Dan Sevel: Gentle giant in sports marketing’s top league
1976-2018
● Dan Sevel ,who died at the age of 41 this month after falling from the top of the Sun International head office building in Johannesburg, was the hotel and casino group’s sports marketing manager and tournament director of the Nedbank Golf Challenge at Sun City.
He was negotiating a renewal of the Nedbank sponsorship contract at the time of his death.
Sevel was a gentle giant of a man and something of an anomaly in the harsh, often ruthless sports sponsorship space, where the milk of human kindness doesn’t always flow in abundance, and large, thrusting egos jostle for advantage.
He was born in Johannesburg, attended Yeshiva College and King David Linksfield, and joined Sun International in 2000 in events management, leaving in 2006 to work elsewhere in the hospitality industry.
He worked on the 2010 Fifa World Cup, participating in high-pressured and stressful sponsorship negotiations to which he brought a refreshing, not to say unique, brand of honesty and fair play.
He rejoined Sun International and after shadowing the 20-year veteran Nedbank Golf Challenge director Alastair Roper for a couple of years, took over from him in 2016.
It was a position that brought him considerable influence, status and power, flying around the world to Majors, being invited to premier league soccer games, wining, dining and getting VIP treatment wherever he went.
None of this went to his head. He didn’t seem to have an ego.
He remained as low-profile as he could in the circumstances. He avoided the limelight where possible. He didn’t want loud press releases when he took over as director. “Do we really have to?” he asked.
He brought a very human, personal touch to an often soulless environment. It was felt that his biggest weakness may have been an inability to say “no”.
There was a sense that he may have been too nice, too gentle, too soft for the hardball negotiations sports sponsorship entails.
But he was no pushover. He wanted what was best for the product, and if he felt this was being compromised he could play hardball, after his own fashion.
He took over just after Sun International ceded the rights to manage and execute the Nedbank Challenge to the European Tour.
Having a three-way partnership introduced all sorts of new complexities for him to deal with in terms of rights negotiations, what the partners wanted or felt they deserved from the contract, identity retention, influence and so on.
There was tension, as there always is in this kind of arrangement, in terms of “what we want and what you’re willing to give us”, in the words of one player.
In a world characterised by secrecy, Sevel was quite open about his concerns, and not afraid to share them with experienced golf journalists and even ask their advice.
The European Tour wanted the prize money for the Challenge increased, but he felt they weren’t getting the top players.
He was “wondering”, he confided to an old media hand, “maybe we don’t increase it, maybe we force their hand a bit, tell them to get us better players first?”
They got him Rory McIlroy.
When Sevel took over from Roper, Sun International was looking to grow its golf footprint. He went out and identified a number of men’s and ladies’ professionals on the Sunshine Tour and signed them up as ambassadors for Sun International.
Typically, he included not just the bigname world pros but much lesser known stay-at-home pros who, thanks to him, started getting branded clothing and other support, such as free rooms at Sun International hotels.
He formed relationships with celebrity golfers like Ernie Els, Louis Oosthuizen and Trevor Immelman, but also with unknowns struggling to survive as pros.
He supported women golfers who traditionally have struggled to get anything, bringing Sun International in as a sponsor for a number of their big tournaments on the Sunshine Tour, including the Cape Town Ladies Open.
On the men’s tour he supported golfers unlikely ever to play the European Tour, who have to grind out a living in South Africa.
He made sure they got kit and free rooms, knowing what a big difference that makes for a struggling golfer on tour.
The six Sun International challenge tournaments he signed up in the men’s winter section of the Sunshine Tour were a significant investment in what is traditionally a quiet period in South African golf, allowing golfers who can’t play overseas to earn a living playing at home.
Passionate about the game himself, Sevel knew how they felt. His own handicap was a more than competent 17.
Sevel is survived by his wife Louise and a son.