The Dynamo have hired Roc Nation Sports to create events for BBVA Compass Stadium and sell sponsorships, including potentially finding a new team jersey partner. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. "It's the first time we have been hired by a team/venue," said Roc Nation President & Chief of Branding Strategy Michael Yormark. "I wouldn't call us a sales agent, but we have been hired to help them sell their jersey. We've been hired to assist them to sell traditional sponsorships and partnerships. But we have also been hired to help them create content for their venue. So it is a three-tiered agreement." Dynamo Exec VP Steven Powell said Roc Nation was chosen after he met personally with reps of "many of the world’s top sports marketing agencies" to discuss the club's needs. He said Roc Nation was picked because of its "bandwidth and people." Powell: "We were looking for an agency that was willing to play alongside us in growing our team of corporate partners and sourcing content for BBVA Compass Stadium. Roc Nation checks both of these boxes." Dynamo's current jersey sponsor, Australia-based BHP Billiton, is the world's largest mining company with a large oil and gas business headquartered in Houston. BHP Billiton's jersey sponsorship expires in '17, with a negotiating period in which the company has an option to extend. "They have been a terrific partner to work with and if they choose to not exercise that option, we are hopeful to continue to work with them to achieve their regional and national objectives through various other marketing platforms they own," Powell said.
ATTEMPT TO GROW DIVERSE AUDIENCE: The Dynamo attract a diverse audience that includes Hispanics and millennials, and part of the reason the club hired Roc Nation is to maintain and grow that audience, Powell said. "Roc Nation has an incredible DNA, which you would expect to find in a company founded by one of the world’s most innovative and successful musical artists in Jay Z and a visionary music industry executive in Jay Brown," Powell said. "The understanding and ability to articulate what Roc Nation could bring to the table and how both of our organizations could work together was very impressively articulated by Michael Yormark on our very first call." Yormark said the Dynamo is its first sports property client, and the agency expects to make announcements about new agreements in the next 30 days. Yormark said Roc Nation was hired because of the agency's combined expertise in sports and music. "The music component, the entertainment component, is something that we bring to the table that many agencies can't," Yormark said. "When they looked at their business, clearly, one of their goals is to take that venue of theirs and turn it into a multipurpose facility that doesn't just host soccer games, but also hosts concerts and music festivals and those are the areas we are going to help them with," Yormark said.
