann acquired the company; Forstmann served as chairman and CEO until his death in late 2011.
In 2006, IMG Media acquired nunet AG, a provider of mobile TV services to mobile network operators around the world. Clients of nunet's mobile TV CMS currently include: Vodafone, Proximus, Vodacom, Mobilkom A1. Content distributed currently includes MTV, Fashion TV, Eurosport, and Discovery Networks.
In November 2007, IMG acquired Kentucky-based Host Communications, which had multiple business units with services ranging from sports marketing and broadcasting to the management of associations and non-profit organizations. The sports-related businesses were combined with the Collegiate Licensing Company (CLC) to form IMG College, while the association management division was renamed IMG Associations.
IMG was founded and headquartered in Downtown Cleveland in complex built in 1965 diagonally across the street from Erieview Tower. When the IMG Center was built, it originally housed the Cuyahoga Saving Bank, which was acquired by Charter One Bank in 1998. In 1997, IMG renovated the Cuyahoga Savings Bank Building and renamed it IMG Center. At street level they have a projection screen showing their businesses, events and clients, with images ranging from Formula One racing to professional golfers. Following the acquisition of IMG by Forstmann Little, the headquarters remained in Cleveland, Ohio for several years until officially relocating to its new parent company's existing offices in New York, in 2010. The firm continues to operate its major U.S. office at the former Cleveland headquarters.
On October 15, 2010, IMG acquired ISP, the multimedia rights holder for more than 50 universities based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. As a result of the acquisition, IMG College retained ISP's former headquarters in Winston-Salem.
On December 3, 2012, The Premier League announced that IMG Media had agreed a new three-year deal with the Premier League for aeroplanes and ships rights.
IMG is a privately owned company.
Read more about this topic: IMG (company)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Look through the whole history of countries professing the Romish religion, and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed principle of action—that the end will sanction any means.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“the future is simply nothing at all. Nothing has happened to the present by becoming past except that fresh slices of existence have been added to the total history of the world. The past is thus as real as the present.”
—Charlie Dunbar Broad (1887–1971)