Avish Sood shows off his Big Initiative Award
from the University of Michigan in Oct. 2013. PHOTO: MICHIGAN SPORT BUSINESS CONFERENCE

No need to blame the current economy for the high unemployment rate. Apparently only those who can market themselves survive!

The story of a recent George Brown College (GBC) graduate Avish Sood, 23, speaks for itself.

“Recently, I’ve been receiving a lot of success while in the sport and event marketing program. I have been chosen as one of the top 10 sports business student professionals in North America by the University of Michigan. Would love to chat about it.” This was the message I got in my inbox from Sood.

This self-promoting email didn’t leave bad feelings; on the contrary I was dying to meet this guy who seemed to have more initiative than his peers. With the confidently relaxed energy of success Sood met my expectations at his new workplace at the Toronto 2015 Pan/Parapan American Games.

After completing his bachelor in commerce degree from University of Toronto (UofT), Sood got his postgrad at GBC and is currently taking an online course from the University of Virginia while participating in numerous North American sport conferences and other sport-related events.

As a young and rising professional in sports business Sood already obtained multiple honours and awards on his shelf: Big Initiative Award from University of Michigan, Eighth Annual Ivy Sports Symposium of Harvard University handbook participant, and an award from sportsnetworker.com.

Growing up playing basketball, Sood discovered different sides of his favorite game while arranging his first sports industry conference at UofT, which is the largest student-run sports conference in Canada. It had about 260 students attend last year.

“Growing up I always saw ads of Samsung, Panasonic or whatever company it was, and I wondered why they were paying so much money to be involved with NBA or NHL?” said Sood. “While I was in university I started a sports marketing conference with the couple of friends. And we pretty much made all the brand development, all the marketing efforts, all the sponsorship.”

“We started it from scratch with zero money. I enjoyed what I was doing as I got to deal with different kinds of professionals, not only in sports but also in all facets of marketing, business and finance,” said Sood.

Tying his interest in sports to business, Sood worked as a junior accountant at Rogers Sportsnet (previously Score Television Network) and later did a prolonged co-op at the Toronto Blue Jays.

“I decided to use my financial background as a strength when applying for jobs in marketing,” said Sood. “So rather than a typical four months co-op I did eight and half months because of the length of baseball season. I worked at the sponsorship side of the business, making sales presentations for directors, for new pitches, for recaps. I decided to stay there full-time. Once I graduated from GBC, I got the current job.”

Being given lots of responsibilities at his young age Sood believes that he is in right place at the right time. “My first day I was doing a presentation and my boss wants to see how I go on the fly,” he said. “I really like the fact that it’s the largest scale event that Toronto has ever seen, it’s the biggest multi-sport event ever held in Canada. I want to take this experience to learn the sponsorship side, how it is to handle such a big event, go to the client side and see what their expectations are.”

Keeping an eye on technology and staying tech savvy, a month ago Sood and his friend Darryn Renaud launched an online resource, The Sponsorship Space, dedicated to sports sponsorship trends in North America. The project is doing great as in short time it has already got about 40 CEO’s regularly following it around the world.

“The way I see it: if you want to go to a certain field, you want to go there full-heartedly,” said Sood. “You want to make sure that all your background is in one aspect of the business. Make yourself an expert in one area, rather than being a jack of all trades. So when opportunity comes up, it’s yours.”