The Washington Nationals have hired Wasserman to find a naming rights sponsor for their ballpark, according to today’s Washington Post
From WP - The idea: Create a relationship that the club hopes will bring in $8 million to $12 million annually for 10 or 20 years. Yet even though the Lerner family took control of the team 20 months ago, the ballpark still has a name that will change. The Nationals hired Wasserman Media Group, which has sold more than $2 billion in sports sponsorship around the globe, to run what they consider to be a complex transaction. The process, according to Nationals President Stan Kasten, is much more than just slapping up a few signs and renaming the stadium after a company.
According to Baseball-reference, the Nats draw right around 2 million fans per season to the stadium. Not sure how many of those are unique, but just for fun, let’s say that they are.
Now think about the team’s Website. It probably draws three or four times that many unique fans each year, but even with the power of MLBAM behind it, I’ll bet the NATS are only generating fraction of the sponsorship revenue from its Website than they expect to generate from stadium naming rights.
I’m not trying to single out this one team. I expect Washington will get its naming rights parntner and I further expect that partnership will prove profitable for both parties. Otherwise they’d never do it.
But I would guess - and this is just a theory - that every major, pro franchise has orders of magnitude more fans hitting their Websites than visiting their stadiums; yet I’ve never seen any team sell naming rights on its Web page.
Why not? Doesn’t the Web have to potential to be THE central element in a sponsorship package?
We can build integrated promotions around the Web and include other traditional media in the mix, just like we can do with the stadium. Sure, the stadium ends up on TV a lot. We can’t underestimate the value of that exposure. Still, with marketers clamoring for ROI, and Web fans just one click away…and with many fans watching games online…the value of connecting with fans via the Web is skyrocketing.
If I owned a company large enough to afford naming rights, I might negotiate to name the NATs Website instead of its stadium - and probably get 10x the exposure for a small fraction of the prices. Funny thing, they’ll probably just “throw in” the Web to whoever buys the stadium…and give away an asset that could have significantly inreased the overall deal.
Something to think about.
Hey, Pat - nce idea.
Would like to see how this could ever happen.
Like “Welcome to Toyota-Colts website. Click here to enter”?
As a Fluminense FC fan, I can predict some resistance from brazilian fans… but hey, here’s the money to bring a great new player.
A thought provoking subject for sure. Others please correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the Dallas Stars (NHL) sold a title or presenting sponsorship to AT&T Wireless back in the day that included URL branding. It was something gnarly like attdallasstars.com. I cringed when I saw this. Even though I have sold sponsorship since ‘92, I often prided myself on keeping it clean and making it relevant, I thought it crossed a line and de-valued the team brand and their website and made the sponsor look stupid. Overcommercialization can backfire on a sponsor. A stadium is part of a team’s brand but the web sites integrity needs to be guarded against to some degree. Something about it just doesn’t seem right. The point I take away from this blog is how to build a case for value that your website has, especially if it delivers more reach and frequency than anything else.
no kirk i heard it already too
i have never heard it before sorry