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

Olympics helps Russian Sponsorship Growth

In Russia, the relationship between sport and business has been one of patronage than partnership, meaning that sport clubs and personalities are often dependent on sugar daddies or state corporations, and Russian athletes miss out on the lucrative advertising contracts enjoyed by their well-heeled counterparts in Western Europe, America or East Asia.

Now, led by a wave of sporting success, a consumer boom and increasing advertising savvy, that mentality is starting to change.

Whereas in the United States, 15 percent of advertisements use celebrities, with the figure rising to around 40 percent in East Asia, in Russia the total is a miniscule 2 percent. But the volume of contracts is set to shoot up from $60 million in 2007 to about $200 million this year.

That means that come autumn, the country should be festooned with pictures of victorious Olympians, promoting everything from washing machines to mobile phones.

Omsk-born Alexei, 24, won gold in Athens four years ago and has a number of sponsorship and endorsement contracts with Russian companies, his father said. His first fight is scheduled for Monday.

"The number of companies and the interest has increased since the last games," he said. "It is not a massive increase, but the amount has gone up steadily."

Many Russian sportsmen and women will be looking for inspiration to their compatriots who have made it big on the international stage and forged a global name for themselves. All follow in the wake of golfer Tiger Woods, who looks set to become the world's first billionaire sportsman over the next few years.

"Once the Olympics are over, the winning athletes will be looking at average contract from $50,000 to $200,000," Kormilitsyn said. Athletics and boxing are the most profitable Olympics disciplines, and firms from the telecommunications and banking sectors are keenest to cash in, he said.

It's not just for the athletes that this year's Olympics represents a potential boom time. China has spent $42 billion getting the country ready, and income from both broadcast rights and sponsorship are soaring.

As they set out to crack the mammoth Chinese markets, companies are betting big on Olympic sponsorship.

From 2001 to 2004, sponsorship made up just over one-third of total revenue for the Olympics. Fees for broadcast rights account for just over half of all revenue during that period. Organizers estimate that the Beijing Games will bring in over $1.7 billion in broadcast rights.

But although they get their equal share of the central pot, the Russian Olympic Committee has lagged behind many of its counterparts in other countries.

Compared with the lengthy list of major corporate sponsors on the glossy web site of the U.S. Olympic Committee, the list of corporate sponsors for the Russian team is dominated by state firms, such as VTB, Sberbank and Aeroflot.

VTB is sponsoring the men's volleyball, women's basketball and gymnastics teams.

"They're the most promising. We think they will win," said Vasily Titov, deputy chairman of the VTB bank management board. "We want to be associated with the leaders." The bank has featured the basketball players in advertising campaigns.

From The Moscow Times

Synergy Sledge Sailing Sponsorship?

The following article has been ammeded from its original form.

In a Bloomberg article, Roberto Coladangelo, an Account Director at Synergy Sponsorship was quoted as saying: `You might as well stand in a shower and tear up 50-pound notes,”

In response, Coladangelo has said

I would like to make it clear that the journalist involved misquoted me and despite since amending the copy, it still does not truly reflect my point of view.

What I actually said in the interview was whilst the mass market has the perception that sailing is an elitist and expensive sport, there are strong opportunities within sailing for sponsors and the sport can actually be very open and accessible.

Crunch Changes Cowes Crowd

According to an article by the BBC, the last Cowes Week to be sponsored by Insurance company Skandia was not too badly affected by the ‘credit crunch’.

Despite a year of financial turmoil, the streams of yachts heading out onto the Solent are still flying the flags of some of the world’s biggest banks.

Back on land the main shopping street is packed with groups of corporate hospitality guests making their way round the designer boutiques.

And yet, though the well-heeled crowd may not yet be counting the pennies, there are some early signs that the slowdown is beginning to effect the very genteel world of Cowes Week.

But the boss of On Deck, Mike Williams, has seen a change in the make-up of his clientele this year.

“We’re probably 20% down on the corporate hospitality side of things, but that’s been made up by sailing enthusiasts booking the boats as individuals,” he says.

One of the other parts of Mike’s business is the individual regattas the company organises for different sectors of business, ranging from the Banking and Finance Regatta in September to a race for the furniture industry.

“You would expect that these regattas would be hit hard, but because there are so many sailors within the companies, there are still plenty of entries for this year,” says Mr Williams.

Among the punters watching the live bands is a group of hedge fund managers who’ve chartered a yacht for the day.

“There’s still a lot of money around here,” says the skipper of the boat.

“The higher end does not seem to be feeling the pinch. In fact they seem pretty immune from the credit crunch.”

And while the Pimm’s and champagne continues to flow, it would seem that the waves of the credit crunch are not quite ready to engulf the Cowes regatta quite yet.

Etihad Credit Sponsorship for Growth

Four years ago, no-one had heard of Etihad, it was an infant airline. Now it is the world's fastest growing airline, and global marketing chief Peter Baumgartner says it has been sponsorship, not advertising, that has allowed the Abu Dhabi carrier to achieve growth of more than 40 per cent every year.

