Home Team Marketing acquires multimedia rights to California public high schools

Cleveland-based Home Team Marketing has struck an agreement with the California Interscholastic Federation, giving it multimedia rights throughout the state.

More than 800,000 student athletes participate in CIF-sanctioned public high school sports in California.

“This is a massive, massive property,” said Pete Fitzpatrick, president of Home Team Marketing. “There’s really not much out there that compares to this, in terms of its consumer reach across the athletes, their families and all of those who are loyal to their high school.”

With California, Home Team Marketing now has the rights to 16 high school athletic associations, including the New York State Public High School Athletic Association and the Texas private schools.

Fitzpatrick’s agency has been aggregating the rights to these associations as a way to present a national high school platform to potential advertisers. The deals enable the company to sell signs, media advertising and promotional rights to the state championship events that are sanctioned by the associations.

Fitzpatrick thinks that the marketing profile of high school sports will continue to grow. He added that he’s prepared for competition from IMG College, which last week acquired the marketing rights to the Florida High School Athletic Association. IMG also has rights to the public University Interscholastic League in Texas.

— Michael Smith