PBR Names Fenway Sports Group Exclusive Sponsor Sales Agency
 |
Fenway Sports Group To Market PBR's Open
Categories, Including QSR, Beer, Soft Drinks |
The PBR and Fenway Sports Group (FSG) have agreed to a four-year deal for FSG to serve as the exclusive third-party sponsorship sales agency for the PBR. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. FSG will work with PBR's sales team to develop programs that leverage PBR's portfolio of sports marketing assets; provide comprehensive property analysis and valuation services; identify new revenue streams; maximize existing sponsorship assets; and cultivate and secure new corporate partnerships that offer sponsors access to PBR. The deal was announced Friday morning at MSG in advance of the Built Ford Tough Invitational (PBR). The deal arrives as PBR has enjoyed a significant run-up in popularity and media coverage of its events. "PBR has really built up a credible product and begun to align themselves with blue-chip brands, but we still see a world of much bigger opportunity for them," said FSG Exec VP/Business Development & Motorsports Brian Corcoran. "We can offer them our Rolodex and expertise, while at the same it diversifies us as well and gives us another key outlet in our portfolio." Among the still-open categories for PBR that FSG will market are traditional sports sponsorship mainstays such as QSR, beer, soft drink and insurance (Eric Fisher, SportsBusiness Journal).
ALONG FOR THE RIDE: The WALL STREET JOURNAL's Matthew Futterman reports the deal "gives FSG a percentage of new sponsorship pacts." Corcoran: "I see PBR poised in a similar fashion to NASCAR 10-plus years ago. PBR has a talented team that has done a good job cultivating relationships with a few blue-chip companies, but they are underdeveloped from a corporate-sponsorship perspective." PBR COO Sean Gleason said that the organization has "just a four-person sales staff," and that the group has 20 national sponsors with deals that "range from about $500,000 to nearly $3[M], producing roughly $24[M] in total sponsorship revenue each year from brands such as Copenhagen, Wrangler and Enterprise Rent-A-Car." Gleason: "Our fans are some of the most sponsor-loyal in all of sports. Fenway has a lot of contacts and relationships and a level of expertise we feel we can learn." But TBA Global Chief Strategy Officer Richard Luker said that bull-riding is "still a niche sport with questionable mass appeal." Luker: "It's a lifestyle, not a sport. It's not realistic to think it will ever be a mainstream sport." Versus Exec VP/Programming, Production & Business Operations Marc Fein: "The South and Midwest, middle America, that is where the chunk of the audience comes from" (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 1/9).
|
