Dawn Fuller has in essence taken over the family business – the Gateway Classic Sports Foundation – but she is looking outside of her family and city for ideas on how to turn it around.
The foundation was founded by her grandfather, the late Earl Wilson Jr., and she took over the reins from her father, Richard Gray, who is retiring. But she is looking around the industry for best practices to improve the foundation’s core production, the Gateway Classic football game.
The classic is coming back in 2013 – the game itself will be played on September 28 – after a year hiatus that was needed, Fuller said, to reassess the foundation’s mission and finances and to strategize for kicking off an improved Classic for its 20th anniversary.
In that regrouping last year, her predecessor as foundation president (and father) put into action one obvious way to improve the impact of a football game: attract teams that more people would get exciting about watching and supporting. He succeeded in signing Tennessee State University.
When Fuller went to Nashville to sign the contract for the 2013 Classic with Tennessee State officials, she began to form other ideas for how to improve their home game. One good idea was pretty down-home. When Fuller was asked, “When is the fish fry?” she knew that the Gateway Classic needed a fish fry – and this year, it will have one, on Friday night in the parking lot at the Edward Jones Dome.
“Tennessee State does fish fry fundraisers that draw 40,000 people,” Fuller said.
She also learned how Tennessee State works with host hotels to create game-specific branding and to hype the overall experience of the Classic. Fuller came home and worked with St. Louis hotels to do just that for Tennessee State’s appearance in St. Louis – with the team’s expected traveling fan base of 17,000.
She found a willing partner in Mark Woolford at the Union Station Doubletree, which is putting up the Tennessee State team; their band is at the Ramada Plaza and their opponent, Central State University (Ohio), is at the Millennium Hotel. Woolford is willing to break out paint in the team color of blue and, Fuller said, his bell staff will wear “whatever we want them to wear” during Classic weekend.
Fuller is not rebuilding and rebranding the Gateway Classic alone. She has a staff of five – all new on her watch, other than Arthur Tyler, director of operations. “They are all younger,” Fuller said, “idealists.” She also has hired an industry veteran as a consultant: Tony Mason, who used to run the Circle City Classic in Indianapolis.
Based on Mason’s experience with HBCUs, he brings strong rapport with alumni from both Tennessee State and Central State. He also is showing Fuller and her staff in St. Louis the importance of working closely with both the presidents and the athletic directors of the two teams. And he brings to the table experience with successful branding ideas, like the host hotel in Indianapolis that serves Circle City Margaritas on Classic weekend.
Fuller has not forgotten talent and resources in her home city. She said the Gateway Classic owes its ability to take a break last year to the continued support of Ameren, as brokered by Richard Mark, president of Ameren Illinois. Among local black-owned businesses, Andy’s Seasoning was an early supporter that has remained strong. Anheuser-Busch was an early, major sponsor that is hosting a reception this year – under the initiative of Vanessa Foster-Cooksey, senior director of community affairs at Anheuser-Busch InBev – after the relationship had cooled in recent years.
But Fuller emphasized she isn’t counting on sponsors to hold up the foundation without help. She intends for the Gateway Classic under her leadership to be a net moneymaker, in service of its mission to provide scholarships. So far this year, the foundation has made money on every event, she said.
“I want to turn the Gateway Classic into a money-maker by selling more tickets and then give the money back to St. Louis as scholarships,” she said.
Though she wants to remake the Gateway Classic, she does not want to do it in her own image. Unlike her grandfather, its founder, whose image and voice dominated the foundation and its flagship game, she does not want to become a local icon.
“I have no desire to be the face of the Gateway Classic,” she said, despite the fact that she has the classic physical beauty of a model. “I want to take a back seat to the cause.”
One of her mentors – Richard Mark – insists she can’t disappear from view entirely as president and CEO of a non-profit corporation. “Richard tells me the events I absolutely have to go to,” Fuller said. So she goes to some public events, but only for the sake of business.
“My personal business is at home,” she said, which for her is a downtown loft on Washington Avenue, where she is raising two young children, a girl and a boy, Madison and Gray. “I’d rather stay away from the chicken dinners.”
For more information, visit http://www.stlgatewayclassic.org/.
