Contract pays Eli $1.5M for title

Much has been written about Eli Manning’s new marketability after leading the Giants to their upset Super Bowl victory, but the young quarterback has already cashed in on his performance.

Under the terms of his rookie deal as the No. 1 overall pick in the 2004 NFL draft, Manning will get $1.5 million for winning the Super Bowl, said Tom Condon, his contract agent at CAA Sports.

Condon has also represented three other quarterbacks picked No. 1 in the last decade — Alex Smith, Tim Couch and Eli’s brother, Peyton. “For the first-pick quarterback we have done things like that on virtually all of them, to varying degrees,” Condon said. “We had a good, hefty one in there for Eli.”

Before he set foot on the University of Phoenix Stadium turf, Eli Manning had already earned $1 million for his postseason play. Under the terms of his contract, Manning earned $250,000 for winning the wild card game, $500,000 more for the divisional playoff, and another $250,000 for the conference championship. Winning the Super Bowl pushed that total to $1.5 million.

Such postseason incentive clauses “are uncommon for NFL players in general,” said Mark Levin, director of the NFL Players Association’s salary cap and agent administration. “But for players drafted at or near the top of the first round, it is very common.”

SPORTS AND ENTERTAINMENT? WHO KNEW?: Fox Sports Chairman David Hill was at a Super Bowl party near his Los Angeles home last year when he noticed something that had been bugging him for years.

Though the TV was on and the party was full, nobody was watching the pregame show.

“It might as well have been broadcasting in Urdu,” Hill said.

Hill’s solution was to try to create programming that would make people take notice. He decided to stage a red carpet event around the Super Bowl, hosted by popular “American Idol” personality Ryan Seacrest. He believed that these interviews would cause partygoers to focus on parts of the pregame.

Fox’s Ryan Seacrest (left) interviews
Commissioner Roger Goodell on the
red carpet.

“To me, it just made sense,” Hill said. “You have a lot of kids milling around. Everyone comes in to watch the national anthem and the kickoff. But the pregame show, which is what we put a heck of a lot of time and effort into … they could have been discussing whatever, and nobody is watching.”

Hill had to convince skeptics that images of Seacrest interviewing Hollywood stars would cause partygoers to take notice. He did, and the move appears to have paid off. According to Nielsen ratings (see chart), this year’s pregame show posted a 10.8 rating, a 6 percent jump from last year. Its 20.1 million viewers were the most for a Super Bowl pregame since 2002.

And the Hollywood aspect helped the show’s demographics, which jumped 16 percent among women 18-49 (6.4 vs 5.5) and 11 percent among men 18-49 (9.3 vs 8.4).

It’s hard to tell how much of a role the entertainment elements played in the pregame ratings. The matchup of two big-market teams, including a Patriots team that was attempting to complete an undefeated season, was certain to bring big ratings anyway. But Hill is confident that these numbers will cause other networks to bring more entertainment elements into their broadcasts.

The entertainment elements also could have had an effect on Fox’s ad sales around the game. The network essentially sold out the game in the fall by convincing more movie companies to buy spots and have their stars walk the red carpet into the game.

Thanks to the $2.7 million Fox was charging per 30-second spot, the network brought in $250 million in revenue on Super Bowl Sunday alone.

Still, just two days before the game, Hill admitted that he had no idea whether his experiment would be successful.

“You can’t predict it,” he said. “You’ve got to feel it. If you try and predict it, you force it, and if you force it, it never works. You’ve got to just feel what feels right.“

NBC EXECS TAKE A FIELD TRIP: NBC’s Dick Ebersol and Fred Gaudelli were spotted days before the game in Fox’s broadcast compound, just outside University of Phoenix Stadium. The duo was on hand to get some tips about the logistics of working a Super Bowl. Though Ebersol and Gaudelli are two of the most experienced executives in TV sports, NBC has not broadcast the game since 1998, and the game has grown immensely since then. NBC holds the broadcast rights to next year’s game in Tampa.

Fox starts its Super Bowl planning two years ahead of time, but, Hill said, “we really get serious at the start of the season.”

HILL: ‘YOU’D KILL FOR MY JOB’: Nearing the end of a six-month stretch that has seen it broadcast the country’s top sporting events — the MLB All-Star Game, World Series, Bowl Championship Series title game, Super Bowl and Daytona 500 — Fox Sports executives were still giddy about their schedule.

“Every one of my friends wants to kill me and take my job,” Hill said. “It’s wonderful. It’s been great. We are the luckiest sons of bitches in the history of the planet. Come on. Get real. You would kill to have our jobs. Every guy is like that.”

Fox Sports President Ed Goren agreed, adding, “I pinch myself thinking back to 14 years ago when Fox Sports was just starting and people wondered if Bart Simpson would be in the announce booth. Fourteen years later, to have these tremendous events, one after the next … I don’t think any of us could have envisioned it 14 years ago.”

NOT YOUR MAMA’S SUPER BOWL: Over the years, we’ve heard almost every NFL corporate sponsor rumored as a Super Bowl advertiser. But one name we have never heard is Campbell’s Chunky Soup, which has been a league sponsor since 1998 and is a brand that probably would be off the shelf without the help of its NFL sponsorship. Turns out Campbell’s likes the idea of ladling it out one serving at a time as opposed to one big, er, bowl.

“With what we spend, it gets down to whether you want one big hit [on the Super Bowl] and hope consumers remember, versus a presence that lasts the whole season,” said Mimi Dixon, senior integrated marketing manager. “We’ve always netted out on the side of frequency versus that one big reach.”

While Chunky activated more than ever at retail in 2007, Dixon said increasing local market activation is still at the top of her to-do list during the NFL’s offseason.

