Menu
Colleges

Learfield steps beyond athletics

Collegiate marketing giant Learfield is crossing the border from the athletic department to the other side of campus, where it is working with schools and brands to build universitywide partnerships.

The initiative is called Campus+, a new division within Learfield that converts vendors and other businesses into campuswide corporate sponsors.

Two Learfield schools, Louisville and Texas A&M, already have agreed to Campus+ deals, while another dozen are in talks with Learfield about adding Campus+ to their multimedia rights deal. Pretty soon, Campus+ will be an integral part of every negotiation with new school clients or those seeking an extension, said Andy Rawlings, Learfield’s chief revenue officer.

“There’s a huge opportunity there, driven by the needs of both our school partners and sponsors,” Rawlings said. “The sweet spot is when the brand and the school are both investing in each other, and investing more than money.”

Rights holders such as Learfield and IMG College have been trying to tap into campuswide marketing for a few years with limited success.

JMI Sports used campuswide marketing as an effective tool when it won the rights at the University of Kentucky in 2014. IMG and JMI subsequently formed a joint venture focused on campuswide marketing.

The idea is to combine athletic assets, such as advertising, in-venue signage and tickets, with other inventory across campus to create more exposure for the partner and increase revenue for the rights holder.

Learfield’s Campus+ intends to take the concept even further. By creating what it calls strategic partnerships, Campus+ will essentially facilitate a relationship between the sponsor and the school that goes well beyond the athletic rights that Learfield typically sells.

“For years, athletics was the only access point for corporate partners to get on campus,” said Learfield’s Mark Devine, a senior vice president who oversees Campus+. “But companies have always wanted an authentic relationship in the higher education space. Wells Fargo, AT&T, Toshiba, they’re all looking for those connection points with the university.

“The days of the university using AT&T services but having Verizon advertising in their athletic venues are disappearing. It doesn’t make sense.”

Devine began putting together strategic partnerships more than five years ago when he sold for Nelligan Sports, a rights holder that was acquired two-plus years ago by Learfield. He saw firsthand how smaller schools that usually sold athletic sponsorships for $20,000 to $30,000 could fetch six figures for universitywide programs.

“Companies want more than an advertising relationship,” Devine said. “They want to put their technology on campus. They want to build loyal customers, while also engaging with the C-level executives of tomorrow.”

When Devine came over from Nelligan, Learfield President and CEO Greg Brown and Rawlings met with him to better understand what a strategic partnership represented. It can be different for different categories, Devine told them.

For office products, a company like Office Depot would pay a sponsorship fee to become the school’s official office supply provider. In return, the school would exclusively order from Office Depot at discounted rates.

Beyond that, Office Depot would provide internships, hire graduates, work with the school on symposiums that featured its C-level executives, and share research and technology.

“Sometimes, schools want us to come in and teach about our national supply chain or how we handle global contracts,” said John Lander, a senior vice president for Office Depot’s business development. “The real value is being able to develop relationships like that with the universities.”

Devine said he’s seen cases like Colorado State, where the school went from using a handful of vendors for office supplies to just one, and the single-source model helped CSU save $200,000 the first year.

“It’s about more than hanging signs in the student union,” Rawlings said. “You’re talking about two sides working together in an authentic way. They don’t always know how to talk to each other, and that’s where we can help them.”

Learfield took about a year to study Devine’s model and to seek feedback from its schools before unveiling Campus+ in the last few months.

Brown and Rawlings moved Devine out of national sales and put him in charge of a Campus+ staff of five. They are constantly seeking new opportunities and new categories where schools and brands could benefit from a relationship. Among the most fertile categories, Rawlings said: Financial institutions, banks, credit unions, office supplies, health care, energy, waste management, telecommunications, technology, fiber optic cables, furniture and fixtures.

Most of the time, Devine’s Campus+ team works with the school to look for partnerships, but it’s up to the school to issue the request for proposal and select the partner.

Learfield gets paid a few different ways. The Plano, Texas, agency typically receives a percentage of the sponsorship fee paid by the company to the school, or Learfield is paid a percentage based on incremental savings a school might realize from the strategic partner.

Each Campus+ deal includes athletic assets as part of the arrangement, which provides another source of revenue.
Any one deal wouldn’t be a huge score for Learfield, but if the company scales it across its 120 schools and multiple categories, it becomes easier to see the revenue potential. Still, campuswide marketing remains a largely unproven concept that tends to look better on paper. Rights holders have found it difficult to get buy-in from university administrators when it comes to commercializing campus.

“It’s hard to get everyone on the same page,” Devine said. “But we’re building a portfolio of case studies that we can share with the schools to help them see the vision.”

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/2016/09/19/Colleges/Learfield.aspx

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

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2016/09/19/Colleges/Learfield.aspx

CLOSE