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Marketing and Sponsorship

Fanatics expands venue merchandising; Lenovo departs NFL

Continuing to expand its venue merchandising capabilities, sports e-commerce specialist Fanatics has bought some of the remaining assets of Milt Arenson’s Facility Merchandising Inc. and brought him into the fold as senior vice president of stadium within the retail group, reporting to Ross Tannenbaum, Fanatics president of retail.

Scooping up FMI gives Fanatics some valuable merchandising rights. FMI had venue deals with the New Orleans Saints and Arizona Cardinals, along with the College Football Playoff. Not coincidentally, Fanatics has e-commerce rights for all of those events.

The deal represents a melding of the old school and new. FMI was one of the venerable names in venue merchandising over the past two decades or more, with 24 consecutive Super Bowl assignments. That cozy NFL relationship ended in 2012. However, FMI assisted Legends in servicing Super Bowl merchandise sales at Levi’s Stadium for Super Bowl 50 in February, which netted record retail sales of $4.6 million. FMI has also held merchandising rights at the U.S. Open since 1996. An existing deal meant that this year’s U.S. Open was being serviced by FMI and Levy, while Arenson was ostensibly a Fanatics employee.

Both a new U.S. Tennis Association deal and a five-year Super Bowl RFP (see SportsBusiness Journal, May 23-29), which also includes merch rights for other NFL events, are in the offing. Presumably, Arenson’s experience with those retail efforts was a principal factor in Fanatics’ buying what was left of FMI, but we’ll never know for sure, since he ignored our many cell calls and texts.

Fanatics is continuing to expand its brick-and-mortar business with the acquisition, while eliminating another competitor. Over the past few years, Fanatics has been gobbling up licensing rights like Ms. Pac-Man. Over the past two years, Fanatics has added venue retail rights with NASCAR, the Kentucky Derby, the NBA Store, the Pittsburgh Pirates and Daytona International Speedway. The purchase of FMI assets follows Fanatics’ May hiring of former Gameday Entertainment President Alan Fey as vice president of venue development.

Computer maker Lenovo found its way out of the NFL, ending a four-year run as a league sponsor.
> TUNING OUT: Worldwide PC sales leader Lenovo has dropped its NFL sponsorship after a four-year run. The hardware company, which has its U.S. headquarters in North Carolina, signed on as a league sponsor in 2012, with rights encompassing the notebook, desktop and workstation categories, and extended the deal before the 2015 season to include servers.

Support for the NFL sponsorship included fantasy football platforms, along with licensed products, in the form of NFL-logoed computers and tablets.

Lenovo, which entered the U.S. market with its purchase of IBM’s PC business in 2004, had previous sponsorships with the International Olympic Committee and the NBA, so perhaps the source we talked to who said the relationship had “just run its course” bulls-eyed what happened. While much of top-level sponsorship sales now center on artful dissection of the technology category, we’re wondering about a replacement. HP and Lenovo are the PC market-share leaders in the U.S. followed by Dell, itself a former NFL sponsor. Other NFL tech sponsors include Bose, Microsoft, SAP, Verizon and Zebra Technologies.

> GET MET; IT PAYS: Lagardère’s consulting division has quietly won an agency shootout for the sports/entertainment consulting business for MetLife, which had been with Van Wagner Sports & Entertainment for many years. We’re told Lagardère has been working on the account since early August. The insurer has been looking for a high-profile global sports property for some time, and its 2013 sponsorship of the World Baseball Classic was considered a sort of test drive.

MetLife’s largest properties in the U.S. include its well-traveled blimp, naming rights for the New Jersey stadium that the New York Giants and Jets call home, a PGA Tour deal and a team sponsorship with the New York Yankees. The agency’s sports work for Citi means that it is now leveraging naming rights for two of the largest New York-area sports facilities.

SMOYER
> COMINGS AND GOINGS: Doug Smoyer, NFL vice president of business development, is leaving the league headquarters in New York to join nearby Van Wagner as chief sales officer. Some of Van Wagner’s larger projects include the new U.S. Bank Stadium in Minnesota, along with naming rights and sponsorship sales for FC Barcelona’s Espai Barça development, centered on its home Camp Nou stadium. Smoyer said he was looking forward to selling a more varied inventory including naming rights, suites, PSLs, property sales and the Dorna in-stadium ad business. “It’s an opportunity to sell more than sponsorship, and I consider this a one-of-a-kind opportunity,” said Smoyer, who has 15 years with the NFL, including prior positions with the New York Giants and Washington Redskins. … In a move that’s related to Smoyer’s, but we’re assured unrelated to the transfer of the MetLife business cited above, Kip Koslow also has departed Van Wagner after 13 years, where he was a senior vice president, to join Lagardère’s consulting division. We’re also told that he won’t be working on the MetLife biz. … The World Surf League has chosen former PGA Tour senior director of business development Max Novena as vice president of global partnerships and Melissa Colgate as senior director of partnerships. Colgate was last with GoPro, where she was director of brand partnerships. Novena will be based in Santa Monica, Calif., while Colgate will be in New York City; both will report to WSL Chief Commercial Officer Mark Noonan.

Terry Lefton can be reached at tlefton@sportsbusinessjournal.com.

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