IMG, R&A expand longtime partnership with ambitious 10-year plan

Have you ever heard of Seven League?

The company self-admittedly “provides consultancy and agency services to accelerate the digital performance of the biggest names in sport” and has worked with everyone from the NBA and NFL to the Green Bay Packers and FC Barcelona. In 2021, Seven League became the digital arm for IMG Media and will now be integral to the game of golf due to the management company’s renewed and expanded long-standing partnership with the R&A.

“We are delighted to expand our partnership with IMG and to leverage their expertise on a deeper level as we continue to evolve as an organization,” said Martin Slumbers, Chief Executive of The R&A. “Enhancing our media and digital expertise, evolving our partnership program, ensuring our championships continue to be world-leading and diversifying our business are key to our long-term commercial success. Our purpose is to ensure that golf is thriving 50 years from now and this partnership will help us open up a whole new range of opportunities.”

The relationship between the R&A and IMG goes way back to the Mark McCormack era, and for 50-plus years IMG has viewed the R&A as one of its most prestigious clients. The two are now locked into an ambitious 10-year partnership that, starting this month, will see IMG provide digital services powered by Seven League, evolve the R&A’s production and content offerings as well as distribute international media rights.

“We’ve really focused particularly in the last year or two in how our services need to evolve in order to cater for the changing landscape in media, the changing landscape in sport and how best to serve our most important clients,” said President of IMG Media, Adam Kelly, who has been with the company for 22 years. “Where we’ve expanded has been creating a solution that really looks at the whole business from the perspective of the fan, and how we engage with the audience, and how we develop and build value.”

For the first time, IMG has embedded a team – Seven League – to put dedicated staff within the R&A to work as a resource and provide bandwidth to “supercharge” the R&A’s strategy. The expanded partnership allows for IMG and Seven League to do what they do best, which will ensure the R&A gets to focus on what it does best.

“From an RNA perspective, as we expand and deepen the relationship with IMG, it allows us to leverage all of the expertise and the enhanced capability and ultimately drive…