The bowl game schedule has been stretched to optimize advertising revenues. So instead of having all the games on one day, they will unfold over a ten day period, culminating in a national championship game on January 9th. For those not from the US, the point of all this was both to introduce a series of games that would identify a national collegiate football champion, but also produce some advertising revenue in which the universities participating would share.
How those sponsorships have evolved tells us something about the US economy, the society it supports and the changing interests of its citizenry.
The so-called 'Major Bowls,' those games featuring the best teams, were originally sponsored from the 1920s and 30s into the 80s by agricultural interests attempting to draw attention to their products, and not insignificantly, to regional pride (with hope for some financial development thrown in). California had the Rose Bowl; Georgia, the Peach Bowl; Florida, the Orange and Gator Bowls; Texas, the Cotton Bowl; Louisiana, the Sugar Bowl, etc. There was a quaint, hokey quality to the events which served both to highlight regional distinctions, but also to underscore that for this one day, at least, the nation was one. The advent of television in the 1950s turbocharged interest and increased the impact of the sport, the events and the advertising potential.
Starting in the 1980s, when color television penetration in the US began to reach saturation levels, those original sponsors could no longer afford the exploding advertising costs of national and even global reach. But the names had become enshrined in the national consciousness so replacing them was deemed too potentially risky to brand equity and therefore to revenue generation. A hybrid system evolved in which the original sponsors were linked to hyphenated partners who were really paying the cost.
So, from the country's rural, agrarian past has emerged its financial and technological present and future (with some fast food thrown in for sustenance of a monetary if not nutritional sort). So we now have the Discover (credit card) Orange Bowl, the Allstate (insurance) Sugar Bowl, the Vizio (tv manufacturer) Rose Bowl, the ATT (telephone) Cotton Bowl, the Tostitos (snack food) Fiesta Bowl and, our personal favorite, the Taxslayer.com Gator Bowl. There are also, for those keeping score at home, the Capital One, Chick Fil A, Outback, GoDaddy.com and Hyundai bowls.
There are those who decry what they perceive is the desecration of a noble tradition. Pragmatists point out that these 'traditions' are in many cases only a generation or two old and were themselves driven by commercial interests. This is, for better or worse, a reflection of who we are. We embrace it - and look forward to seeing where the next leg of this economic journey will take us. JL
Barry Janoff reports in Big Lead Sports:
Post-season college football is mainly focused on the teams, players and coaches on the field. But major brands also play a significant role – and have a major stake – in the 35 Bowl games played between Dec. 17 and the BCS title game on Jan. 9.
Among the companies with title sponsorships are AT&T, Capital One, BBVA, Kraft, Hyundai, GoDaddy.com, AutoZone, TicketCity, New Era and Outback; and brands with sponsorship deals for the five games in the Bowl Championship Series: the Rose Bowl presented by Vizio, Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, Allstate Sugar Bowl, Discover Orange Bowl and the Allstate BCS National Championship.
All of the games are seen nationally, giving each brand not only a stage for Bowl branding but also a venue to air commercials to a responsive audience.
“Our national platform is college football, [led by] the sponsorship of the Chick-fil-A Bowl,” said Steve Robinson, svp-marketing and CMO for Chick-fil-A. “For us, investing in games is paying for the right to activate. We want people to experience our product.”
Chick-fil-A has been title sponsor of the game since 1998 (from 1968-1997 it was known simply as the Peach Bowl). The Dec. 31 game on ESPN will match Virginia against Auburn, but it is more than the followers of those two schools that the company is seeking to reach.
“Colleges themselves are more of a national brand than ever,” said Robinson, who was part of a panel discussion during the IMG/Sports Business Journal Intercollegiate Athletics Forum held in New York earlier this month. “You don’t have to have attended a university to support it, and you don’t have to still live in the community. This is a real opportunity to raise our profile and brand awareness on a national level.”
For Chick-fil-A, being involved with a Bowl sponsorship gives them the ability to parlay their regional presence into a national forum. “We have found with the Chick-fil-A Bowl that you don’t have to be a national player with a huge budget,” said Robinson. “Getting the name out is helping us to build our brand.”
What companies that sponsor college Bowl games also have in common is that they are constantly seeking to have their name associated with the event in which they have invested. And that can often be a strategy involving longevity rather than immediate impact.
“It would seem that Bowl games that have longer relationships with the sponsors, you remember them easier,” said Kirk Herbstreit, commentator and analyst with ESPN’s College GameDay, who will be calling the Rose Bowl presented by Vizio (Jan. 2) and the Allstate BSC National Championship game (Jan. 9) on ESPN. “The ones that seem to change every two years are the ones that would be tougher to remember the affiliation. The ones that build the long-term relationships, without a doubt, there definitely an impact there.”
Unlike Chick-fil-A’s long alliance with the Bowl game in Atlanta, other Bowl games have seen a revolving door of title sponsors.
This year, Taxslayer.com took over title sponsorship of the Gator Bowl. Prior to that, the annual game had five previous sponsors since 1989: Mazda (1986-91), Outback Steakhouse (1992-94), Toyota (1996-2006), Konica Minolta (2007-10) and Progressive (2011).
And electronics firm Vizio is in the first year of a four-year pact as presenting sponsor of the Rose Bowl. Fans may or may not remember, and may or may not care, that the “Grandaddy of them all” had three presenting sponsors since 1999: AT&T (1999-2002), Sony PlayStation 2 (2003) and Citi (2004-10).
“Sports fans, particularly football fans, are a critically important audience for our brand as it continues to grow and expand,” Vizio offered in a statement when the sponsorship deal was signed. The pact ensures that the company will have presenting sponsorship status when the BCS National Championship is played there in 20134.
“Serving as presenting sponsor of the ‘Granddaddy of all Bowl Games’ provides a rare opportunity to reach a captive audience. It also provides tremendous marketing potential leading up to the game during the critical holiday buying season.”
In 2010, a bevy of other brands came in as title sponsors for various Bowl games, including Discover, BBVA and GoDaddy.com.
Although still in the debating process, the possible switch from the current BCS format to a playoff system could add value to these sponsorship deals.
“If there was a playoff system or a plus-one, I would figure that the Bowls would still be involved and that they would still need sponsorships,” said ESPN’s Herbstreit. “If anything, they would have a higher profile. But that’s subjective and open to a pretty good debate on how much more popular the post-season would be if the system were to change. Everybody seems to think it would be a slam-dunk and that it would become a lot more popular.”
For most, though, the strategy is to focus on the present with an eye toward any, or even no, BCS format change.
“We are just trying to create a platform for the cows [the company's mascots] to sell chicken,” said Chick-fil-A’s Robinson. “The cows have played very well with that audience. We have local-restaurant independent operators, and we do well in college towns because these local operators work with athletic departments, colleges and the administrations. We have more than 200 stores that are licensed [destinations] on college campuses.
“For us,” stressed Robinson, “the college student is the sweet spot.”
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