UCLA’s 10-year multimedia rights extension with IMG College will pay the school $14.4 million a year on average, nearly three times what the Bruins had been making. So Dan Guerrero, UCLA’s athletic director, knew he had to give up something in return.
In exchange for one of the most lucrative rights deals in the country, UCLA included new inventory that had not previously been available to IMG College, including naming rights to Pauley Pavilion and potentially other facilities on campus.
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Naming rights to UCLA’s arena could bring in annual rights fees in the mid-seven figures.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
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“For us, it meant really liberalizing the assets that we had available,” Guerrero said.
Paul Engl, general manager of the UCLA property, will spearhead the sale of naming rights for Pauley. The Bruins will have veto power over any deal that the school doesn’t deem a good fit.
Naming rights for Pauley, which would retain the Pauley name, could bring annual rights fees in the low to mid-seven figures.
Selling naming rights is nothing new for UCLA, but the previous deal with IMG College didn’t include those rights, so the agency couldn’t sell them.
Guerrero in 2012 instead hired Joe Heitzler from Entertainment Management Group to sell Pauley’s naming rights. They were close to a deal with AT&T before it fell through.
The extension with IMG College, which kicks in for the 2016-17 academic year, also includes more venue signage, digital inventory and opportunities for experiential marketing.
Guerrero said his team of Chris Iacoi, the athletic department’s chief financial officer, and Josh Rebholz, senior associate AD for external operations, worked with him during negotiations. They worked with Patrick Whitesell, co-CEO of WME-IMG, and Jason Lublin, IMG College’s president, to close the deal.
“This has been a very productive relationship and we see the potential for it to grow,” Guerrero said. “WME’s [Los Angeles] offices are just 15 minutes away and WME has resources at its disposal that may allow us to do things we’ve never done before. Being right here in L.A., the concerts and the celebrities WME represents are things we can probably take advantage of. Having the A-list celebrities around our events is good for our fans and it’s good for our sponsors.”
Guerrero said the total value of the deal influenced the school to re-sign rather than taking its rights to the marketplace with a request for proposal. The Bruins also looked at the Pac-12’s new multimedia rights business before opting to stay with IMG College.
