PARADISE ISLAND, Bahamas– When Lea Miller first arrived here four years ago with ideas on expanding the sports culture of this island country, she found a blank canvas on which she could paint.
No one expected the attractive 30-some blonde, a former scholarship tennis player at Wake Forest and Georgia Tech with a passion for basketball and a penchant for marketing, would create a masterpiece the first time she picked up a brush.
But three years later, Battle 4 Atlantis has become just that, the premier eight team tournament in college basketball.
The first field included defending national champion Connecticut and got some unexpected buzz when Harvard from the Ivy League won the tournament. The second tournament
featured eventualy national champion Louisville and storied Duke. And this year’s star attraction is Kansas, a potential national championship contender that features freshman forward Andrew Wiggins, a Canadian import who could be the first pick in next spring’s NBA draft.
Other countries in the Caribbean like the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico still run tournaments, but this tournament has quickly blown them out to sea with quality of its field and the fact the games are played in a 3,800 seat ball room located in the middle the Royal Towers of the opulent, mind blowing Atlantis Resort, named after tghe lgendary lost city of Greek mythology. a 14-acre world of water that includes screaming fast 60-foot water slides, up close experiences with playful dolphins and sea lions, and an aquarium in the Dig that is the home for 50,000 amazing marine animals from nearly 200 different spices. Atlantis also has Vegas-like shopping, restaurants, night clubs and a casino.
This year’s Battle, which starts Thursday– which includes teams like Villanova, Iowa, Tennessee, USC, UTEP, Wake and Xavier — has put the Bahamas in the forefront of island counties looking to grow her band with major athletic events. Miller is also the creative mind behind the Bahamas Bowl, a new post season game for non-BCS teams, that will start in 2015,
Miller, who works out of New York City but has made over 70 trips to the island, has been a central figure in pushing forward the increased exposure this country is receiving from the main stream American media. She had just let go along with 2,000 others by IMG, which blew up her division, and heard about the fact Atlantis was looking to replace the Michael Jordan celebrity golf tournament with another large sporting property from playing tennis in New York with the legal counsel for the resort. He put Miller in touch with George Markantonis, the president of Atlantis and the two built up a relationship over the phone the next two months.
Miller had never seen the resort in person.
As soon as she landed here for the first time in 2009, she recognized its beauty and started thinking Atlantis would be a natural venue for a college basketball experience. “I guess that had a lot to do with my ACC roots,” she said. “I thought it would be an all time slam dunk to bring college hoops down here.
Markantonis loved the idea. But Miller first had to obtain sanctioning to hold an exempt event. She had to represent the country and lobby the NCAA legislative committee– made up of one member from each conference– to seek approval, which required a two thirds majority. Miller put on a doubleheader Dec. 18, 2010 with Georgia Tech vs. Richrmond and Mississippi State vs. Virginia Tech– just two weeks before the vote. The timing couldn’t have been better. The doubleheader went off great. The teams had a blast and from there she won the exemption.
Miller immediately started recruiting for the inaugural field, setting her sights on one of the the biggest names on the East Coast– Connecticut. She attended 20 UConn games during the 2011 season. “I stalked them, signed them a week before the Big East tournament and they won the national championship,” she recalled. “So the first year, we had the defending national champion.”
“If I’m going to get involved with something, I’m going to want it to be the best,” Miller said. “The Atlantis spends money to make money. they are visionaries, which is unusual in this day and age. But I don’t know any of us envisioned this would be as big as it is in terms of scale and money it brings into the country.”‘
Neither did ESPN, cable TV’s 500-pound gorilla, which had a bad experience with a tournament in Mexico, and had shied away from signing deals with any new unproven properties outside the country. Miller was resourceful enough to go to NBC, which signed a three year deal that provided Battle with some necessary cable exposure.
Miller took the tournament to another level last year when she lured both Duke and Louisville, with two Hall of Fame coaches Mike Krzyzewski and Rick Pitino, to the island. Miller flew all the way to Istanbul, Turkey for the 2010 World Championships to get time in front of Mike’s wife Micheky so she could win her over. She brought Louisville down here to play the local Bahamian team and spent a week with Pitino. “I was in his ear all the time,” she said. “I was out on a yacht with Louisville AD Tom Jurich and his staff and coach Pitino was back at the Resort. I knew I needed to get the president of the Atlantis in front of him to close to deal.
“We’re out on the ocean and i got an email saying coach wanted to meet George, but that was in 15 minutes I had to get a chef from the kitchen to unlock a wave runner off this yacht to get me back to shore so I could rush George in to meet coach Pitino. I knew that would help lock up the deal.”
This year’s big name, Kansas, was an easier sell.
“I went up to Bill Self at the 2010 Final Four and he was putting a dollar bill in a water machine and I tapped him on the shoulder and gave him the 30 second elevator pitch,” Miller recalled. “He said ‘Meet me in the lobby the next day, I want to hear about it. I pitched him on the whole thing and they were one of the first universities that I scored. He signed on before Louisville and Duke. There’s something to be said about belief and hard work and he bought in from the beginning.”
Kansas sold close to 2,000 packages to this tournament and filled up three charter flights. Iowa sold another 800 packages, creating a tough ticket market. ESPN, realizing the potential involved, has since jumped in with both feet starting next year when the field will include North Carolina and four other teams from the Top 25. Eventually, Battle 4 Atlantis may need a bigger arena to accommodate the growing number of fans who want to be part of this experience.
The bottom line is: Don’t bet against Lea Miller and don’t bet against her new baby, The Bahamas Bowl, becoming a success, even though the game is being played in a 20,000 stadium. She is an empire builder.
