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Marketing and Sponsorship

Pro Football's Hall of Fame project starting to take shape

Johnson Controls lands naming rights for mixed-use development

Rendering shows hotel, retail as part of Hall of Fame Village.
Photo by: RENDERINGS COURTESY OF PRO FOOTBALL HALL OF FAME
David Baker’s a big man, and the 6-foot-9 leader of the Pro Football Hall of Fame has a big vision when it comes to the $600 million real estate development in Canton, Ohio.

“Pro football’s Disneyland,” he says with optimism.

Baker’s dream of a Disney gridiron is inching closer, aided by one of the broadest business-to-business sponsorship plays in sports.

A rendering shows the Hall of Fame Village built around the existing Pro Football Hall of Fame Museum, shown at center front next to the Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium.
Fortune 100 industrial equipment/smart city supplier Johnson Controls is taking naming rights to the Hall of Fame Village, the $600 million, 90-acre mixed-use development adjacent to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton. Sources said the deal is worth in the high seven figures annually over its 18-year term.

Under the deal, the Milwaukee-based Johnson Controls, which has roughly $51 billion in annual revenue, becomes presenting sponsor of the Hall of Fame’s high-profile annual induction celebration, which will be branded “the Pro Football Hall of Fame Enshrinement Week, Powered by Johnson Controls.” It also becomes the “Official Smart City Partner” of the Hall of Fame Village, and gets title rights to a $120 million virtual reality attraction, the Johnson Controls Hall of Fame Experience.

A rooftop deck will overlook the new stadium and the new development.
Despite its scale, Johnson Controls may be one of the most anonymous companies in sports. By some estimates, its systems are in as many as half of the world’s largest stadiums and arenas. However, fans would be hard-pressed to find a Johnson Controls sign in any of those facilities, unless it was on a piece of equipment.

“We’ve been supporting these

Work began in 2015 on constructing the new stadium, which will include premium areas.
kinds of facilities for years, but now we’re getting more visible as technology evolves,” said Kim Metcalf-Kupres, vice president and chief marketing officer of Johnson Controls, noting the company’s systems, operations and maintenance agreement at Milwaukee’s Miller Park. “This works as a showcase venue, both for our technologies and our brand, so it should work from a business development standpoint and a marketing standpoint.”

Baker, who has been the hall’s president and executive director since January 2014, said the village development, scheduled for completion in 2019, will include hotels, a conference center with 80,000 square feet of convention space, a youth sports complex, coaches university, an institute for officiating, and an assisted living facility for football greats. Baker said his projections have it bringing 13,000 jobs and a $15.3 billion economic impact to the Canton region, while increasing the Hall of Fame’s annual attendance from 700,000 to 3 million people.

Baker envisions the village as a gathering place for all things football. “This will be to football what Williamsport is to baseball,” he said, noting the facility is scheduled to open in time for the NFL’s 100th season.

Baker is looking to add events to the vast development, and there has been preliminary talk of bringing NFL events, like the combine and the draft, to the complex.

Restaurants and retail will be part of the mix on the project’s Main Street.
Eric Bechtel’s IdeaQuest agency represented Johnson Controls in the deal. Bechtel said it took just 75 days to complete, which he attributed to “shared values” between the companies and his relationship with Baker, which dates more than 20 years to when Bechtel was working at an agency selling AFL sponsorship inventory and Baker was the league’s commissioner.

“We could see it fit almost immediately,” Bechtel said, “because of the ability to build from scratch what we hope will be a B2B magnet. And now we have some entrée to some NFL owners at a time there are NFL stadiums being built that will also be mixed-use developments.”

Johnson Controls has done little national sports marketing beyond a deal with the NHL for its York AC brand. After the company’s $16.5 billion acquisition of Tyco early this year, the Hall of Fame Village represents a good repositioning/rebranding mechanism.

Traditional marketing assets in the deal include intellectual property rights to the Hall of Fame’s signature gold jackets, signage and hospitality. But paramount to Johnson Controls is that it gets a vibrant and real-time technology demonstration platform for its building management, HVAC equipment, fire and security systems.

“It’s a great place to gain more visibility with the average fan/consumer and more awareness, but it will also be a terrific place to bring customers and show them our integrated smart city and smart campus capabilities,” Metcalf-Kupres said. “We’re hoping it can be a living laboratory, as we pilot technologies there.”

Premier Partnerships’ Premier Ventures unit is selling commercial assets at the Hall of Fame Village, which potential sponsors might view as a lower-cost alternative to an NFL league sponsorship, and one that includes former NFL greats and a facility to activate within.

Premier Ventures is now hoping to sell six to 10 founding partner deals.

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