AWA?s Founder Remembered

Services were held on Aug. 24 for Fayetteville entrepreneur Gregg Ogden who died from complications due to a ruptured colon on Aug. 18 at a hospital in Chicago. He was 45.

Ogden was the founder of Athletic World Advertising, the nation’s largest sports schedule poster company, and in 2006 he was named vice-president/membership services for Sam’s Club, a division of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

Mark McQueen, president of AWA, said Ogden’s colon ruptured Aug. 16 and he was eventually sent to the medical center at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Ogden had survived a round with leukemia in 2001 and had recently undergone a liver transplant, but the colon rupture was unrelated, McQueen said.

AWA had sales of $100 million in 2005 and employs about 250 people in Fayetteville and Tulsa.

University of Arkansas Athletic Director Frank Broyles is an AWA board member and was a longtime friend of Ogden. Broyles said Ogden increased the company’s sales by 900 percent and is the only person he knows that took the sports poster concept nationwide.

Broyles said Ogden had worked on putting parts of the business and his personal estate in a trust a few months ago, and did not expect any interruption in AWA’s operation. 

In 2006, Ogden was named a Northwest Arkansas Business Journal “All-Decade Honoree.”

The All-Decade team was made up of 12 previous 40 Under 40 honorees who the editors of the Business Journal would “send to the closing table.”