Mark McCormack

Mark Hume McCormack was a remarkable American lawyer, sports agent, and writer. He founded and chaired International Management Group, now known as IMG, which is an international management organization that serves sports figures and celebrities. His contributions to the industry make him a worthy enshrine in the National Sports Agent Hall of Fame as a "true pioneer."

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The role of sports agents has evolved significantly since the 1960s, when attorney Mark McCormack's work with golfer Arnold Palmer changed the way sponsors dealt with professional athletes. Today, the profession is dominated by high-profile individuals working for large sports management agencies. While the 1996 film Jerry Maguire famously the sports agent as a contract negotiator, the reality is far more sophisticated, with agents playing a crucial role in sports management and marketing. McCormack, who founded International Management Group (IMG), is widely credited with ushering in the modern era of sports management and marketing.

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Mark McCormack was born and raised in Chicago where he developed a passion for the game of golf as a young boy. When he was 6, he was hit by a car and fractured his skull, and his doctor barred him from contact sports. 

While attending The College of William and Mary, he placed number one on the golf team and thereafter played well enough to qualify for the British and U.S. Amateur Championships and the U.S. Open.

After receiving a law degree from Yale University and accepting a position in a prestigious Cleveland law firm, McCormack remained in touch with several professional golfers he had befriended as a player. He soon began arranging exhibitions for his friends as a sideline and offered them legal advice on a casual basis. Then, in an agreement sealed by a handshake, Arnold Palmer became McCormack's first full-time athlete-client and a new chapter in the business of sports was speedily written. 

While launching his business in the United States, McCormack understood the global nature of sport and built IMG into a global powerhouse with offices in over 40 countries.  He was in China before Richard Nixon, launching both the Chinese Football League and Chinese Basketball Association.  From Soccer to Badminton to Snooker to Cricket to Rugby, his footprint and influence was felt in every major international sport. 

McCormack wrote several books, including The Terrible Truth About Lawyers and What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School, which spent 21 consecutive weeks at #1 on The New York Times Best Seller list. His annual publication The World of Professional Golf, first published in 1967, included an (unofficial) world ranking system. In his book What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School, McCormack tells a fictionalized story of a Harvard study in which the three percent of graduates who had clear, written goals earned ten times as much as the 97 percent who didn't have clear, written goals. McCormack and numerous motivational speakers, including Tony Robbins and Brian Tracy, have used various versions of this story in their presentations.

Given sport's ever-increasing influence in our culture, the London Sunday Times listed McCormack as one of the 1000 people who most influenced the world in the twentieth century.

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McCormack met his second wife Betsy Nagelsen-McCormack, a two-time Australian Open doubles champion and a Wimbledon doubles finalist, while she was a business client. They married in 1986. The couple founded the McCormack–Nagelsen Tennis Center at the College of William & Mary, which houses the ITA Women's Collegiate Tennis Hall of Fame.

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McCormack died at a New York hospital on May 16, 2003, age 72, from complications after suffering a cardiac event four months earlier that left him in a coma. His second wife, Betsy Nagelsen, their daughter, Maggie, and children from his first marriage to Nancy Breckenridge McCormack, Todd and Leslie, later shared $750 million, when the family's shares in IMG were sold.​​

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