WAITING ON THE SIDELINES: While Reebok’s exclusive on-field apparel deal with the NFL doesn’t expire until after the 2010 season, Russell Athletic President Doug Kelly has lined up four teams — Washington, Atlanta, St. Louis and Carolina — as sponsors with limited local apparel rights.

Kelly said more than 10 other NFL teams have contacted him about cutting similar deals, and he’s considering adding a couple for the next NFL season.

Still, Kelly insists, it is not an all-out blitz on Russell’s part. “When new opportunities come up, we just want to be on the NFL’s radar screen,” Kelly said. “With our AFL rights and those deals, hopefully we are showing [NFL] ownership what we can do. And it is easier to negotiate with people that you know.”

WHICH IS BETTER: HOT OR HISTORIC?: During Super Bowl week, there was a fairly serious debate among NFL licensees as to which would ring the cash register more, a win and perfect season by the New England Patriots or a New York Giants triumph. The debate was whether a New England championship would have an enduring commemorative factor that would outweigh the flash fire nature of an NFL championship in the country’s biggest market.

Generally, the rule in sports licensing is “there’s no demand like pent-up demand.” Now that the Giants have triumphed, licensees sobered by soft fourth-quarter retail results are hopeful of an uptick.

“There’s been a nice Giants business in the last few weeks, so I’m inclined to think that unseating the Patriots’ locomotive means more business,” said David Baxter, Reebok’s president and CEO for onfield apparel. “Knocking off Goliath is something that moves the cash register.”

A day before the game, Reebok’s “if-win” orders for the Giants were outpacing those for the Patriots by more than 30 percent. “My gut feeling is that a New York win will be a little bigger than the Patriots again, even though a perfect season would probably have some endurance and product that sell well into next season,” said Leo Kane, NFL vice president of licensing and consumer products. “The New York fan base is large and rabid, and Boston is pretty saturated in terms of championships.”

SPORTS IMMUNE TO RECESSION?: With many of the nation’s biggest advertisers beaten up in the financial markets recently, the question of an advertising recession was very much on the mind of the sports marketing community, most of which treats the Super Bowl as yet another annual gathering.

“You see what happened to retailers during the holidays and it shook everybody,” said SI Group President Mark Ford. “But I haven’t seen it hit us and I don’t think it will. I’m actually very optimistic about the year for us, since it includes the Olympics.”

Added NFL sales czar Ron Furman: “Our sponsors are increasingly challenged [financially] but if recession happens, I like sports and the NFL’s chances. There will be a need to watch, a need to escape, and an ultimately high level of engagement you just don’t get elsewhere. If there’s an economic squeeze, it will be about choices for advertisers, and we’re thinking sports and the NFL are an attractive choice in any economy.”

Playing in London won’t get you in the Super
Bowl, but, hey, the Giants did it.

SIGNS ARE GOOD FOR LONDON GAME: The NFL intends to keep field-level rotational signs for its second overseas regular-season game, said Mark Waller, the league’s senior vice president of marketing and international.

San Diego and New Orleans will play at Wembley Stadium in London in October, following last year’s Giants-Miami game at the same venue. That game featured an NFL first: on-field corporate signs, which the league used in part to create the feel of a soccer pitch. Six sponsors, including Bridgestone, the title sponsor of the game, were part of last year’s effort, but Waller said the sponsorship lineup for this year’s contest has not been set.

Waller joked that inclusion in the London game did not guarantee a spot in the Super Bowl, but certainly the Giants sent a message to other clubs that the strain of playing overseas did not detract from the rest of the season. In fact, some Giants players have talked about how the big-game nature of playing overseas helped prepare them for the atmosphere of the playoffs.

PRO BOWL A NO BOWL?: The NFL is not just looking at the option of revamping the Pro Bowl, but is considering doing away with it all together. So said NFLPA Executive Director Gene Upshaw in his annual remarks to reporters during Super Bowl week. The Pro Bowl has lost much of its luster, and the league has publicly talked about perhaps moving the contest to the Super Bowl city to be played in the middle weekend between the conference title games and the Super Bowl. But apparently, another option is doing away with it all together.

“We’re trying to decide when it should be played, where it should be played and if it should be played at all,” Upshaw said.

The game is currently played in Hawaii, with this year’s game scheduled for this past weekend.

BILLS, BUCKS AND BORDERS: The Buffalo Bills’ planned games in Toronto will not bring a financial windfall, but they should help expand the team’s brand into Canada, said Bills owner Ralph Wilson.

The league formalized a plan during Super Bowl week to allow the Bills to play three preseason games and five regular-season games at Rogers Centre over the next five years. The Bills play in perhaps the weakest economic market in the league and have long complained that they cannot compete for long given those conditions.

Rogers Centre will arrange ticket sales for the games while sponsorships will be sold jointly, Wilson said. He noted that premium seats at Rogers Centre cost three to four times what they sell for in Buffalo.

FALCONS FANS AREN’T BITING BACK: The Atlanta Falcons may have suffered a brutal season both on and off the field, but owner Arthur Blank is bullish that the developments won’t hurt the team commercially.

“Our fans have really been fabulous,” said Blank in an interview during Super Bowl week. “They really understand the situation with Michael [Vick] and, obviously, with coach [Bobby] Petrino were things that really were out of our control. And so there is a lot of support and understanding. The trust that is established between the franchise and the fans has not been broken.”

No sponsor has left the team, Blank said, and he pointed out that there were several corporate backers with him in Arizona.

As for season-ticket renewals, that process has not begun, he said.

Staff writers Terry Lefton, Liz Mullen, John Ourand and Daniel Kaplan contributed to this report.