Third investment by Midwest-focused venture capital fund will enable CSMG to leverage sports talent clients for rapidly expanding media content and production opportunities

Chicago, June 15, 2005 – Hopewell Ventures, a $110 million venture capital fund licensed by the U.S. Small Business Administration as a Small Business Investment Company (SBIC), announced today that it has made a $3.5 million venture investment in CSMG, a sports talent, marketing and management firm that represents high-profile athletes such as Dwyane Wade of the Miami Heat and Donovan McNabb of the Philadelphia Eagles.

The additional funding will allow CSMG to leverage its client base to create additional revenue streams in the corporate consulting, media and event production arenas, as well as to strategically expand its talent foundation in represented sports and new markets.

“Alan Nero, Tom Kang and the team at CSMG have built one of the premier sports representation and marketing firms in the country, with superstar clients from every major league,” said William P. Sutter, Jr., Managing Partner, Hopewell Ventures. “With their exceptional long-term vision and commitment to operational excellence, we see a huge opportunity for CSMG to leverage its talent to create additional revenues.”

CSMG, based in Skokie, Illinois was founded in 1983 by Alan Nero as a sports management firm serving a select group of athletes, primarily baseball players. It has grown to provide a full array of services, including negotiation, marketing and financial services for its nearly 250 professional athletes, managers, retired stars and broadcasters, as well as corporate brand consulting and media production.

“The funding and strategic guidance from Hopewell will enable us to seize upon some extraordinary corporate marketing and media content production opportunities,” said Tom Kang, President and Chief Executive Officer, CSMG. “The traditional networks no longer control content distribution. With satellite, hundreds of cable channels, the Internet and ordered services, the demand for content is exploding.”

This is Hopewell’s third portfolio investment in Midwestern companies. The first two were iTRACS, a leading provider of intelligent physical layer network infrastructure management solutions and TLContact, which licenses a private patient Web page service, called CarePages, to the nation’s leading healthcare institutions.