The long shot.

• Author: Payton, Kathy
• Position: Television sports syndication contracts of Raycom Inc.

Raycom became a powerhouse among sports syndicators. Can it continue to slam-dunk the competition?

At the time he and his wife met with the Sugar Bowl committee back in the early '80s, Rick Ray was already thinking big, even though their fledgling Charlotte-based syndication company, Raycom Sports and Entertainment, was only a few years old. The couple was already producing the Sugar Bowl Classic basketball tournament in New Orleans, but Ray had bolder plans.

Raycom's founder and CEO asked when the rights for the Sugar Bowl football game would be up for bid. The going rate was a cool $7 million. "Dee looked at me like, 'Are you crazy?'" Rick recalls. "We'll be here," he told the committee. Says Dee: "I almost passed out."

As it turned out, Rick and Dee Ray didn't come back to bid. Rather, Raycom set to work on organizing a new bowl game. In 1990, subsidiary Raycom Management Group Inc. created the Blockbuster Bowl, lining up the Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based videotape-rental chain as the sponsor. In its first year, it scored a 5.8 rating -- 5.8% of the TV-owning households in the nation watched the game. The Sugar Bowl's rating that year came in at 4.9.

As a team, the Rays have shown some blockbuster-type strength in the hard-knuckled world of TV sports syndication. "I think Raycom has positioned itself as the premier sports syndicator in the country," says John Swofford, UNC's athletic director. "Obviously, it's quite a success story, and frankly, I only see that continuing."

Earlier this year, The Sporting News ranked Rick Ray 48th among its 100 most-influential people in sports, up from 81st last year -- a remarkable achievement for a man who has never coached and hasn't played competitive sports since high school. Raycom is now the nation's largest independent sports programmer, with 76 employees and $65 million in annual sales -- about twice the money the biggest Charlotte TV station brings in. Headquartered since 1985 in its own two-story brick building near downtown, Raycom has sales offices in New York, Chicago and Dallas.

Its success is particularly striking given the number of sports syndicators that have folded in the past few years after bidding more for programs than they could pay for with advertising sales. When Raycom started a decade ago, Executive Vice President Ken Haines notes, there were about 13 independent sports syndicators, including Lorimar, Katz, MetroSports and Sports Productions. (None of those four syndicates college sports anymore.) It's Rick Ray's creativity that sets Raycom apart from sports programmers that have failed, N.C. State Athletic Director Todd Turner says. "He's not afraid to do something different."

That was obvious during Raycom's extraordinary but unsuccessful efforts over the past year to put the Blockbuster Bowl into the same league as the venerable Cotton, Sugar, Orange and Fiesta bowls. Those four bowls formed an alliance last year to create a national championship game for college football. The existing system has been criticized for haphazard matchups that often don't pair the nation's top teams.

Rather than compete as a second-tier bowl, Raycom and Blockbuster CEO Wayne Huizenga offered the Big East and the Atlantic Coast conferences $4.2 million each -- more than the payout of any bowl except the Rose Bowl (where the Big Ten and Pacific 10 champions play). After giving the money a long, hard look, the Big East and ACC opted to stick with the older bowls, which are increasing their payouts to match Blockbuster's offer.

It was a stinging defeat for Raycom, which fears that Blockbuster might pull its sponsorship. Already, Blockbuster officials have said they will cut the payout from $2.5 million a team to $1.5 million this year.

But most observers see the Blockbuster saga as a momentary setback. Though well-known in the Southeast for years, Raycom gained national publicity during the past year after landing a multiyear contract to package, produce and sell advertising time on ABC's college basketball schedule.

Buying air time and sports property rights, then selling advertising and producing the games is what a sports syndicator does. But the ABC deal marked the first time a major network has sold a whole series to an independent programmer.

In essence, ABC was admitting that Raycom had the contacts and ability to produce college basketball games better than the giant network. After all, Raycom owns television rights to six of the eight major basketball conferences -- the Big Ten, Big Eight, Metro, Pac-10, Southwest and, in partnership with Jefferson-Pilot...