Foxwood Sports Steps Into HS Marketing Void

The October demise of Athletic World Advertising, once the world’s largest sports schedule poster company, has opened the door for a new company to revise the business model.

Foxwood Sports opened in early November at the old Lindsey Real Estate building in Fayetteville and has been busy stepping into the marketing void and signing up schools for next fall.

Foxwood employs around seven now, with the potential to reach as many as two dozen once the company is in full swing. Foxwood has purchased Varsity Advertising of Russellville to take advantage of its reach in the Arkansas River Valley. The parent company of Foxwood is CrossWood Associates Inc., a global commodities trading company owned by Steve Renfro.

Foxwood Sports will be competing with Game On, the successor company to AWA created by Mark McQueen, a former AWA manager who formed Game On in May and has since taken on many former AWA employees.

AWA’s financial situation deteriorated in its final months, leading it to stop making stock payments to the late founder Gregg Ogden’s brother Brick Ogden, who then defaulted on a loan from The Bank of Fayetteville that used his share payments as collateral.

AWA also got behind in its rebate payments to area high schools – by as much as $3 million according to some reports – leaving a bad taste with many administrators.

Tatum Owenby, 29, a Greenwood native and a former Arkansas Razorback football player, said not only is his company committed to fulfilling its obligations, it will expand the business model beyond posters to help high schools better leverage their brands to increase revenue in tightening economic times. Owenby has been involved in the online advertising business for the last four years.

“We’re primarily a sports fundraising company,” Owneby said. “Our vision is to go outside the lines of what’s been the norm for 25 years, which is just a poster business.

“We have a much greater vision to generate rebates for athletic departments through online components and different print formats.”