Colts Redefine Stadium Sponsorship

The Indianapolis Colts will score almost $18 million annually through their new stadium’s title sponsorship and deals with 14 founding sponsors, each of which has its own themed area of the stadium’s interior.

Including sponsor agreements for two massive video boards at each end of the stadium, a narrower video board circling the upper reaches of the lower bowl, and other in-stadium deals, the Colts should bring in $20 million, 30 percent more than in the RCA Dome, according to team officials.

The naming-rights deal with California-based Lucas Oil Products Inc. will bring just over $6 million annually over 20 years, while the founding-partner sponsorships—which range from five- to eight-year deals—will bring in just under $12 million annually.

More sponsorship revenue may be coming. Colts officials are working with Cummins Inc. to put the engine-maker’s name on two pedestrian ramps. Flooding at the company’s Columbus headquarters this summer slowed negotiations, but they could be rekindled in time for signage to be in place for the start of the Colts’ 2009 season.

Sponsors aren’t just slapping their names on a corridor. Chevrolet, for instance, is promising to have a variety of its newest vehicles on hand with interactive features.

Not to be outdone, AirTran Airways is hanging a replica of one of its planes from the ceiling and is building a cross-section of a plane’s fuselage where fans can get their picture taken sitting next to a life-size, three-dimensional likeness of an active Colts player.

The theory, sports marketers say, is that the more entertaining sponsors make their areas, the more visitors they’ll receive during Colts games and other events. Attendance at non-Colts events is important to the team because it gets half of revenue from those events. The team gets all the revenue from its own games.

“The trend in the NFL is toward increasing the inventory in your home venue, and the Colts did their homework on this to really maximize what they could get,” said Larry DeGaris, director of academic sports marketing programs at the University of Indianapolis.

Stadium sponsorship revenue is key because, unlike ticket revenue, it is not shared with other National Football League teams.

“It’s the first time something like this has been done, and the results are fantastic,” said Tom Zupancic, Colts senior vice president of sales and marketing. “We think we are going to revolutionize the way stadiums wrap in these sponsors. I can guarantee you, people here have never seen anything like this.”

The Lucas Oil gate will feature drag racing, stock and open-wheel cars, even a souped-up tractor. It also will rev up fans with race-car simulators.

Lucas said the stadium deals his company signed were driven as much by nonfootball events as Colts games. City officials said 120 to 150 events annually—from trade shows and corporate stockholder meetings to the NCAA Final Four—will be held at Lucas Oil Stadium.

“We look forward to interacting with all the people that come through this facility and getting our message out to them,” said Rebecca Carl, chief marketing and community relations officer for Clarian Health, one of the founding sponsors. “We want to reach out with our message to as many people as we can, and we think there’s going to be a wide cross-section of people coming through this facility.”

Clarian’s space will feature displays of giant football players tackling the stadium’s columns decorated as tackling dummies, each labeled as a health condition, such as “heart disease.”

Huntington National Bank’s area will feature massive replicas of its Colts bank card and check, along with two circular LED tickers featuring information on financial markets and on the bank. It also will have four interactive kiosks showcasing information on the new stadium.

“Our goal is to attract banking customers, plain and simple,” said Brent Frymier, Indiana marketing manager for Huntington National Bank, which sponsors the west gate. “But we understand the value of entertaining fans for both the team and sponsors. We’ve designed our area with that in mind. We think we’re going to be a part of something spectacular.”

From Indianapolis Business Journal

"It's all about Activation"

Don't take it from me. Read The Economist's Special Report and hear it from the Chief Marketing Officer of Coca-Cola, Joe Tripodi...

These days it might cost €150m to sponsor the UEFA Champions League, the club championship of European football, for three years, or as much as $70m to back a Formula One (F1) team for a season. And all that buys is the right to use the name of an event, a team or an organisation.

“Activation”—promotions, competitions, television advertising during breaks, corporate hospitality and so forth—might multiply the sponsor’s budget two or three times over, and it is vital. “In sponsorship it’s not what you have, it’s what you do with it,” says Joe Tripodi, chief marketing officer of Coca-Cola. “It’s all about activation.”

Does Sponsorship Work? Ask Volvo.

I get asked a lot whether sponsorship actually works. Whether it can hold its own against other kinds of marketing spend. Apart from the metrics which show that sponsors can achieve great ROI from this form of promotion, another way of answering the question is to point to companies that obviously believe that it works.

Take Volvo for example. Volvo have taken the Round the World Sailing race and made it their own, with innovative media treatment and professional activation. But Volvo sponsor all kinds of things, so many in fact, that they have launced a website dedicated to their sponsorship activity.

