Sports Business Awards

Ace In The Hole: PGA Tour Superstore may not still exist if Blank hadn’t stepped in. Now it’s thriving.

Journal - 05/06/2024

Arthur M. Blank is most well known in the sports world for owning the Atlanta Falcons, but it was his tenure at The Home Depot, not the NFL, that led to one of his other sports acquisitions: the PGA Tour Superstore. Blank was approached in the mid-2000s...

Building A Foundation: Co-founding The Home Depot crystallized Blank’s view of customer relationships

Journal - 05/06/2024

Arthur M. Blank was nobody’s idea of a future billionaire when he graduated with an accounting degree from Babson College in 1963. He spent five years at an accounting firm before joining his family’s pharmacy business, which his mother sold to the Daylin Corporation in 1968. Two years later,...

Milestones: The Career Of Arthur M. Blank

Journal - 05/06/2024

1963 ■ Graduates from Babson College in three years. 1963-67 Arthur Young & Co., senior accountant. 1968 ■ Sherry Pharmaceutical Co. (founded by...

Stock Answer: One way Blank decided Home Depot could boost its business was to sponsor a NASCAR team

Journal - 05/06/2024

Arthur M. Blank had not yet joined the NFL world when he went looking for a new way to deepen customer loyalty to The Home Depot, only to have a Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee convince him that the best way to do so was with a NASCAR...

The Arthur Blank I Know

Journal - 05/06/2024

I didn’t know Arthur M. Blank before interviewing with Atlanta United. He likes to say that he understood only about half of what I said with my English accent, so he called me back for a second interview just to find out the other half. There was a...

A Goal Fulfilled: Atlanta wasn’t known as a soccer hotbed — until Blank brought an MLS team to town

Journal - 05/06/2024

Long before Atlanta United or Mercedes-Benz Stadium existed, Arthur M. Blank had a vision. While in Aspen, Colo., at a conference hosted by longtime private equity giant Forstmann Little & Co. during the mid-2000s, he pitched MLS Commissioner Don Garber on bringing a team to Atlanta. MLS...

A Price Worth Paying: Blank ensured that his customers wouldn’t be gouged for food, and the result was another business success

Journal - 05/06/2024

Arthur M. Blank Sports and Entertainment controlled almost no aspect of the fan experience at the Georgia Dome, the downtown Atlanta venue where its Falcons played from 1992 to 2016. Obtaining improvements was an incremental, almost painful experience that Falcons owner Arthur Blank likened to multiple visits...

The McLendon Foundation thrives on creating opportunity and building community

Journal - 05/06/2024

Diana Camarillo has fond memories of the 2022 McLendon Leadership Weekend at the University of Kansas, where she was part of The McLendon Foundation cohort that gathered to participate in various programming aimed at professional development. The cohort competed in a 24-hour case study competition, with small groups...