According to a Tweet by former SAB contributor and current senior writer for Sport Techie Mark Burns, Independent Sports & Entertainment (ISE) has hired Chris Grancio as its Chief Marketing Officer.
Grancio joins ISE after serving as the General Manager of Global Basketball at adidas, where he was responsible for everything basketball related including product innovation, design and development, global merchandising and marketing. Grancio is familiar with the business of basketball, both as a former player and from working first hand with some of the NBA’s biggest names. According to a Forbes article, also by Mark Burns, after graduating from Harvard with a Bachelor’s of Economics in 1997, Grancio played professional basketball overseas in Europe for a few years before entering the business world.
His first role was as an entry-level sports marketing position with Staples, which led to different sales and marketing positions throughout the industry, but gradually saw getting farther away from sports. A self-proclaimed “sneakerhead” who owned over 100 pairs of shoes growing up, it seemed that it was fate that New Balance came calling in 2004. After two years, he joined adidas, which was his most recent company before ISE.
In his time with adidas, Grancio saw the brand evolve in international markets with NBA stars such as Derrick Rose, Damian Lillard, and most recently James Harden all having their own signature shoes with the company.
Independent Sports & Entertainment was in the news this summer as it rebranded itself from Relativity Sports, a story which can be found here. According to its website, ISE is an integrated sports, media, entertainment and management company that represents more than 300 of the best athletes in the NBA, NFL and MLB. As one of the largest sports agencies in the world, ISE provides each client with superior contract negotiation capabilities, as well as business, marketing and brand opportunities globally.
Given Grancio’s global marketing background with one of the leading sports apparel companies, ISE’s clients will be in good hands with their marketing deals.