A visit to the site reveals that Volvo sponsor Sport, environmental projects, culture at a global, national and local level. volvoinsponsorship.com delivers news, views, information and results from all points of the compass.

From prestigious professional golf championships such as the Volvo China Open and the Volvo Masters to the worldwide enthusiasm of the Volvo Masters Amateur, the sponsorship portal augments tournament site-specific websites, giving a flavour of the on-course drama, meets the men and women at the centre of the stories with exclusive insights behind the scenes.

Then there is sailing; the Volvo Ocean Race, Volvo's flagship round-the-world race, setting sail in October 2008 on a seven-team, nine-month, 37,500nm, four-continent 10-country, 11-port ocean odyssey sets sail from Spain on October 4th.

The Volvo-sponsored Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and the Gothenburg Opera both strike the right chord with Volvo's cultural campaign and volvoinsponsorship.com will hit all the high notes from the concert halls and opera houses at home in Gothenburg and abroad.

And it's ‘Green for Go,' with Volvo's environmental initiatives, the Volvo Environment Prize, the most coveted ecological award on offer and its junior equivalent, the Volvo Adventure with the youth of the world finding environmental improvement simply eco-logical and the sponsorship portal gets to the heart of the environmental action.

The very best of the rest comes from Volvo's support for Swedish motorsport, burning eco-fuel of course, exhibitions, conferences and awards around the world, equestrian excellence at the annual Göteborg Horse Show, featuring the full sponsorship spectrum from Volvo.

Commented Steven Lefebvre, New Media Manager at Volvo Event Management in Brussels, "The new sponsorship portal provides a global platform with which to pull all the strands of Volvo's various sponsorship activities together."

He added, "With our portfolio of dedicated event-based websites such as volvochinaopen.com, volvomasters.com, volvooceanrace.org, volvomastersamateur.com, volvomastersofasia.com attracting millions of sport-specific aficionados to their in-depth coverage, we are endeavouring to reflect the broader and more diverse elements of Volvo's worldwide sponsorship activity and offer a different perspective for those engaging with us either for the first time or in a broader way."

The strapline for the new site is "bringing sponsorship to life."

Who's on Beckham's Shirt?

Quick. Think. You've seen this image in all kinds of press. The front page of the Sun, the back page of the News of the World, the front cover of Sports Illustrated. So why can't you name the sponsor?

If you are in the industry, or a die hard Galaxy fan, you may know the answer, but a straw poll reveals that 9 out of 10 people can not tell you the sponsor's name. So much for the use of sports properties as mobile billboards. So much for extrapolated numbers of coverage. If ever there was an argument that the 'exposure' model of sports sponsorship is flawed, this is it.

You can almost imagine the board presentation. "Next year, the world's most famous footballer will be playing in a shirt with your brand on it. Your brand will be seen by millions of people around the world. If you were to pay for that kind of exposure at market rates, you would not be able to afford it... "

Unlike a billboard, which allows other images, associations, strap lines and messages to be conveyed in the time it takes to drive past on the motorway, a logo on a shirt is just that. There is no call to action. Just an implied endorsement of the participant. Without activation, the sponsorship is lost in the noise.

So how to do it properly? Well think of a sports property and then name their sponsor. If you can, then they are probably doing it right. In fact, some may have done such a good job that you may be thinking of a sponsor who hasn't been involved for several years.

Try it with the following examples: a) Tiger Woods, b) Roger Federer, c) Jeff Gordon, d) Kimi Raikkonen, e) Andrew 'Freddy' Flintoff, d) Manchester United.... Answers below.



Answers.
LA Galaxy Team Shirt Sponsor - Herbalife
a) Accenture, Nike, Gatorade.
b) Emmi, Gillette, Jura, Mercedes Benz, Nike
c) Dupont, Nicorette, Pepsi
d) Marlboro, Fiat, Shell, Martini
e) Vodafone, Barclays Capital, Woodworm
f) AIG, Nike

Activating Sponsorship to a Wider Audience

A great example of using a sponsorship across different markets. This distinctive yellow Aviva advertisement ties in with the company's backing of the English yachtswoman Dee Caffari.

The Open 60 yacht most recently completed the Artemis Transat and will shortly compete in the Vendee Globe.

It's great to see some joined up thinking and some good activation of the sponsorship on the water.

It's also good to see the activation outside of the sailing press. Traditionally, one would expect to see an ad like this in a publication like Yachting World, however Aviva are running the campaign in 'mass-market' publications like Time. 'Intelligent Life', the quarterly publication from the Economist is a niche publication, but importantly a non sailing title and shows that the marketing folk have considered multiple, but targeted audiences.