Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Sponsorships revolve in sports

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2003 05:51:46 -0000

July 5, 2003, 1:04AM

Sponsorships revolve in sports

By HAL BOCK
Associated Press

In the high-stakes world of sports sponsorships, nothing is
forever and few things are for very long.

There is, for example, golf's Nationwide Tour. Invented in
1990, it was sponsored by the Ben Hogan Company until
1992. Then Nike took over until 1999, followed by Buy.com
in 2000 and now Nationwide Insurance.

That's three title sponsors in five years. Winless players like Jeff
Freeman and Eric Meeks, trudging through Triple-A level
tournament golf, have enough other problems without worrying
about whose name is on the tour.

English soccer's League Cup changes sponsors with regularity.
The competition is now called the Carling Cup, thanks to a
three-year deal with Coors. This is the same event that was
called the Worthington Cup for five years and the Coca-Cola
Cup before that.

Revolving sponsorships are an old story in college football. The
Capital One Bowl once flew the banner of the Florida
Department of Citrus as well as Comp USA and
OurHouse.com. At various times, the Independence Bowl's
bills were paid by Poulan/Weedeater, Sanford, which
manufactures writing instruments, and MainStay Management.

Bank One Bank has its name on the Arizona Diamondbacks
ballpark and now is a presenting sponsor of the Chicago Bears,
expanding its relationship with the NFL team that began when
George Halas opened an account there in 1934. Nobody
knows how much Papa Bear deposited.

Does this sponsorship stuff really work? The people paying for
the privilege seem to think so.

"You may not buy a brand because of association with an
event, but it serves to support image," said John Eckel, senior
vice president for sports and automotive marketing for Hill and
Knowlton.

"It used to be you'd hang a banner for awareness and that was
enough. It has become so much more sophisticated. You must
get into the right sponsorship and leverage it properly. Just
buying sponsorships is never enough.

"It's a $20-plus billion sponsorship market and 80 percent of
that is in sports."

A lot of the message is subliminal.

It could be as simple as the sponsor's name across a coach's
headset. "A viewer might say, `If he's using that brand, it must
be reliable.'" Eckel said.

Unless, of course, a play gets botched.

Few companies are more involved with sports than
Anheuser-Busch. Tony Ponturo is the company's vice president
for corporate media and sports marketing.

"At the end of the day, we are not in the sports purchasing
business," Ponturo said. "We are in the growing beer sales and
market share business."

Tradition often gets shattered by sponsorships.

The Chicago White Sox played in Comiskey Park for the
better part of a century. Now the place is called U.S. Cellular
Field, named for the wireless phone company that paid $68
million over 20 years for the right to hang its name over the
front door. The new sponsor did not, however, replace the
dugout-to-bullpen land lines.

"Our strategy was based on how to get our brand name out
there on a consistent basis," said Jay Ellison, vice president of
operations of U.S. Cellular. "It's a tactical, daily opportunity.
You see the traffic. You see the brand impression.

"We had a sponsorship and took it further to naming rights. It
was a cost-effective way to keep our name out there."

And a necessary one in the competitive world of wireless
communications.

Let U.S. Cellular buy a ballpark. Nextel went for the whole
NASCAR stock racing series in a 10-year, $700 million deal
after R.J. Reynolds, the series sponsor for 33 years, bowed
out.

Was Nextel's sortie a reaction to U.S. Cellular's baseball buy?

"Meaning no disrespect, we don't react to U.S. Cellular in any
area," said Mark Schweitzer, senior vice president for
marketing at Nextel.

For Nextel, already equipped with sponsorship relationships in
hockey, football and baseball, stock cars looked like a perfect
fit.

"We had been interested in NASCAR for some time,"
Schweitzer said. "The rate of growth in the sport seemed to us
a great value and the fact that it was exclusive was very much a
factor. There's no other sport where you can own the league
name."

One sponsor in, another out.

When Enron's bankroll turned into Monopoly money, workers
hastily removed that company's name from the ballpark in
Houston and replaced it with Minute Maid. The same thing
happened in Foxboro, Mass., when CMGI's books started
spilling red ink. All the signs came down at the new stadium,
replaced by Gillette.

In St. Louis, the Rams play in Edward Jones Stadium. It used
to be called the TWA Dome but then TWA went out of
business, perhaps in part because it spent too much
discretionary capital on naming rights for a ballpark.

Adelphia Coliseum, home of the Tennessee Titans, now is
simply called The Coliseum after Adelphia's revenue stream
dried up. The same thing happened with PSINet Stadium,
home of the Baltimore Ravens.

Buying stadium names is a big thing for the high tech crowd.
There's Qualcomm in San Diego, Alltel in Jacksonville,
Network Associates in Oakland, Ericsson in Carolina and
3Com in San Francisco.

Some years ago, when Pete Rozelle was still commissioner of
the NFL, the final question at his annual Super Bowl press
conference concerned sponsorships.

Noting the increasing corporate interest in sports, an inquiring
mind wondered whether the NFL's showcase event might be
vulnerable to a takeover.

"Could we one day have the Preparation H Super Bowl?" he
asked a nonplussed Rozelle.

It hasn't happened.

Not yet.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/sports/1980877

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