According to the USA Shooting website, since 1995, USA Shooting has been headquartered at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. It is the national governing body for Olympic Shooting Sports in the United States. USA Shooting has approximately 5,000 members. USA Shooting implements and manages development programs and sanctions events at the local, state, regional, and national levels. The organization also publishes USA Shooting News magazine, public & member specific websites. It also houses the Olympic Shooting Center, which is the largest indoor shooting facility in the Western Hemisphere and is used for elite and resident athlete training, competitions, national championships, coaching seminars, camps, committee meetings and local clubs.
In my opinion, the key goal of USA Shooting is or ought to be training and supporting athletes that can win: gold, silver or bronze metals in the Olympics. Is USA Shooting currently attracting the industry’s best shooters? The answer is “No”. Successful athletes today must make their sport their career, not their hobby. This requires that they make a living at participating in their sport. In order to make a living, there must be prizemoney at sporting events. Currently most of the best shooters make their living competing in prize money-driven shooting events in non-Olympic shooting disciplines. Thus, if USA Shooting wants to attract these athletes, they must begin creating prize-money based shooting events and add significant prize money for World Cup and Olympic medal winners.
Sponsoring significant prize-money shooting events will require a significant increase in USA Shootings current $4.2 million operating budget. USA Shooting should adopt a new goal of increasing its operating budget by at least 100 percent each year for the next 3-5 years. How can this lofty goal be attained?
Although USA Shooting has commenced an expanded traditional fund raising process in conjunction with the US Olympic Committee (“USOC”), this traditional money raising process is not likely to create the envisioned increase in operating capital growth. New initiatives in the following areas are critical to gaining the significant growth rates:
- Attract one or more significant senior sponsors such as Home Depot, Sunkist, Redbull, Gatorade, General Mills, AT&T and or
Ford Motors; - Rebuild a definitive relationship with the NRA and the shooting
industry in general; - Lead the financial sponsorship of the development of bunker trap,
double trap and international skeet fields at existing gun ranges in
order to attract new members; - Sponsor 2-4 regional highly publicized celebrity shooting events
annually; - USA Shooting brand, trademark & logo licensing events in-sync
with the Shot Show; - Publish a “Must Have” magazine that will be of a high editorial
standard that can compete for top advertisers. The existing
competitive magazine publications include: Skeet Shooting,
Shotgun Sports, Shooting Sportsman, ClayShootingUSA and or
Garden & Gun; - Develop instructional & training books, magazine & website articles
and DVD’s authored by USA Shooting professionals that could
also be sold as cable programming content; - Significantly broaden the coaching staff and create a multi-level
coaching certification program. - Move the Colorado Springs outdoor shotgun training facilities to a
year around environment such as San Diego, where existing USOC
facilities are located; - Dramatically improve on public relations and free media
campaigns; - Despite improvements made in 2007, a more robust website should
be designed and launched; - Work to promote sporting clays and FITASC as an experimental
sport in future Olympic Games, thus broadening the membership
base; - Develop a strategy to support shooting in the U.S. Senior Olympic
Games, held in off years of the Olympic Games; - Expand the fostering of sport talent representation for top
performing athletes; and - USA Shooting should make a overt effort to support responsible
sport shooting that can be embraced by communities as an
example against gang violence.
Lastly, a new paradigm in competitive thinking is critical to the success of this growth strategy. Frankly, nothing less than domination within the industry is required. This mean that USA Shooting needs to go head-tohead with other organizations such as the American Trapshooting Association, The National Skeet Shooting Association, and the National Sporting Clays Association to compete for new members and sponsors. This new competitive paradigm should be complimented by new board members and additional senior management that have “done it before” in the shooting industry and or other sports industries.
Douglas MacLellan is an economist, venture capitalist, merchant banker and business incubation expert. MacLellan has been a catalyst for the development and financing of global businesses in the United States and throughout the world including: Bulgaria, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, China, Hungary, India, Korea, Madagascar and Russia over the past 15 years. Throughout his professional career he has served on the board of numerous companies and has provided advice and counsel on strategic planning, operational activities, corporate finance, economic policy, asset allocation and mergers & acquisitions. He has helped raise over US$700 million for development stage, start-up and mid-cap companies. MacLellan holds extensive experience developing businesses in China, including a thorough understanding of the regulatory framework and how to work with local authorities. He has substantial contacts in the Chinese government and business communities. He has been working in China since 1983 and is a recognized authority on joint venture and wholly foreign owned enterprise (WFOE) structuring. In regards to U.S. publicly listed companies experience, Mr. MacLellan has over 11 years of active audit committee chair experience that includes managing through difficult investigative matters.
Mr. MacLellan has also been active in fund raising, sports agency & sponsor relationship development for athletes competing on the US Ski Team and in USA Shooting. To date his efforts have been directed at two specific athletes, Ms. Kim Rhode the 2008 US Olympic Skeet team athlete and three-time Olympic medalist (1996 and 2004 gold medalist, 2000 bronze medalist) and Ms. Lindsey Vonn (Kildow) the 2008 World Cup Alpine Skiing Women’s overall winner and the winner of the Downhill discipline. Mr. MacLellan is also a member of the on the board of directors of Alliance for the Regional Solution to Airport Congestion (ARSAC), a group dedicated to the responsible development of airport services in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Mr., MacLellan other interests include: International Skeet Shooting, Sporting Clays Shooting, Alpine Skiing, Sailing and Glassblowing.