The NFL is selling 2,000 corporate trips to the Super Bowl this year, marking the first time one of the major professional leagues has created a significant hospitality initiative around its championship.
The NFL envisions expanding the program, dubbed “NFL on Location,” to encompass other events during the year, such as the draft and American Bowl.
For now, the program will offer to NFL sponsors and other companies a one- to five-day trip to Detroit next February at prices ranging from $3,999 to $7,499 per person. Firms have to buy at least 10 trips to tap into NFL on Location.
“The spirit of this is we wanted to create a program that has staying power, is a branding opportunity for us and is a business opportunity for our corporate partners,” said Frank Supovitz, the NFL’s senior vice president of event planning.
Questioned if the program could be seen as scalping, Supovitz replied, “I don’t expect it and we haven’t heard it. To be honest, what we are providing is an essential service to corporate America.”
Because the tickets are part of a package, these arrangements have not run afoul of league or state scalping prohibitions. For this past February’s Super Bowl, the two competitors, the Philadelphia Eagles and New England Patriots, each sold trips through a third party, PrimeSport.
Those packages were geared toward fans, and many teams have travel partners to whom they direct some of their allocation of Super Bowl tickets.
The NFL gets 25.2 percent of all Super Bowl tickets. In the past, they were used for sponsors, for other league partners and for NFL employees to entertain at the game. The NFL on Location tickets and hotel rooms will be carved out of this allocation and not from the teams. The AFC and NFC champions will continue to receive 17.5 percent of tickets, the host city 5 percent and the remaining 29 teams 1.2 percent each.
The NFL now finds itself in competition with the many travel and event companies that fish in these waters.
TSE Sports & Entertainment is one such company. Its president, Robert Tuchman, said the league needs to understand that this business is more than just providing tickets and a hotel room. In Detroit this year, for example, TSE will organize a wine-tasting party, a poker tournament and a visit from NFL coaches and players. The Super Bowl, he said, is more than just the game day, but an entire week of parties and events.
By contrast, the only entertainment that is part of the NFL’s package are day-of-game receptions within the corporate hospitality village. (Companies can buy extras such as Taste of the NFL that occurs earlier in the week.) The NFL’s trips also include tickets to the NFL Experience, as well as merchandise and special gifts.
“It is a limited package,” Tuchman said of NFL on Location, though he nonetheless praised the league for entering the business and giving it credibility. “We have an entire event staff that manages the program, from booking airlines to greeting people at the airport to room-drop gifts.”
Supovitz said what distinguishes his program from others is the guarantee of ticket and hotel locations, inventory controlled by the league. By contrast, Tuchman said he relies on buying tickets from players and coaches.
The other professional leagues have limited packages for sponsors, Tuchman said. However, unlike the NFL, hockey, basketball and baseball do not know until a few days in advance where their championship will be, so it is more difficult to craft these types of hospitality programs, he said.
The NFL has been dabbling in this business for a few years. Since 2000 it has offered similar packages to the Pro Bowl. And it experimented at recent Super Bowls the last several years.
For Super Bowl XXXIX, the league, in conjunction with the host Jacksonville Jaguars, pitched 7,500 packages at prices ranging from $2,795 to $8,500. Proceeds from those sales were directed to improvements at the team’s stadium.
The league has not actively been marketing NFL on Location, but the program is being sold by its three travel partners — QuintEvents, Intersport and Dallas Fan Fares.
The league envisions eventually publishing an annual catalog of trips to any league-run event, at which time the business could begin to generate serious dollars for the NFL.
Now, Supovitz said, “This primarily is a service. There is revenue attached to it, but it is not a significant stream of revenue. It could one day become one on an annualized basis.”
