IMG, the largest sports management and marketing company in the world, is planning to get even bigger.

The company started by Mark McCormack, still chairman of the group, and built around the star power of golf legend Arnold Palmer in the '60s, has grown into a massive worldwide enterprise representing the likes of golfers Tiger Woods, David Duval and Karrie Webb; Olympic marathon champion Naoko Takahashi; and tennis stars Pete Sampras and the Williams sisters.

But the International Management Group has been a bit of a latecomer to the world -- and riches -- of soccer. That is now changing, and with the World Cup coming to Japan next year, IMG plans to delve deeper into the market.

"The World Cup will bring a lot of football people (to Japan) and it will show these people the differences in Asia and help give people a positive impression," senior international vice president Peter H. Smith explained on a recent swing through Tokyo.

"We realize we've only been in soccer in a peripheral way up to now, so we had the option of trying to grow ourselves or acquire other people and their particular business."

IMG opted for the latter route, realizing that soccer was already a massive business with significant players on the business side of the market. Recently, IMG acquired two major companies -- the Dutch company International Sport Consultancy and the Swiss firm VH -- to boost its soccer credentials.

"Now we consider ourselves to be No. 1 in soccer as well," IMG's director of football in Asia, Malcolm Thorpe said.

"IMG has been famous for its top golf and tennis stars; now we represent 500 soccer players, which we've done mainly by acquiring smaller agencies. We've been able to take these and help these people work together as one group in an intranet system, creating a much more professional organization."

IMG manages more than $1 billion in client assets, handles around 4,000 contracts a year and negotiates deals worth billions of dollars.

Thorpe pointed out that the traditional image of a soccer agent as one man and a mobile phone is becoming a thing of the past. With IMG having strong business ties with around 150 clubs worldwide, its range of contacts and influence is huge.

IMG is planning to do more than just represent players. Through its television arm TransWorld International, IMG also hopes to expand the TV side of its business. It already helps Manchester United with MUTV, and Thorpe believes that TV opportunities are still largely untapped.

"Club TV is still a developing medium," he pointed out. "Many clubs don't own their own TV rights. Now, some of these are being relicensed and given back to the clubs."

These clubs, with IMG's help, produce daily TV shows -- Manchester United has six hours of new content daily -- which are then transmitted through cable and satellite TV channels around the world.

Thorpe says this market will increase dramatically in the coming years, and fans of United and other top British clubs around the world -- including those in Japan -- will be able to tune into their club's own TV channel for up-to-date news and interviews on a daily basis.

International Sport Consultancy's Fulco van Kooperen added, "We were very involved in the Shinji Ono deal (with Feyenoord) and the TV rights to Dutch games, and I think this shows how clubs can benefit over a broad range of services."

Japan, with its maturing players, strong league and poor representation on TV, is an obvious target for IMG.

"We're going to be very active in the player-representation business over here for players going out of Japan and coming to Japan," Smith noted. "We want to help the development of clubs on the playing side and the commercial side.

"We've been helping Yokohama FC and we also represent Masami Ihara (of the Urawa Reds). On the flip side, we also aim to represent major clubs (from overseas) in Japan. The key is to take advantage of the World Cup, which means pre, during and after the World Cup."

Thorpe added: "I think the World Cup will focus attention on players in this part of the world and this will develop as time goes on.

"The Tokyo office provided a lot of sponsorship for the Chinese league and helped develop the technical side of things over there, and we have also been involved in the sponsorship of the K. League in South Korea. The message for Japan is that this knowledge and expertise can be utilized here, too."