Moneyball
More money for sports teams means better facilities and better athletes, and David Johnston, a 1991 graduate of Washington and Lee University, is in the business of helping schools maximize their revenues from their athletic programs.
David and his partner, Rich Kein, offer multimedia rights management through the firm they founded in 2011 called Rockbridge Sports (yes, it’s named after Rockbridge county), based in Charlottesville. Their business model offers incremental revenue growth and it is particularly focused on digital content.
In an interview posted on the Forbes SportsMoney website, the two explain why they think their approach is best. Unlike the bigger companies, such as CBS Collegiate Sports Properties, where both worked for eight years, Rockbridge Sports offers long-term partnerships to help athletic directors understand the complexities and evolution of multimedia rights management space.
David began his career as an account executive for corporate sales and director of licensing and merchandising for the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Teams, working closely with team and Olympic sponsors, suppliers and licensees leading up to the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City. He entered the collegiate multimedia rights industry as the general sales manager of Terrapin Sports Marketing and moved to CBS’s senior management team, where he was responsible for the overall operation, growth and financial success of the company and was directly engaged in the acquisition and start-up of 10 new collegiate and media partnerships.
He lives in Charlottesville, with his wife Kelly and three daughters, Talley, Emma and Virginia Leigh.
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