A star worth selling

ATLANTA — Alex Ovechkin passed Sidney Crosby on the season scoring list Thursday night. His NHL-record $124 million contract signed earlier this month far surpassed Crosby’s deal.

Ovechkin also has helped rescue his once woeful Washington Capitals and could make the playoffs for the first time in his career, while Crosby’s Pittsburgh Penguins will try to keep a tenuous hold of a postseason spot while their superstar misses several weeks with an ankle injury.

Still the one area in which the two phenoms do not compare is off-ice revenue. Crosby has become a marketing entity with no NHL rivals, an endorsement juggernaut who is measured against top superstars from other major sports.

That is something Team Ovechkin is out to change.

“It is time for Alex to do business on a different level,” said Konstantin Selinevich, who has become the man behind the business of Alex Ovechkin. “We all know he and Crosby are the faces of the NHL. I think he has backed that up with the results. Some guys have got the big contracts and not done as well, but Alex has been even better.”

People in the hockey community questioned why Ovechkin fired super agent Don Meehan in November 2006, but with the help of Selinevich, his parents and his brother, Mikhail Jr., the Caps’ All-Star left wing has done well for himself financially and his portfolio is far from a finished product.

Crosby has become a mini-mogul, with television commercials, mainstream magazine covers and pictorials as well as the perception that the NHL has put all of its proverbial eggs in his basket.

“Sid is not just selling to the hockey people, he’s selling to the masses — to everybody, to people who don’t even know hockey,” Caps goaltender Olie Kolzig said. “I don’t know if outside of hockey, Ovie is that big of a guy. Give him some time though. There might be some overexposure with Sid eventually and people might look for a new approach and go after Ovie. I think he’d be a great salesman. He’s very charismatic. I don’t know if he has a face for TV, but he has a knack for it.”

Indeed, Ovechkin the actor has been a big hit. He has done commercials for the NHL and for the team, including a popular one with majority owner Ted Leonsis and a vending machine last season.

“I just have fun with it,” Ovechkin said. “I am a hockey player, not a TV star.”

Ovechkin has several endorsement deals, including CCM, Upper Deck, Elite Hockey and Hype energy drink, and Selinevich said he is working through the details on more deals. To help manage the business aspect, Selinevich and Mikhail Jr. have set up a company to market Ovechkin called Great Eight.

“I think the comparisons with Crosby are subtle things and sometimes not-so-subtle things that happen to put one guy ahead of others,” Caps director of media relations Nate Ewell said. “The other thing and this isn’t the league’s fault, but Reebok has pinned more on Sidney than CCM has on Alex. That’s all one company but different brands. … Certainly there has been more mainstream Reebok advertising for Sidney.”

While Reebok has produced a Crosby-inspired “Rbk SC87” clothing line, Selinevich said CCM is about to do the same with Ovechkin. The company has created different styles and designs for Ovechkin to approve, and he will meet with CCM representatives next week for another batch of test subjects.

Selinevich said he expects the clothing line to debut after the World Championships in Canada in May.

“The clothes are more sporty looking,” Selinevich said. “It is a cool logo and the clothes will be like Alex. He has a crazy personality and likes crazy colors.”

Ewell has managed Ovechkin’s team-sponsored exposure since he entered the league. The organization receives requests for Ovechkin’s time in many different factions — from community relations projects to sponsors and plenty of media inquiries.

A few days before the season started Ovechkin sat in Ewell’s office for an hour and did a “radio tour” — several seven-minute interviews in hockey markets across the continent. The day after he signed the 13-year contract, he was everywhere from XM Radio to ESPN.

“It was [general manager] George [McPhee]’s idea to have all of that funnel through one person to make sure we weren’t pulling him in all these different directions,” Ewell said. “Because he will say yes to anything.”

One of the more interesting requests shot down was having Ovechkin pen a weekly diary for FHM Online.

“It is a fine publication, but I think most of the people that look online there aren’t looking for diaries from hockey players,” Ewell said.

One of the big disadvantages for Ovechkin is not being North American and his work-in-progress grasp of the English language. He is funny and engaging and captivates crowds with his charisma, but some companies would still be gun-shy about his unpolished language skills.

While Crosby is a huge marketing success in his native Canada, Russia is another financial frontier for Ovechkin to conquer. If securing deals in North America is tough, doing so in his homeland will be much more so.

Athletes are rarely called upon to be spokesmen in Russia. Previous Russian hockey greats have not found endorsement success at home, and the same goes for stars in other sports like Maria Sharapova.

“Hockey players just aren’t used by advertisers as much or other athletes at all. Despite the fact that we love sports in Russia very much, we don’t watch them on TV as much as people do in America,” said Slava Malamud, who covers Russian pro athletes in North America for Sport-Express. “Advertisers are a little apprehensive because the players are not well-exposed people. You have to be an Olympic champion on the level of a national hero or a superstar soccer player.”

Selinevich said Ovechkin has become one of the most popular athletes in the country, and there is interest in him. They are exploring the idea of hiring a marketing company in Russia to help increase his exposure at home. He also said there is a major publishing company in Russia working on the details of a book about Ovechkin’s life.

Even while all of these potential enterprises are in motion, Ovechkin’s parents have emphasized that his first priority remains what he does after he chugs a Hype energy drink and laces up his CCM Vector skates.

“I think his family is very wise. They have a person who is representing his marketing interests, but the family wants him to focus on hockey,” Leonsis said. “The rationale is right on two points: One, Alex is going to make a lot more money playing hockey than he is being a spokesperson. Secondly, we need to make the playoffs. He is going to make a ton of money, but he needs to win a Cup to be part of that pantheon of players.”