Clancy’s Sports provides organizations focus and a roadmap. Shifting from tactical thinking to strategic visioning is difficult while you are in execution mode. Our approach is simple: define your primary purpose(s), understand your capabilities, design the organization for success and hold people accountable to clearly aligned goals. Setting vision is easy, but staying tethered to the vision requires setting the right processes that ensure cultural alignment.
Clancy’s Sports provides organizations access to a myriad of expertise from across the country with access to some of most seasoned leaders who have worked on Super Bowls, Final Fours, large scale road races as well as leveraging the deepest understanding of the grassroots sports' movement. Broad based experience allows for thoughtful insight into ensuring every event has the potential to feel like it is a ‘World Cup’ event while driving meaningful results. The ability to create properties, attract them, or simply just put the structure and processes in place to manage every or any aspect of an event, Clancy’s is a solution.
Clancy’s Sports was initially established to support sports commissions, Convention & Visitor Bureaus and government agencies alike in optimizing their sports offerings in a community, developing and packaging them effectively to specific target market needs and ensure maximum participation. Our network and extensive industry knowledge, ranging from feasibility studies to facility design and operations includes experience with some of the most recognizable event properties and sports facilities in the U.S.
After being involved with creating or hosting over 2500 events over 30 years, in 60+ sports and over 3M athletes, we understand how a facility should be built, what amenities are important and most importantly, how to maximize the revenue for facility and the market that it is in.
Clancy’s Sports is a Florida based LLC which was founded in May of 2014 by former Walt Disney World executive, Mike Millay.
As the Director of Business Development for ESPN Wide World of Sports complex, Mike was one of the original and remains the longest-tenured executive of the complex. As the initial Executive in the development and execution of the business strategy, his roles included providing leadership insights into facility design, business processes, client negotiations, event management, sponsorship and marketing.
In addition to Fortune 100 corporate experience, Clancy’s Sports is influenced by Mike’s non-profit sports background as he helped create that Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation serving as its first executive director for almost 7 years and helped drive the formation of the National Association of Sports Commissions (NASC) serving as its chairman for 2 terms. He is active with several local and national sports non-profit boards such as the Greater Orlando Sports Commission, the DeVos Sports Business Management Program and Ohio University’s Sports Management Program.
"Mike Millay is a true visionary and problem solver. He examines a situation and visualizes a great long-term solution. But, having said that, he's always ready to roll his sleeves up and dig into the immediate short-term, ground level solution. Over a relationship of 20 years, Mike has been a pleasure to deal with - always professional and personable even in difficult circumstances."
“There may not be a more knowledgeable person in the amateur sports space than Mike. He has such broad sports and event experience working with the Olympic family, the collegiate space, and all grassroots sports….yet he also has experience with the professional leagues, broadcast and the facility design space….he’s just a very unique and qualified sports leader.”
Since its inception in 2002, the Greater Columbus Sports Commission has grown from a two-person team to a staff of 12 and has booked more than 500 new sporting events. Early in the organization’s history, we trusted Mike Millay and Clancy’s Sports to help us implement new tools and procedures that would take the Sports Commission to the next level and ultimately, help us achieve the success we experience today. Mike and his team are skilled professionals that understand the industry and value the partnerships they build. I highly recommend Clancy’s Sports.
Clancy’s really helped us totally rethink our mission, vision and organizational structure. Their (Mike’s?) process led our board of directors, key stakeholders and staff through a thorough strategic discussion which resulted in shifting our mindset on our organizational design and staffing alignment. Clancy’s impact is seen every day in how we operate our business.
Mike’s 20 years of sports facility operational experience was critical as we conducted our feasibility study for facility expansion in the market. Mike has a unique balance with his programming insights, facility management experience as well as understanding of functional facility design.