Glass Entertainment Management Official Website

When University of Florida grads Connie and John Tracey decided they wanted to attend the BCS Championship game, they turned to a Tennessee sports entertainment company to help them arrange game tickets and accommodations.  "I found their site on the Internet," said Connie Tracey, of Great Mills, Maryland.  The couple used Glass Entertainment Management Company, a Memphis-startup company that moved to Mt. Juliet last November.  "The customer service was great," she said. "The accommodations were fabulous. We couldn't have asked for better service.

"The price was fair," she said.

 

Glass Entertainment Management is owned and operated by Patrick Glass, who left his sales position with FedEx to open his own business four years ago.   "I started with not one single client, picked up the phone and started cold calling," Glass said.  I don't know what it's like to have a booming economy. Every sale I get is a sale I didn't have. My business is growing."

 

"All our client has to know is what time the game starts. We arrange everything from the airport transportation, hotels, transfers, tickets, flights, to the time they get back. Then we will do some type of follow-up from there to see how the event was. We're pretty customer service oriented," he said.

Glass's company makes sports travel arrangements from two clients up to 500 to see an event. He is currently marketing packages to the 2010 Masters Tournament and the Kentucky Derby.

Whether you want to see the Super Bowl or sit on millionaires row at the Kentucky Derby, Glass can arrange the trip.  "We're in the business to create an unforgettable experience," Glass said.

Tracey would use Glass's company again to make sports travel arrangements, she said.

While many of his clients are individual fans such as the Traceys, Glass's company works with other companies such as Fortune 500 and Fortune 100 companies that want to offer sports packages as incentives to their employees or as gifts to their clients, he said.

He recently put together a corporate suite at a Yankees/Mets baseball game.

"We just took a cigar company to the All Star game in St. Louis. It's a lot of work for the logistics," he said.  "My niche is selling these programs to companies," Glass said. "For us to survive in this economy, you have to have a product where you think outside of the box."

Glass, a UT Martin business school graduate, used his sales experience and business knowledge and combined those with a love of sports to create his business plan.