The University of Southern California and Fox Sports Media Group have agreed to a three-year deal allowing Fox to sell sponsorships at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and Los Angeles Sports Arena.
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The deal includes both the coliseum (above) and the Los Angeles Sports Arena.
Photo by: USC SPORTS PROPERTIES
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The agreement, which Southern Cal officials expected to be signed last week, expands Fox’s partnership with the Pac-12 Conference school. USC Sports Properties, which is owned by Fox and manages marketing and media rights for USC sports, is in the third year of a 10-year deal with the school’s athletic department.
The new deal gives USC Sports Properties the exclusive rights to market partnerships that extend across campus and to the alumni association, in addition to selling space at the coliseum and arena. USC took over operations of those facilities in September.
Fox’s inventory at the two venues includes gates, concourses, concession stands, restrooms, elevators, the back of the video board at the coliseum and the roof of the sports arena, said Dan Shell, vice president and general manager of USC Sports Properties.
Naming rights for the coliseum are not included in the new agreement. USC officials prefer to wait on that piece until they have a concrete plan for renovating the 92-year-old stadium, said Dan Stimmler, the school’s associate senior vice president of auxiliary services.
“We would like to have a partner for both buildings,” Stimmler said. “We are just starting a feasibility study on upgrading the coliseum that will take six months. It’s a huge undertaking, and we want to get that project done before we know what a deal would look like.”
For now, USC Sports Properties has signed deals with Continental Tire and the USC Keck School of Medicine, two new sponsors, and picked up an existing deal with MillerCoors, originally sold by the Los Angeles Coliseum Commission, the stadium’s governing body.
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USC Sports Properties has signed the Keck School and expected a State Farm deal.
Photo by: USC SPORTS PROPERTIES
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The marketing group also has commitments from Bay Alarm, Chevron, State Farm and Wells Fargo, four deals that were expected to be signed last week, Shell said.
All seven sponsors have static signs at the coliseum this season. The deals run from one to three years and are valued in the low five figures to low six figures annually, Shell said.
USC’s deals with Fox Sports Media Group and Legends Hospitality, the food provider for the coliseum and arena, all run three years and will expire before the 2016 season. At that time, school officials expect the coliseum’s renovation, expected to cost
$70 million to $100 million, to be completed, Stimmler said.
Next season, there will be sponsorships available for two temporary club spaces tied to Trojans football, one in the coliseum parking lot and the other inside the arena on the main concourse, Stimmler said.
The arena’s hospitality zone opened this season and holds about 1,000 people and is open to the public. It was initially named Julie’s, a nod to the old Julie’s Trojan Barrel, a famous campus restaurant that closed in 1999.
IMG College also competed for marketing the two sports facilities.