Many companies put advertising first, Baumgartner says, but the challenge of getting the name of the airline in front of millions of potential customers in dozens of markets required a special strategy.

The answer, he says, was sponsorship.

"We decided to spend a lot of our budget on sponsorship," he says. "Formula One is an example of how we have approached this strategically."

In 2007, Etihad was the sponsor of the Spyker Formula One team, but this year the airline has taken the plunge by linking its name with the biggest brand in the business, Ferrari.

Baumgartner says the fit is a natural one for a company that sees itself as innovative, cutting-edge and technically driven.

"Ferrari is a commanding brand and we felt that Ferrari would bring a lot to us. It all fits together."

The sponsorship-driven element of Etihad is very much strategic, but there also has to be a degree of opportunism in applying such a strategy, he says.

"We have been quite active in recent times and fortunately there have been a couple of opportunities.

"You have to grab these when they are around."

Another of those opportunities was the chance to link up with British football team Chelsea.

It may not be a motor racing team, but the sponsorship works in the same way.

"If you consider Chelsea, it works in a very similar fashion to Ferrari," Baumgartner says. "We are trying to take our Abu Dhabi-based brand to the world and that means more than just placing a logo on a team.

"We have managed internally to build quite a skilled sponsorship team.

"We have also been exploring sponsorship from the very first day." The success of that strategy was on show last month when the airline won the world's best marketing strategy award handed out by Airline Business magazine in Britain.

The magazine lauded the success of the brand's sponsorships, along with its consistent message from the time customers were picked up by its limousines to when they experienced its in-flight service.

Ferrari and Chelsea may be among the biggest sports brands in the world, but that has not stopped Etihad from making some more eclectic deals as well.

Baumgartner highlights the airline's sponsorship of the All Ireland Hurling Championships.

Although the sport may have limited appeal, the fact that the airline has taken an interest in the sport at all has created a bond with Irish fans of the sport, and this has fed back directly into Etihad's success.

"Next to giving us overnight fame in Ireland, hurling is a sport that is very close to the community and has great emotional links with the people of Ireland," Baumgartner says.

Etihad is an airline out to market itself, but he notes that it is also a marketing tool in its own right.

The airline was originally commissioned to help grow awareness of Abu Dhabi as a tourist destination.

A Ferrari-based theme park is under construction there and the capital of the United Arab Emirates hosts its first grand prix sponsored by Etihad later this year.

The strategy has helped to turn Etihad into the world's fastest growing airline, Baumgartner says.

"Getting back to the fact that sponsorship is more than just putting a logo on a shirt or car, the real value is when you tap into the community behind it."

From: The Australian

"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.”

Are Olympics Sponsorships Worth It?

An article today in Business Week, suggests that for some blue chip brands, the answer is no. High profile sponsors who are supporting Beijing, but not prepared to sponsor future games include Kodak, Lenovo, and J&J.

The Lenovo example is pretty self-explanatory. Its sponsorship of the 2006 Winter Games in Turin and the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing will be a one-time shot for the Chinese PC maker. For Kodak, a sponsor of the games since 1986, the returns just aren't there. Antonio Perez, CEO says "It's just not the best way for us to spend our money."

While China is seen as an opportunity to get a brand in front of millions of new consumers, some research suggests few consumers even notice who is backing the Games. In a survey of 1,500 Chinese city dwellers earlier this year by London's Fournaise Marketing Group, only 15% could name two of the 12 global sponsors, and just 40% could name one sponsor: Coca-Cola. Adding to the confusion for consumers are 21 additional national-level sponsors, including Adidas and Volkswagen.

Others see it differently. Coke has signed on through the 2020 Games. "Coke has not in the least reconsidered its Olympic sponsorship," says Kevin Tressler, director of Coke's Worldwide Sports & Entertainment Marketing.

The Chinese games potentially offer a unique set of circumstances to sponsors. As well as restrictions in the IOC charter that ensure nonsponsors' ads are restricted in and around Olympics venues, Beijing has extended the ban to all outdoor advertising in the city's airports, buses, and billboards within the city center.

In recent games, the debate as to whether to sponsor the officials of the IOC and host government or the competing athletes has probably come down on the side of the latter. Nike especially have made much of the fact that their shoes are won by the gold medal winners while official sponsor Adidas shows are worn by the men in suits. However, in China, things are different. Government officials will notice which companies show up in support even if consumers don't, a major factor for sponsors in a country where guanxi, or relationships, are such an integral part of doing business.

London 2012 will be a different story. Marketers will have to weigh whether there are more cost-effective ways to reach consumers and leverage Olympic enthusiasm without having to pay the high price. Frank Vial, strategy director of branding agency Landor Associates, argues that in a world that's moving toward targeted marketing, "maybe the Olympics will have to reinvent itself as something other than a global, monolithic brand."