Trophy Park Adds President of Sports Operations & President of Operations, COO to Management Team
Trophy Park, the planned world-class, multi-purpose indoor and outdoor athletic complex in Jackson, New Jersey which plans to open in 2021, will now have two experienced executives heading its day-to-day operations.
Mick Smoothey, the former Chief Executive Officer and Founder of U.K. Elite Soccer and Chief Executive of Global Team Events based in Cedar Knolls, NJ has joined Trophy Park as President of Sports Operations and Bill Muirhead, former CEO of Star Parks and long-time executive with Six Flags has been named President of Operations and COO. The announcements were made by Alan Nau, CEO of Trophy Park.
“We are extremely fortunate to add two highly-respective sports executives in Mick Smoothey and Bill Muirhead to our management team at Trophy Park,” stated Nau. “Both bring unique skill sets to their positions. Mick has successfully launched and managed soccer and team event companies that have employed hundreds of employees with thousands of athletes competing while Bill has run amusement parks across Europe as CEO of StarParks and Six Flags European Division as well as serving here as VP and General Manager of Six Flags Great Adventure from 1999-2001.
Smoothey launched U.K. Soccer in 1992 and grew it into a $16 million dollar company with over 300 employees, multiple lines of business, serving the needs of 50,000 soccer players. He also founded Global Team Events in 2005, a sports travel, event management and experiential firm offering travel, tournament, event management and sponsorship activation services. The two firms were eventually purchased in 2013 by Steel Sports and Smoothey continued to operate the businesses in his role as CEO.
Muirhead co-founded and served as CEO of StarParks with the private equity firm Palamon Capital Partners. The company was comprised of seven amusement parks throughout Europe. Three parks were located in France, two in Belgium, one in the Netherlands and one in Germany. The parks were purchased from the Six Flags Corporation.
Muirhead’s marketing expertise helped the company win IAAPA European divisions “Best Marketing Plan” and “Best TV Ad Campaign” consecutively for three years. He also successfully negotiated marketing rights with Universal Studios for the Shrek 4D attraction, the only Universal brand attraction in Europe as well as Nickelodeon to brand its characters in the Moviepark in Germany. He also successfully negotiated with Dreamworks to develop an attraction based on the Ice Age movie and characters. It is the only Ice Age attraction in the world and won the industry wide recognized THEA Awards for best attraction.
