Editor’s note: This story is revised from the print edition.
Gannett Co. wants to do for local marathons what it’s done for local newspaper and TV ad sales.
Gannett’s USA Today Sports Media Group has acquired the rights to seven independent marathons and is now selling sponsorships and buying media for the consolidated property, dubbed the USA Today Sports Active Alliance.
Think of it as an IMG College, but for marathons. Years of selling across a chain of news outlets has prepared USA Today for this step, said Jason Ford, group vice president of sports marketing.
“It’s certainly more complicated than pushing digital ads around, but it’s doable,” said Ford, whose division runs sites such as TheBigLead.com and MMAJunkie.com.
The series started with the Detroit Free Press/Talmer Bank Marathon, already owned and operated by the Gannett-owned newspaper. USA Today then signed the Eversource Hartford Marathon, Portland Marathon, California International Marathon in Sacramento, Rite-Aid Cleveland Marathon, Go! St. Louis Marathon and Indianapolis Monumental Marathon.
Collectively, about 121,000 runners participated in those races last year.
The local marathons and USA Today share any additional revenue from sponsorship deals. But, the real “secret sauce,” said senior director Bruce Revman, is the promotional power that USA Today and the Gannett chain can offer the races and their sponsors.
“The two most important things for any brand is to shout a big message in a big way, and to have an impact locally, and that’s what Gannett does,” said Revman, former senior vice president of marketing at Competitor Group, which owns the Rock ’n’ Roll Marathon series. He joined USA Today in April.
The business model grew out of a San Diego coffee meeting between Revman and Ford in 2013, where they identified the market gap between one-off local marathons that have trouble attracting blue-chip sponsors and the Rock ’n’ Roll series, which has signed exclusive sponsor deals that lock out competing brands.
The alliance is offering a title sponsorship for the series in the low seven figures annually, Revman said. Individual categories at an alliance level will go for at least six figures, he said, but some could climb higher. They haven’t sold any new sponsorships yet.
Ford and Revman want to build the alliance to include up to 20 races by the end of 2016.
