Marketing rights to 33 college bowl games “will be available to sponsors from one source for the first time under an agreement reached by the Football Bowl Association and FishBait Marketing,” according to Michael Smith of SPORTSBUSINESS JOURNAL. By aggregating the marketing rights “to all but two of the bowl games in college football’s postseason, FishBait will go to market with the ability to sell corporate sponsorships that stretch across nearly all of the bowls.” It is a “one-stop shop model that’s never been tried in the bowl space.” Florida Citrus Sports CEO and FBA Chair Steve Hogan said, “It’s something that many of us in the bowl space have been talking about for years. … Much like we’ve seen with the PGA Tour, there’s power in numbers. We needed to combine our rights. It’s the only way for sponsors to be able to do one deal and have a footprint that stretches across the postseason.” South Carolina-based FishBait will "go to market with the rights to 33 of the 35 bowl games and the ability to sell across them.” The Rose Bowl and the Pinstripe Bowl “are the two that didn’t jump onboard.” Sponsors of the Yankees “already enjoy rights to the Pinstripe Bowl,” while the Tournament of Roses control most of the rights to the Rose Bowl. Smith reports talks with both bowls are ongoing, but each will “continue to sell its own title rights, unless it strikes a separate agreement with FishBait.” ESPN has the marketing rights “to the BCS bowls -- Fiesta, Orange, Rose, Sugar and the national championship game.” The net “will retain those title sponsorship rights, but FishBait will be able to sell corporate sponsorship packages into those games as long as the categories don’t conflict.” FishBait CEO Rick Jones said that his agency and the FBA have “identified 30 categories that they will target, everything from consumer packaged goods to tires, home improvement retailers, rental car agencies, travel websites, sports bars, recreational vehicles, arcades, mutual funds, sporting goods stores and motion picture studios.” FishBait has “set a goal of selling six of the categories for the 2012 bowl season and six more for the 2013 season, for a total of 12 categories in two years” (SPORTSBUSINESS JOURNAL, 5/14 issue).
