Elevate Sports Ventures announced Thursday that it has acquired Bowlsby Sports Advisors, the five-year-old research agency run by Kyle Bowlsby, son of the former Big 12 director.
The merger was completed in November, according to the corporations, and brings Bowlsby’s agency under the Promote commercial umbrella and brand.
Kyle Bowlsby will work for Elevate as their top lover as part of the agreement. The news comes nearly a year after the merger of U.K.-based SRI led to the launch of the company’s hiring division, Elevate Talent.
Bowlsby Sports Advisors, which was established in 2019, has a smaller market share in the college activities headhunting industry, which is dominated by companies like TurnkeyZRG, Parker Executive Search, and DHR International. Bowlsby, however, has developed a niche by working with non-Power 4 schools or finding candidates for less high-profile ( and lower-paying ) athletic department roles.

According to public records, over the past year Bowlsby conducted a$ 10, 000 search for Robert Morris ‘ senior women’s administrator, a$ 30, 000 search for the Intercollegiate Tennis Association’s CEO, and strategic plans for the athletic departments of Incarnate Word ($ 20, 000 ) and Azusa Pacific ($ 65, 000 ).
Elevate presents its order of Bowlsby as a tactical bid to compete for the biggest professional jobs, though.
” We don’t get an acquisition lightly”, Jonathan Marks, key company commander of Elevate Campus, said in an annexed Zoom interview earlier this year. ” We are making this consolidation to create the best collegiate research agency in the world,” the statement read. We are aware that it will take some time.
The San Francisco 49ers, Harris Blitzer Sports &amp, Entertainment, and CAA formed a relationship in 2018 to launch Elevate. The firm also has connections with more than 70 sport sections as well as two Division I conferences, including the Big East and ACC, giving them advisory companies that range from ticketing to “experiential style.”
Kyle Bowlsby said his father, Bob, who resigned as Big 12 director in April 2022 and just served as vice president of his father’s company, will certainly add Elevate as part of the consolidation. But, Bowlsby Sports Advisors ‘ another VP, Kaity McKittrick, is making the leap.
The elder Bowlsby completed a six-month tenure as Northern Iowa’s interim athletic director after leaving the Big 12, which also engaged Kyle Bowlsby in a$ 45, 000 agreement to find a lasting replacement.

The younger Bowlsby spent four years at Korn Ferry, where he handled requests for professional and college sports clients, before launching Bowlsby Sports Advisors. Working at Elevate, according to Bowllsby, may only increase his rolodex, making it easier for him to target classrooms on a wider, more diverse range of potential prospects.
” If you look at Elevate’s back workplace, it’s made of an elite group of individuals that works all around the sporting business”, he said over Zoom. ” If a school buyer wants to go outside the field, we can do that, and if they want to go more traditional, we can”.
Kyle Bowlsby stated that he will continue to pursue the types of less well-known projects that helped to shape his company while increasingly looking for opportunities to engage with the big boys in the “high-level searches” industry.
” I think it is a mix of both”, he said. We want to stay in the search industry at the ground level because that is how you get to know the next generation of skills.
In response to the industry’s rapid changes, Bowlsby continued,” The university president area has a pressing need for elite ability. But when I look at Elevate, they are positioned at the vanguard of profit generation, and that offers us a distinct benefit”.
Schools are increasingly turning to outside companies to help fill gaps in their team sites, from Olympic athletics coaches to even more mystical positions, as athletic directors are increasingly consumed by revenue generation. For instance, Bowlsby documents he was just commissioned by William &amp, Mary to aid in the getting of its sport agency’s chairman of mental health and performance—an emerging target in college athletics.