In 1970 Donald Dell, Frank Craighill, Lee Fentress and Ray Benton founded the Washington, D.C. law firm, Dell, Craighill, Fentress & Benton, one of the first sports law and sports management firms in the world. Dell's friendships made through his U.S. Davis Cup captainship allowed him and his University of Virginia law school friend Craighill, and partners, to begin their sports agent careers with clients such as Arthur Ashe and Stan Smith. Dell was also instrumental in the founding of the Association of Tennis Professionals and is considered one of the fathers of sports marketing and the sports agent business. The firm enjoyed great success during the formation of the ATP and would become ProServ in 1976. As ProServ evolved, difficulties between partners arose and in 1982, Craighill, Fentress, and W. Dean Smith left to found Advantage International. Craighill became Managing Director and the firm rose to become an industry rival of fellow full service agency IMG in the 1990s. Craighill came to realize that Advantage's historical 20% growth rate since its founding would not be sustainable in the long run, due to the increasing complexity and competition in the athlete representation industry, without the addition of greater capital and resources. This led to the sale of Advantage and its leadership including President, Phil de Picciotto, Mickey Lawler, and Jeff Austin to Interpublic Group. In 1997, Interpublic group successfully completed the merger of Advantage and other agencies to form Octagon.
IPG
In 1970 Sir Frank Lowe was the head of the advertising agencyCollett Dickenson Pearce. In 1979 Lowe arranged sponsorship of the Queen's Club Championships which became known as the Stella Artois tournament, an arrangement that lasted almost 30 years. After leaving CDP in 1981 to form his own agency, Lowe Howard-Spink, which eventually became Lowe & Partners Worldwide, he sold his agency to one of the world's largest advertising and marketing communications groups, Interpublic Group and joined the board of the US Giant. In 1997, Sir Lowe convinced the IPG board to build the first "marketing-led sports agency." To do this, IPG bought a group of sports agencies which included APA and Advantage International.
Recent years
The two divisions which make up Octagon are Athletes and Personalities, and Marketing. With Athletes and Personalities primarily broken down into sport divisions and Marketing division primarily handling corporate sponsorship and event management. Operating out of 50 offices in 22 different countries, Octagon manages the sports and entertainment marketing efforts of some of the world's most prestigious brands, including BMW, MasterCard, Doosan, Cisco and AB InBev. In June 2008, Octagon was awarded top sports agency honors by and was named the inaugural Sports Agency of the Year and President, Phil de Picciotto, was named amongst the 50 most influential in sports list. Then, in October of the same year, Octagon acquired a large portion of sports management firm CSMG, including their baseball, coaches, broadcast, legends and marketing divisions, and added CSMG founder Alan Nero and 20 other staff. The following February, Octagon Digital launched a sports content aggregator for Twitter posts named Twackle. Octagon currently operates with over 800 employees around the globe, with an equal number of athlete and personality clients, and manages upwards of 13,400 events per year. Current clients include athletes Michael Phelps, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Simone Biles, Stephen Curry, Elena Delle Donne, Rudy Gay, Jimmie Johnson, Vladimir Tarasenko, Jeanette Lee and Félix Hernández, and personalities including Bill Cowher, Brian Billick, Herm Edwards, and Emmitt Smith. Octagon was named 2016 Best in Talent Representation by the SportsBusiness Journal. In September 2016, Octagon announced a new logo and new brand positioning called 'What's Next?' in reflection of who the agency is today and where it's headed in the future. The rebrand featured a new global site that was coded and developed entirely in-house. On May 23, 2018, Octagon won the Best Talent Representation of the Year Award at the Sports Business Journal Awards event in New York City. Other winners in different categories that evening included MLS, Arthur Blank, AEG and the Vegas Golden Knights.
