NBC Sports and Red Bull Media House have extended their marketing and broadcast partnership for the Red Bull Signature Series.
Under terms of a new revenue-sharing agreement, Red Bull will continue to run and produce the events. NBC Sports will show 20 hours of the events on NBC, and NBC’s action sports division, Alli Sports, will manage sponsorship sales and marketing of the events.
“Red Bull is such a powerful global brand and they produce some of the best events in the world,” said B.J. Carretta, Alli Sports vice president of marketing and communications. “It’s a good fit for what we’ve been doing in the action and youth sports space for years because they’re always pushing the envelope of what events there are.”
Red Bull’s events for this year include “Red Bull Double Pipe,” a halfpipe competition across side-by-side pipes, and “Red Bull Straight Rhythm,” a freestyle motocross competition.
The new deal will see NBC Sports air 15 fewer hours than it did under the initial deal signed in 2011. Under that agreement, NBC aired 20 hours of Red Bull programming and NBC Sports Network showed 15 hours. But Red Bull found another cable outlet to work with last year when it signed a three-year deal with Fox to deliver 180 hours of live and highlight footage to Fox Sports 1 and Fox Sports 2.
Between 2011 and 2013, Alli Sports signed several sponsors to support the Red Bull Signature Series, including Casio, Nike, Dodge and GoPro. Sponsors for this year include Dodge, Polaris, BF Goodrich, GoPro and Specialized.
Alli Sports is leading sponsorship sales for the Signature Series with support from NBC’s sales staff. They are looking to fill the apparel, mobile and snack-food categories.
“The beauty of what Red Bull does is we can work with other brands based on events, whether it’s a snowboard event or a mountain bike event,” Carretta said. “Our goal is not to clutter the shows but authentically integrate brands into them.”
