ACTIVATING SPORTS SPONSORSHIP RIGHTS: MORE THAN IT USED TO BE
When Adam Chase began practicing sports law 15 years ago, sponsors of sports events were usually happy to pay event promoters a lump sum in exchange for a certain amount of branding, and then retreat to the background. Now, he says, those sponsors tend to “activate” – or exercise – their full sponsorship rights. Chase is a Washington D.C. attorney with Cooley LLP, whose business includes sports clients. Most of those clients are seeking to develop sponsorship opportunities for their brands. He also works with the Atlanta Braves, as well as promoters who sell sponsorship opportunities. Chase regards a sports sponsorship as a good fit for consumer-facing brands because most consumers like sports. A major, national sports event is “the one must-see, real-time television [programming] these days,” he says. “There’s almost nothing else [like it, except] maybe an awards show [such as] the Academy Awards. … There’s the [brand] exposure to both the people in the stadium and also the people watching on TV.” Sports events, he adds, “are one of the last communal activities in an age of increasing social media and fragmentation.” Stadium sky boxes, Chase says, are another key branding opportunity. “If you’re Verizon and you have naming rights here in D.C. for the Verizon Center, you’d better believe you’ve got … [a] nice a box, to take big and potential clients, best employees and executives.” One of Chase’s clients is Events DC, the official convention and sports authority for the District of Columbia. Events DC promotes the annual AT&T Nation’s Football Classic, of which Wells Fargo Advisors is the official banking partner. Well Fargo, Chase observes, wants to be involved with the entire event, especially one such as the Nation’s Football Classic that is “very community-focused. There is a lot of things going on around the game, other than the game [itself ]. There’s educational seminars and job fairs … They want to be part of all of that.” Perhaps the most important conversation a bank looking to sponsor a sports event needs to have is with itself. “What does the financial institution want out of it?” Chase says. “Is it a big, NFL-type sponsorship, such as [being] the credit card of the NFL? Or is it a really local, community type of sponsorship? That will affect what assets of the game or the team that the financial institution will want [to sponsor], and what the [sponsorship will do] for them.” On top of that, he says, banks want “exposure and positive goodwill around the game and around their brand that’s associated with the game.” These days, according to Chase, the NFL is “the gold standard” of sports-event sponsorships. “Everybody wants to be associated with the NFL,” he adds. “But maybe a local bank in a small town in New England is happy being a good partner of the local Triple A baseball team.”
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