The College Football Playoff has selected three companies to handle its fan fest, concert series and pregame tailgate during the weekend of the inaugural championship game in January.
The Colonnade Group, a Birmingham, Ala.-based agency with deep roots in college football, will manage and operate the weekend fan fest, which is being called Playoff Fan Central. Colonnade knows the fan fest business well — it also runs fan fests for the SEC, Big Ten and Big 12.
The weekend concert series, called the Playoff Playlist Live!, will be produced by Gary Solomon’s Solomon Group, a New Orleans-based agency that specializes in live event production and set design. The weekend concert series will be held in American Airlines Center near downtown Dallas.
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An early rendering of the CFP fan fest, which will be located in downtown Dallas and managed and operated by The Colonnade Group.
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The Etzel Agency out of Beaverton, Ore., will design and oversee the Championship Tailgate on game day, Monday, Jan. 12, at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
The fan fest and concerts will be staged in downtown Dallas over the weekend leading up to the championship game. Admission costs for those events have not been established yet. On game day, the focus will shift to AT&T Stadium, where the tailgate will be held only for ticket holders to the game.
“This will be bigger and better than anything that’s ever happened in postseason college football,” said Bill Hancock, the CFP’s executive director.
Fan events for the semifinals will be orchestrated by the host bowls — the Sugar and Rose. The CFP oversees the championship game.
It’s fair to say that the NCAA’s Final Four served as something of an inspiration for the CFP’s ancillary events, especially considering that the Final Four was held at AT&T Stadium earlier this year. CFP organizers were paying close attention, studying each of the NCAA’s fan events. Hancock also ran the men’s basketball tournament as an NCAA executive through the 1990s, so he’s well-versed in the commercial growth of the Final Four.
The challenge for CFP executives was figuring out how to top everything that’s come before it.
They started with the fan fest, which will be housed in a 500,000-square-foot section of the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in downtown Dallas from Friday, Jan. 9, through that Sunday. By comparison, the Final Four’s fan fest, Bracket Town, was held on 400,000 square feet in the same convention hall.
The CFP also will bring its media day for both teams into Playoff Fan Central on that Saturday, enabling fans to watch the player and coach interviews as they happen.
“When the commissioners created the playoffs, they wanted to make sure that the event was befitting the stature of the game and the importance of the playoff,” Hancock said. “We want the fans, even if they don’t have a ticket, to be able to experience the championship.”
ESPN will sell the activation space inside the fan fest. CFP official sponsors will have the right to negotiate for space first.
Colonnade will serve as an activation arm inside the fan fest, although sponsors also will have the ability to bring their own agency to assist with setup and activation.
A full-length football field inside the convention hall, a space that has no columns, will serve as the centerpiece for activities. Everything from pep rallies to youth football clinics will be held on the turf field.
New for Colonnade will be a social media hub that will broadcast pictures and posts from inside and outside the fan fest. Screens throughout the space will feature reports from roving reporters inside the convention hall.
Seating for the media day will accommodate close to 5,000 fans, in nonreserved seats, and will not require a separate ticket.
“It’s certainly the largest college fan event we’ve done and it’s the largest that we know of,” said Anna Slive Harwood, vice president of operations and development for Colonnade, and SEC Commissioner Mike Slive’s daughter. “We’re really excited about the social media component and our ability to connect fans nationally to this event.”
Laila Brock, the CFP’s director of team operations and logistics, has worked with Harwood to plan the fan fest.
Talent for the concert series is still being determined, but it will be held over multiple days with multiple acts, Gary Solomon said. Talent will be announced around early October.
The game-day tailgate will extend off the east end of AT&T Stadium into a large footprint in Lot 4. Musical acts, sponsor activation, cheerleaders, bands and broadcast locations for ESPN will be part of the tailgate. Only ticket holders for the game will be admitted.
Tom Etzel, whose agency specializes in live event and experiential marketing, will design and oversee the build-out of the tailgate.
“We want the stadium to be the place to be four or five hours before the game,” Etzel said.
The three agencies and the CFP will have their first planning meeting together this week in Dallas.
