Boise State Sees Jump In Licensing Revenue From Perfect Season
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Fiesta Bowl DVDs Outselling
BCS Championship Game |
Boise State Univ.’s (BSU) licensing revenue jumped 60% last season, due largely to its undefeated football season and Fiesta Bowl victory, and now ranks 44th among CLC clients and is the “highest-ranked non-BCS school in royalties earned,” according to a sports section Cover Story by Jill Lieber Steeg of USA TODAY. Since the Fiesta Bowl, BSU Senior Assistant Dir of Promotions & Marketing Brad Larrondo “has approved all sorts of merchandising ideas,” including putting former QB Jared Zabransky on the cover of EA Sports’ “NCAA Football 08” videogame. Nike is planning to produce a replica No. 41 BSU jersey in blue, orange and white this year instead of just one color, and there also will be BSU “camouflage and urban-look caps” for the first time. Larrondo added, “We’re in the process of licensing Boise State refrigerators. And just the other day, a company representing funeral parlors wanted to know about licensing Boise State coffin liners.” BSU President Bob Kustra has commissioned a documentary of the ’06 season, and he said, “We’ll shop it to see if there’s interest in a Hollywood production. We’ve had six or seven Hollywood producers inquire about the movie rights.” Lieber Steeg notes two books ("Out of the Blue" and "Blue Magic") have also been published about the season. Team Marketing has sold 60,000 DVD copies of Fox’ Fiesta Bowl telecast without commercial interruption, “more than it has sold of the BCS national championship game,” and the BSU-produced season highlight film “Perfection” has sold 12,000 copies, “four times more than in any previous year.” This summer, there has been a “crush of applicants for the [BSU] summer football camps, an increase in season ticket sales (21,000, an all-time high) and hundreds and hundreds of ‘Reload’ T-shirts for sale” (USA TODAY, 8/20).
THE HILLTOPPERS ARE ALIVE: Western Kentucky Univ. (WKU) has signed a five-year, $2M deal with Russell Athletic, making the company the official apparel provider for the athletic department and the exclusive uniform provider for all 20 WKU sports. WKU AD Wood Selig said that the deal “is a result of [WKU’s] decision to upgrade its football program to NCAA Division I-A” (Louisville COURIER-JOURNAL, 8/18).
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