Sponsorship sales at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta have surpassed $900 million in contractually obligated sponsorship revenue, according to sources close to the organization.
The original target for the building, which is scheduled to open next summer, was $1 billion.
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Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium could break a record in sponsorship revenue.
Photo by: TERRY LEFTON
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Without confirming the $900 million figure, officials at the facility’s parent company, AMB Group, say they are confident that the $1.5 billion retractable-roof stadium will break a record in stadium sponsorship revenue.
Owner Arthur Blank “has a sign in his office that says ‘No Finish Line’ so I am never going to tell you we’re 90 percent done,” said Tim Zulawski, AMB Sports & Entertainment senior vice president and chief commercial officer. “I will tell you there’s 12 founding partners in place, and overall we’ve closed out 15 of the top 20 advertising categories. But we’ve reset our goals here more than once. There’s still a lot of meat left on the bone.”
AMB officials are confident they will end up with the most contractually obligated sponsorship income of any U.S. stadium, topping recent sales figures of the Dallas Cowboys at AT&T Stadium and the San Francisco 49ers at Levi’s Stadium. The Falcons figure should last at least until the Los Angeles Rams’ facility opens in Inglewood. The organization has done this in the nation’s ninth-largest market while hitting the market at the same time the Atlanta Braves are building SunTrust Park, a new $672 million ballpark in Cobb County, north of downtown Atlanta.
“People just don’t give this town enough credit,” said AMBSE President and CEO Rich McKay. “We have the third most Fortune 500 companies headquartered here, and those CEOs and their companies are actively engaged. That’s something we’ve been able to take advantage of, and I think the Braves have, too.”
When it came to the organization’s sales approach, Zulawski said they were less concerned with category definitions than most teams. To that point, the building is likely to end up with both Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors as sponsors, with speciality craft brews also in the building.
“Less about category definitions and more about what’s of value to each partner,” said Zulawski. “So we’ll end up with multiple malt beverages. We didn’t care if we had one bank or six, and we will have more than one.”
Premier Partnerships is assisting the Falcons with sponsorship sales at the new facility.
With top-tier sponsorships from IBM, consumer transaction company NCR, and two Atlanta-based companies — consumer credit agency Equifax and industrial company Novelis — the organization has shown an ability to attract decidedly nontraditional, business-to-business sponsors.
“They all wanted a different sort of stake in the ground,” Zulawski said. “The approach was, ‘What corporations does this mean the most to and let’s talk to their C-suite.’ That’s different than filling categories. We wanted to talk to anyone with a billion in sales.”
Mercedes-Benz will be the only sponsor with permanent signage in the stadium bowl, which makes the success of AMB Group’s overall sponsorship sales even more impressive. “From the perspective of tenants, we can flip a switch and make it look unique — like someone’s home field,” said McKay, adding that the stadium will house 45 to 55 events a year. “From the perspective of sponsors there will never be more than four or five companies getting exposure at once. We’ve proved that clean of an environment is really valuable.”
As for selling at the same time as the Braves mixed-use project in the Atlanta suburbs?
“Our product is different,” McKay said. “We’re trying to bring a global facility to an urban area and be a catalyst for change and development downtown. We’ve found corporate leaders have bought in.”
