As a kid, he relished shooting pool with U2 and celebrating his birthdays with Bruce Springsteen – the perks of being the son of prominent concert promoter Barry Fey.
But Alan Fey didn’t want to follow in his father’s footsteps.
“I didn’t really want to be in the concert business,” said Fey, 39. “You have to pay the bands a lot of money, and if you don’t sell enough tickets …. It’s very high risk and very high reward.”
Fey’s passion for sports took him in another direction, and he built a name for himself in sports merchandising, drawing attention from the likes of Tim Leiweke, who runs Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz’s sports empire.
Leiweke recruited Fey in 2000 to launch Anschutz Entertainment Group’s sports-merchandise business. AEG owns the Staples Center, home of the National Basketball Association’s Los Angeles Lakers and Clippers.
Fey left AEG in October 2005 to start XP Events, a Denver-based sports-merchandising business. Since then, XP has landed several major clients, exclusively handling merchandise sales and development for pro franchises such as the NBA’s Phoenix Suns and the National Football League’s Jacksonville Jaguars. This year, the company scored deals to handle on-site merchandise sales for prominent events such as the NBA All-Star Game and the Tour de France bicycle race.
“Growing up playing sports all my life, I wanted to do something in sports,” said Fey, who played football and basketball and ran track in high school. “I reached a point where I knew I wasn’t going to be able to actually continue to play, but I always wanted to be involved in it.”
XP is up against a number of larger firms that handle merchandising, as well as food and beverages, which generate far more revenue for teams and venues.
Among the bigger players is Woodland Hills, Calif.-based Facilities Management Inc., which handles sales for dozens of venues, teams and events, including the coveted Super Bowl.
Also, competitors include many sports teams that handle their own merchandise sales.
Even though Fey didn’t enter the concert business because he thinks it’s risky, experts say merchandising is also perilous.
“You have to be on the cutting edge of inventory control, supply and design,” said Steve Sander, a sports business expert with Sander Marketing.
After graduating from a small college in Oregon with a degree in mass communications, Fey took an internship in the merchandise department with the Denver Nuggets in 1992.
He parlayed the internship into a full-time job and worked in the Nuggets’ retail operations until 1996.
During his time with the Nuggets, the team went through tremendous growth in merchandise sales because of a logo change and a remarkable upset of the No. 1-seeded Seattle Supersonics in the 1994 NBA playoffs as the No. 8 seed.
He left the Nuggets for the NBA league office in 1996, working there for two years until taking over as director of merchandising for the NBA’s Vancouver Grizzlies and the NHL’s Vancouver Canucks.
From 2000 to 2005, he headed AEG Merchandise, ultimately expanding the company’s focus beyond the teams that play at the Staples Center. In addition to the Lakers, AEG handled sales for teams such as the NBA’s Charlotte Bobcats and baseball’s Anaheim Angels. Fey also won a contract with the Grammys to launch a merchandise business.
Fey left AEG to start his own company when he heard that some pro teams, including the Suns, were looking at outsourcing their merchandise business.
Instead of using venture capital, which he says he had lined up, Fey decided to launch the company under the umbrella of Denver-based XP Cos. That firm, owned by Trip Wall, is an established sports-apparel manufacturer.
“It was important for the potential clients that we were going after to see that we had good foundation,” said Fey, who is XP Events’ president.
Fey took the Bobcats account with him when he started XP Events. His first major win with the new company was the Suns.
XP, which has about 30 employees, handles all aspects of merchandise sales for its teams and events, from operating stores at arenas and stadiums to developing new products.
“They just do a tremendous job representing whatever property that they’re working for. A lot of it comes right down to the personal involvement,” Suns president Rick Welts said. “They got a lot of stuff going on now, but they always make us feel like they’re here a lot.”
Fey has led the Suns to the No. 8 spot in the NBA in team merchandise sales. Suns merchandise accounted for 6 percent of NBA sales this season, up from 4.7 percent last season, according to SportsScanInfo, a Florida-based sports-industry research firm.
Though the Suns’ on-court success has been a key driver, “a big part of the credit for that (increased sales) goes to XP,” Welts said.
The success with the Suns helped XP win its first NFL contract, a deal with the Jaguars.
“Seeing what they were able to do with the Suns was a key influence in us deciding to go forward with them,” said Bill Prescott, chief financial officer for the Jaguars.
Staff writer Andy Vuong can be reached at 303-954-1209 or avuong@denverpost.com.
An A-list of clients
Teams and events that have been clients of XP Events, headed by Alan Fey, include:
Phoenix Suns
Steve Nash
Arizona
Diamondbacks
Randy Johnson
Jacksonville Jaguars
David Garrard
Florida Panthers
Ed Belfour
Charlotte Bobcats
Emeka Okafor
Tour de France
Oscar Pereiro
NBA All-Star Game
LeBron James
World Cup soccer
David Beckham
