Chick-fil-A has reached a “new six-year agreement as title sponsor of Atlanta’s college football bowl game,” which is again being branded as the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, according to Tim Tucker of the ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION. The QSR “substantially increased its financial commitment in order to strike the deal with ESPN,” which controls naming and media rights to the game. Chick-fil-A Exec VP & Chief Marketing Officer Steve Robinson “would not disclose financial terms.” But he said that the company is “very pleased" with the deal. Robinson said in addition to the initial six-year term, the deal gives Chick-fil-A “first option to renew” for another six years. Tucker notes in addition to the title sponsorship, the deal “calls for increased Chick-fil-A advertising across the ESPN family of networks and digital platforms, with an emphasis on college football programming.” Robinson: “Our agreement with the network is much broader than just the bowl entitlement. It involves our media buy and our media activation throughout the entire college football season and the bowl season.” He added, “It is literally a border-to-border, Kickoff weekend-to-championship game agreement, and it also includes some other assets in other parts of the year that we are very excited about.” Robinson said that it “took about a year to negotiate the new deal with ESPN,” and that once that was done, it “took about a week to negotiate a new deal with bowl officials about how the sponsorship would be activated locally” (ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION, 4/22).
