Five months after signing an apparel deal with Nike,
the U.S. Soccer Federation has signed a 12-year agreement
with IMG, awarding most of its remaining marketing rights to
a partnership of IMG and Nike. The deal gives the
partnership the rights to U.S. Soccer's sponsorship sales,
its TV component and licensing, while providing guarantees
to U.S. Soccer both in revenue and TV programming. U.S.
Soccer will retain full rights to its games, including
scheduling, staging and revenue streams from them. U.S.
Soccer said its marketing rights were also pursued by
incumbent the Octagon Group (IPG), ISL Marketing (FIFA's
marketing arm) and Interforever (agent for CONCACAF). The
current rights expire at the end of '98 (U.S. Soccer).
A SIGNIFICANT PLAYER: In Baltimore, Lowell Sunderland
writes that U.S. Soccer "took a potential landmark step ...
toward guaranteeing the game's future in this country."
Sunderland puts the deal at around $500M, which includes an
estimated $100M over 10 years from its current Nike deal.
Sunderland reports that the deal will mean more TV coverage
of "national men's, women's and youth teams, both on network
and cable stations, new emphasis on the emerging women's
game and heavier promotion of the game to young people"
(Baltimore SUN, 4/22). In Hartford, Kris Wiley values the
12-year deal at about $380M (HARTFORD COURANT, 4/22).
