Bowl Games Spending $5.4M On Participant Gifts This Season

Hair dryers, aloha shirts and belt buckles return as bowl gifts this season, but new to the roster are pylons and custom-made Fatheads, according to SportsBusiness Daily/Journal’s annual gift package rundown. All told, at least $5.4M will be spent on gifts that will be given to the '14-15 bowl game participants, up 11% compared with the expenditures of a year ago. The increase is fueled in part by the addition of several new bowls. In addition, two-thirds of the bowl game committees will be staging the increasingly popular gift suites or shopping sprees in the coming weeks, up from half the committees a year ago.

For a breakdown of each bowl's gifts, see today’s issue of THE DAILY.