Menu
Events and Attractions

How D-II CIAA event became sponsor destination

Name that college basketball tournament.

It’s one of the best attended tourneys in the nation, with crowds of 150,000 to 200,000 over the course of a week.
It’s loaded with blue-chip sponsors, including Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Nationwide Insurance.

It’s enough of a draw that members of basketball royalty (Magic Johnson) and the White House (Michelle Obama) have made cameo appearances in recent years.

The ACC? Big Ten? Pac-12? Nope.

Try the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association, a Division II league made up of 12 historically black colleges and universities.

This week, the CIAA tips off its annual men’s and women’s basketball tournament in Charlotte. Since relocating from Raleigh to Charlotte almost a decade ago, the tournament has become not only a season-ending celebration for the HBCU schools, but also an epicenter of parties and pop culture — and a destination event for many of the schools’ alumni.

It’s also experienced a series of progressive changes under Jacqie McWilliams, the CIAA’s commissioner since 2012, who came from the NCAA, where she spent 10 years and worked with hotels, communities and corporate sponsors as part of putting on March Madness. She’s brought that big-event experience to the CIAA and pushed similar strategies and tactics.

The CIAA generates ticket sales in the range of $2.5 million from the tournament each year. Major backers Toyota, Coke, Nationwide and Food Lion all spend $350,000 or more each year with the conference.

Host city Charlotte negotiated a six-year extension with the CIAA in 2014, and the new deal lifts some of the financial burden of staging the event off the conference, as starting this year it guarantees that $1.9 million of expenses at Time Warner Cable Arena will shift from the conference to the Charlotte tourism authority.

The Charlotte Hornets, operators of the arena, already provide the building rent-free to the CIAA.

In addition, local government, which formerly pledged $1 million in annual scholarship contributions to the conference, has increased that commitment to $1.4 million.

But what has set apart the event is the focus on entertainment — and fun. The tournament fan festival, staged at the Charlotte Convention Center, covers 200,000 square feet and counts Toyota as the title sponsor. Admission is free, and attendees watch nationally syndicated DJs Rickey Smiley and Tom Joyner host their shows from the festival during tournament week.

“If you’re in the multicultural marketing space, it’s not about basketball,” said Micah Fuller, senior vice president of sales at Urban Sports and Entertainment Group, a firm that has handled CIAA corporate sales for 23 years. “It’s part Essence Festival, part fashion show, part Mardi Gras.”

The 12 CIAA schools span Pennsylvania to North Carolina, with 80 percent of their alumni located in Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland. Enrollment at the member schools ranges from 750 to 7,000 students.

Even as HBCUs struggle with funding and enrollment, the CIAA basketball tournament remains a cultural force, one of the main reasons companies keep coming back. Alums and students attend reunions, dance competitions, battles of the bands, and a slew of parties and concerts during tournament week. Those events have proved so popular that McWilliams has spent considerable time negotiating for more control of hotel ballrooms and other venues to ensure greater influence by the CIAA when it comes to parties and concerts.

Crowds turn out big for the CIAA Fan Fest, which this year will be sponsored by Toyota. Nationwide, Coke and Food Lion also spend around the basketball tournament.
Photo by: URBAN SPORTS AND ENTERTAINMENT
She also convinced Charlotte hotels to provide prime rooms and space during tournament week for $99 to $278 for schools and fans, compared with previous room prices of $300 and more.

As for basketball, the CIAA has tinkered with ticket prices (weekly books start in the $50 range) and created VIP entertainment areas to prod more people to go inside the arena.

“This becomes the epicenter for families and fans and class reunions,” said Reginald Bean, director of multicultural marketing and community affairs at Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated, the Charlotte bottler that shares the CIAA sponsorship with Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta.

Bean credits McWilliams with more community outreach around the tournament. This year, Coke and the CIAA are backing for the first time an event with Charlotte-based Samaritan’s Feet, the international nonprofit that helps victims of famine, illness, poverty and war. The conference and Coke, with Samaritan’s Feet, will donate 100 pairs of shoes and socks to students at a Charlotte elementary school during tournament week.

Nationwide Insurance, a partner for seven years, promotes insurance and financial services to CIAA fans, a typical part of any sponsorship — but the company also has used the relationship as a recruiting tool. Lu Yarbrough III, head of multicultural marketing at Nationwide, said working with the HBCU schools has provided a consistent pipeline for finding talent. Each year, a dozen or so students from CIAA schools receive internships from the company. Of those, eight or nine usually go on to full-time jobs with Nationwide, Yarbrough said.

Johnson, the former NBA star, has a stake in the CIAA through his Aspire TV Network, which shows CIAA tournament games. ESPNU airs the men’s final, albeit on a tape-delayed basis.

Other marketing and promotional partners affiliated with the league include AARP, MillerCoors, U.S. Army, the U.S. Marine Corps and Lowe’s.

One sales advantage: being able to tap corporate budgets targeted for multicultural audiences, money the larger college conferences wouldn’t be eligible to tap.

The basketball tournament is also helping the CIAA get its financial footing. It’s by far the largest revenue source for the conference, which McWilliams said has an annual budget of $5.8 million. She inherited a deficit of $750,000 and said cuts have reduced that amount to $250,000.

“There was a lot of excess spending that had nothing to do with student athletes,” McWilliams said. “We tried to cut back. We did things like make sure to always get three quotes [for vendors]. You have to get real creative.”

She also pointed to a provision in the tournament contract that calls for Charlotte to help pay for the CIAA to open a new headquarters later this year in Charlotte. Now located in Hampton, Va., McWilliams said being in Charlotte may help land sponsors.

When she says she doubts any other Division II conference can boast the sponsor lineup of the CIAA, marketers agree.

“It’s gone from a philanthropic gift [from sponsors] to return on investment,” said Russell Clark, managing partner at Atlanta-based HBCU Sports Marketing, a company that promotes black college sports. “This is a part of America, people who are affluent.”

Erik Spanberg writes for the Charlotte Business Journal, an affiliated publication.

SBJ Morning Buzzcast: March 18, 2024

Sports Business Awards nominees unveiled; NWSL's historic opening weekend and takeaways from CFP deal

ESPN’s Jay Bilas, BTN’s Meghan McKeown, and a deep dive into AppleTV+’s The Dynasty

On this week’s Sports Media Podcast from the New York Post and Sports Business Journal, ESPN’s Jay Bilas talks all things NCAA. Big Ten Network’s Meghan McKeown shares her insight into the Caitlin Clark craze. The Boston Globe’s Chad Finn chats all things Bean Town. And SBJ’s Xavier Hunter drops in to share his findings on how the NWSL is making a social media push.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

SBJ I Factor: Nana-Yaw Asamoah

SBJ I Factor features an interview with AMB Sports and Entertainment Chief Commercial Office Nana-Yaw Asamoah. Asamoah, who moved over to AMBSE last year after 14 years at the NFL, talks with SBJ’s Ben Fischer about how his role model parents and older sisters pushed him to shrive, how the power of lifelong learning fuels successful people, and why AMBSE was an opportunity he could not pass up. Asamoah is 2021 SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree. SBJ I Factor is a monthly podcast offering interviews with sports executives who have been recipients of one of the magazine’s awards.

Shareable URL copied to clipboard!

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2015/02/23/Events-and-Attractions/CIAA-Tournament.aspx

Sorry, something went wrong with the copy but here is the link for you.

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2015/02/23/Events-and-Attractions/CIAA-Tournament.aspx

CLOSE