While we don’t know who will compete in Super Bowl LII next year, we finally know who will be selling its licensed merchandise in Minneapolis, a collection which undoubtedly will include more outerwear than ever.
Multiple sources in Houston said that the long-awaited award of the NFL RFP to sell merchandise at the Super Bowl and all of the NFL’s jewel events has been awarded to … Aramark. However, while those rights originally were supposed to cover a span of five years, they instead will cover the next three Super Bowls and other NFL events, including the draft, combine, Pro Bowl and overseas games.
The RFP process began this past spring and originally was expected to be awarded before the beginning of the 2016-17 season. Sources said that while the award has been made, the contracts have not been finalized. Thus, neither Chris Halpin, NFL senior vice president of licensing and consumer products, nor Aramark Sports & Entertainment President Carl Mittleman would comment.
Competing firms in the RFP included Fanatics and Legends, sources said.
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Aramark will handle merchandise sales at the Super Bowl and the NFL’s other jewel events.
Photo by: TERRY LEFTON / STAFF
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Hall of Fame
The cancellation of last year’s Hall of Fame Game because of field conditions led to lawsuits, upset fans and a big financial hit for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. But it came with a silver lining.
At a meeting three days later with Johnson Controls, Hall of Fame CEO David Baker began talking about values when the Milwaukee building equipment company’s CEO, Alex Molinaroli, interrupted him. He said, “‘Hey, you don’t have to talk about your values, because you showed us that Sunday night,’” Baker recalled. “To me, that connection is the basis [on] which we started a great relationship.”
Several months later, Johnson Controls signed an 18-year, $100 million-plus deal to name the Hall of Fame Village in Canton, Ohio, which will have hotels, residential and health care facilities. Johnson will use the village as a showplace to take potential clients to demonstrate “smart building technology.”
“Clients want to see technology in action, and this is such a dynamic environment,” said Kim Metcalf-Kupres, Johnson Controls chief marketing officer.
Baker and Metcalf-Kupres made the media rounds at the Super Bowl to tout the sponsorship and $600 million project, scheduled for completion in two years.
Despite the canceled game and a “significant financial hit,” Baker said the Hall of Fame will still turn a profit this year.
Still Flying?
It’s unclear what the devastating end to the Falcons season will do for the team’s business going forward into a new stadium next season, but it was exploding beforehand.
During the three weeks prior to the Super Bowl, sales of PSLs to the team’s new Mercedes-Benz Stadium sold at a clip 10 times the average of the preceding six months, said Steve Cannon, CEO of AMB Group, parent company of the Falcons and the MLS Atlanta United FC. That still leaves 25 percent of the 71,000 seats unsold for PSLs.
“We are ahead of where Dallas was,” Cannon said, though the Cowboys’ stadium opened in the teeth of the Great Recession.
Cannon also said more than 90 percent of suites are sold, as are over 80 percent of club seats. Cannon said the team’s hyped cheap-pricing model for food likely won’t turn a profit. “Food and beverage is essentially a loss leader, it is a break even, it is a thank you to our fan base,” he said.
Can can, Act III
Bud Light’s NFL team-logoed cans, aka “Beer With Your Team On It,” are working so well that they will return for the third consecutive NFL season later this year.
The expanded territory rights permitted Anheuser-Busch under its most recent NFL rights deal have been crucial — allowing, for example, Bud distributors in the Pacific Northwest to put Seattle Seahawks cans into neighboring Oregon and Idaho, and Denver Broncos-branded Bud Light cans into Wyoming and Nevada.
Previously, A-B wholesalers in those states could only use the NFL shield to market their beer. For the past month or so, A-B was distributing cans with the Super Bowl LI logo on it across America, including some with a tactile football-like grip on them.
Meanwhile, after years of spending lavishly on activations in the Super Bowl city, including a Bud Light-branded cruise ship and several top-to-bottom makeovers that transformed a local hostelry into the “Bud Light Hotel” or the “House of Whatever” party and concert venue, this year Bud Light’s presence marketing was guided by a “less is more” strategy, emphasizing having beer available around high-traffic areas and schmoozing the brand’s distributors. A-B was entertaining around 600 of them in Houston during Super Bowl week.
“For this event, our b-to-b efforts are easily as important as our consumer-facing efforts,” said Nick Kelly, A-B senior director of experiential sports. “And in the past, we may have over-invested on the consumer side.”
