Maybe Conseco can move into the lucrative Bass fishing market Mr. P$nk?
From Boardrooms to Bass: An Old Raider Turns Fish Mogul
5/15/2000
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Old raiders never die. They just wallow in their sinking legacies. Carl Icahn bangs like a barbarian at Nabisco's gates. Saul Steinberg struggles to salvage his empire. Ron Perelman shuffles assets, including wives. "And ," says Irwin Jacobs, 58, "is organizing bass-fishing tournaments."
A decade after he fell out of the headlines, the notorious takeover maven, known for poaching troubled giants such as Disney, Avon, and ITT, is targeting another sort of undervalued asset: the fishing industry. A few years ago Jacobs bought Operation Bass, a grass-roots operator of catch-and-release tournaments. "There are 55 million fishermen who have never been properly marketed to," he says. "I saw an opportunity."
From his hometown of Minneapolis, Jacobs has quietly built Operation Bass into a media franchise, with TV deals in the U.S. and--would you believe?--China. Tan, with his curly hair slightly graying and ever imposing at 6-foot-3, Jacobs seems boyishly eager. "I want to move bass fishing into the major leagues of sports," he says.
There's a purpose to Jacobs' passion. He grew up fishing with a cane pole, since his dad, a local junk peddler, didn't know what to do with a rod and reel. And he still fishes today. (Prize catch: 4 1/2 pounds. "You beat me," he says, when I tell him my best was a five-pound largemouth.) But Operation Bass is really a marketing vehicle for another piece of Jacobs' maritime empire. He owns the world's No. 2 maker of recreational boats, Genmar--an amalgam of a dozen brands acquired over 23 years, including Ranger, which is the bass fisherman's Ferrari.
When the business tanked in the mid-'90s, Jacobs decided he needed to persuade big marketers to spend big money to promote fishing. "My instinct told me my customer is the Wal-Mart customer," he says. He hung out at stores, watching fishermen buy rods and tackle, and he pestered Lee Scott, now Wal-Mart's CEO, about putting the company's name on his Operation Bass tournaments, even though he knew Wal-Mart never sponsored anything. "It was like this spiritual belief--that I shouldn't take no for an answer," says Jacobs. The company's wariness soon disappeared. As sponsor of the FLW and EverStart bass tournaments, Wal-Mart stages fishing events in its parking lots, broadcasts weigh-ins in its stores, and paints its logo on the racy Ranger Comanches used in competition.
Landing Wal-Mart changed everything. Jacobs has reeled in 20 more sponsors, including Coke, Fujifilm, Kellogg, Timex, and Visa. He's on the verge of striking a TV deal with Fox. Says Fox Sports CEO David Hill, an avid fisherman who broadcast Jacobs' Ranger M1 championship tournament last fall: "Can this become another Nascar? Of course it can't. It doesn't have the visceral appeal. But can it be bigger than hockey? Yes." Fox's movie arm, 20th Century Fox, has tapped a veteran producer--Gil Netter (no, we're not making this up)--to collaborate on a comedy about fishing. And the Chinese government has picked up the Wal-Mart FLW Tour show to be the first American program on its new sports network, CSBN.
All this promotion has helped lift Jacobs' boat business to profitability. (Genmar earned $41 million on $705 million in sales last year, he says.) Of course, it's not just about the money. "I couldn't make a difference in my previous life," says Jacobs, who as a raider was fast and furious, but not well focused. "I never made a lasting footprint." Who knows what steered Jacobs to calmer pursuits in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, but he's apparently liking it. "This fishing business has evolved into more than I expected," he says. "I want this to be my legacy."
--Patricia Sellers
THE TAKEOVER MAVEN IS TARGETING ANOTHER SORT OF UNDERVALUED ASSET: THE FISHING INDUSTRY |
