Rick Thompson, a Radford alum, returned to the New River Valley as the General Manager of Radford Sports Properties in January 2025.
Thompson has parlayed his passion for people and college sports into a remarkable 30-plus-year career around the ability to anticipate trends in collegiate revenue streams. As an experienced strategist, Rick recognizes that knowledge is power and the essential component in today’s increasingly competitive quest to maximize revenue for intercollegiate athletic programs. Most recently, the National Sales Director at Learfield Sports, Thompson has a diverse background in athletics, working his way up the ranks to become one the key figures in some of the most successful collegiate marketing relationships.
Thompson launched CRA, LLC in 2010 to work with a variety of schools, conferences, and key constituents in the areas of revenue generation, staffing solutions, contract negotiations, and overall department strategy development and implementation for collegiate athletic programs. At Learfield, Thompson worked with the BTN, ESPN, CBS Sports and major marketing firms as well as conferences ranging from the SEC, Missouri Valley, Big 12, and CUSA to the Sun Belt and the WAC. He received the prestigious Chairman’s Cup Award in 2010, recognized as the top performer and revenue generator in all of Learfield Sports.
Prior to joining Learfield in 2006, Thompson served five years as the Associate Athletic Director at the University of Kentucky, where he negotiated a record-breaking $80 million, 10-year multi-media rights agreement for the Wildcats in 2004. The 2004 UK athletics multimedia rights agreement is widely recognized for changing the collegiate multi-media rights landscape. He oversaw a $5.5 million media and marketing budget at UK, while also handling all public relations initiatives, including scheduling, fundraising and hiring of coaches. He guided the department’s $75 million external revenue streams. Including the implementation and execution of the plan that resulted in women’s basketball revenues growing from $15,000 to over $250,000 in a two-year period.
Those successes were part of a five-year plan Thompson developed and executed at UK. Among other key initiatives, he organized more financially lucrative seating plans at Rupp Arena and Commonwealth Stadium; established polling campaigns to determine timelines for the key initiatives in the plan and developed innovative media strategies to maximize public relations opportunities.
Prior to his groundbreaking work at UK, Thompson worked as the GM of Learfield Sports at Oregon State University. In two years, he increased annual corporate sponsorship revenues from $1.8 million to over $3 million, the largest two-year financial growth at any Learfield Sports property. He also created a statewide television network for the Beavers.
Thompson served in a similar capacity at TCU (1999-2001), working under the ESPN Regional umbrella. His efforts there led to increases in revenue of over $1 million in a two-year period, and the creation of a TCU athletics television network. The creation of an extensive corporate sponsorship program set the foundation for TCU to reposition upwardly in conference realignment.
From 1997-1999, Thompson served as the Associate VP for Development and Executive Director of the Big Green Scholarship Foundation, Inc., at Marshall University, managing all major athletic fundraising activities. During his tenure, Marshall tripled membership in the annual athletics campaign. He developed highly successful revenue streams to aid the school’s transition to Division I-A in 1997.
A 1989 graduate of Radford University, Thompson received his M.S. degree in Sport Management from Western Illinois in 1991. He got his car started by interning iin marketing and sales with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1990.
