The end of the NFL season means the start of the selling season for NFL corporate sponsorships. Primary concerns there surround a quartet of deals that expire after next season, among them some of the NFL’s largest — rights now held by Procter & Gamble, Verizon, Bose and Microsoft, the last two of which include pricey NFL sideline exposure rights.
Are there additional lines of business Bose and Microsoft might be interested in using the sidelines to market?
The NFL can sell one additional sideline partner. But while Renie Anderson, NFL senior vice president of sponsorship and partnership management, said the league wants to “continue to evolve technology on the sidelines,” she also pledged that any new sponsor with sideline rights “would have to offer technology integration that really benefits the game, like Bose (headphones), Microsoft (Surface tablets) and Gatorade do.”
Outside of the broad-based technology sector, Anderson said the league continues to pursue some traditional sponsorship categories, including home improvement retail, where the league has been without a sponsor since Home Depot failed to renew after the 2009 season, and airlines, where Southwest flew away following the 2006 season.
Spirits continues to be a category closed for league sponsorship but open for NFL teams to sell. Still, the league is beginning to examine the category more closely “to see what it might look like,” Anderson said.
