Larry Kent; Marketing Expert Began Licensing of NFL Products

When pro football fans pull their official John Elway jerseys out of mothballs and move their official San Francisco 49er helmet phones next to their favorite recliner in preparation for another season in front of the television, they have one man to thank for these goodies: Larry Kent.

He is not even close to being a household name, but it was Kent who first looked at team logos and saw untapped possibilities. His vision changed the business end of all professional sports.

The father of sports licensing, Kent died of heart failure at his home in Palm Beach, Fla., on July 14. He was 86.

Kent was born in Los Angeles and grew up in the San Fernando Valley. He served in the Army during World War II and afterward received a bachelor’s degree at UCLA. A pianist, Kent organized dance bands for college functions and went on to form the Larry Kent band, which, for a time, was one of the leading big bands in the West.

After college, Kent started his career in marketing and, in the 1950s, became the manager of merchandising for Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. Rogers, billed as “The King of the Cowboys,” had his own television program, made films, recorded songs and and was seen as an All-American hero.

Kent was hired by Rogers’ manager to help capitalize on this success. He spent 12 years managing and marketing the image of the couple, their dog Bullet and horses Trigger and Buttermilk. He traveled with them and came up with unique ways to market tie-in products.

Working with major retail outlets around the country, for instance, Kent installed Roy Rogers corrals in department stores. The corrals sold official Roy Rogers and Dale Evans cowboy and cowgirl attire, toys and lunch buckets, all with a Western motif. Through it all, Kent was struck by the strong identification that children--and their cash-carrying parents--had with the cowboy couple.

By the early 1960s, interest in the National Football League was beginning to mushroom. Television was pivotal to the growth of fan interest in the league as TV audiences for Sunday games shot up.

Although some franchises were selling souvenirs such as pennants on game days, there was no great vision of how to capitalize on the growing fan interest.

Kent believed that the consumer identification he had seen with Rogers and Evans could be applied to professional sports, which he himself loved.

“The NFL had been around for 42 years when Larry went to Pete Rozelle [with a plan] in late 1962,” said John Wiebusch, who is vice president of the publishing division of NFL Properties and worked with Kent.

“Larry told Pete that everyone and his brother was beginning to rip off the NFL colors, logos and trademarks and that he should license and market all of them collectively,” Wiebusch said.

Kent and Rozelle had known each other since the days when Rozelle was general manager and publicity director for the Los Angeles Rams, a team that Kent followed closely. Rozelle was known as a strong marketing man and immediately saw the wisdom in Kent’s idea of controlling the product by selling licenses to responsible manufacturers.

The owners of the league’s 14 teams agreed to assign all merchandising rights to their team’s trademarks. They also put up $1,000 each. The rights were given over for three years and were renewable.

This new arm of the league was called NFL Properties and it was headed by Kent. It was a small undertaking initially, with less than a handful of employees. The mission statement was to promote the league and its teams and exploit the trademarks.

NFL Properties showed slow growth, but no team ever had to put in more than its initial $1,000 investment to keep it afloat.

The early product line was, by today’s standards, fairly simple: bobble-head dolls for many teams, T-shirts for each team with their colors and logo, and knit caps with the team emblem. By the mid-’60s Kent had added lines of toiletries to the list and was able to persuade major retailers like Sears, Roebuck & Co. and JCPenney to carry the merchandise.

He also worked out inventive tie-in programs with food companies such as Hormel to produce training-table meals, which were served at NFL training camps. Those companies mounted the first national advertising campaigns, boasting of their products as “the official” training table foods of the National Football League.

Kent, remembered by former colleagues as a well-dressed, meticulous man, was president of NFL Properties for the first eight years of its existence. When the NFL decided to move most of the Properties division to New York from Los Angeles in early 1971, Kent chose to resign rather than leave California.

By that time, NFL Properties was bringing in about $2 to $3 million annually. The cut for each of the league’s 30 teams after last season was reportedly about $5 million, with additional profits going to charities.

It would be several years before the National Basketball Assn., National Hockey League and major league baseball would jump onto the licensing bandwagon. But now, the NBA makes about 20% of its annual revenue from licensing. Baseball teams charge their uniform style more frequently than they did 30 years ago--to capitalize on the licensing market.

“It is easy to forget that Larry Kent was a literal pioneer for all those MBAs and marketing whiz kids who have followed him over the past 50 years,” said Wiebusch.

For the rest of his career Kent worked as a consultant, often for firms that purchased sports licenses but didn’t know what to do with them.

Kent is survived by his second wife, Lisa Kent, an author of mainly children’s books, of Palm Beach; daughter Judy Carney of Darien, Conn; two grandchildren and one great-grandson. Plans for a memorial service are incomplete.