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SBJ College: Fanatics Hopes To Wake Up The Echoes


Rupp Arena has a new name and Notre Dame has a new licensing partner. It was a big day for news in Lexington and South Bend.

Here's what's cooking on campus.

       

TAKEAWAYS FROM FANATICS-FIGHTING IRISH DEAL 

  • Fanaticsnew 10-year licensing deal with Notre Dame is about making and selling merchandise, it’s about sublicensing the Fighting Irish’s marks and, yes, it’s about making more money. The deeper Fanatics moves into college athletics, the more these deals provide another benefit -- what College Exec VP Derek Eiler describes as “connected commerce,” bringing the brand closer to the fans.

  • As Fanatics has moved its vertical model of making, distributing and selling merchandise into college, as it has in similar deals with Florida, Miami and Oregon, the analytics piece has grown in importance. Fans are often first identified when they buy something, and nobody sells more sports licensed merch than Fanatics. That’s a lot of consumer information to share with schools. (Fanatics and Notre Dame both use Salesforce’s CRM system).

  • When I first heard about Fanatics’ deal with Notre Dame, I couldn’t help but think of how relationships drive college deals. This marks the third deal Eiler and Senior VP Chris Prindiville have done with the Irish -- CLC, Fermata Partners and Fanatics. Eiler and Prindiville also signed Oregon and Miami at Fermata before migrating them to Fanatics.

  • If the Fermata train keeps delivering to Fanatics, Georgia, Kentucky and Wisconsin could be next.

 

 

CENTRAL BANK STEPS UP CONNECTION TO KENTUCKY

  • Central Bank, which was born-and-bred in the Bluegrass State, has a relationship with the Univ. of Kentucky that goes back 30 years. That’s when the bank bought its first program print ad for $2,000. Central’s deal with UK has grown steadily since then, leading up to the announcement today that the bank had bought naming rights for Rupp Arena and the Lexington City Center. The Wildcats' home court will now be known as Rupp Arena at Central Bank Center.

  • The 14-year deal, which was sold by JMI Sports, culminates a lengthy -- and often confusing -- process that required buy-in from the city, university and agency. JMI also is the rightsholder for UK athletics, but it had to bid separately for selling rights to Rupp Arena because it’s owned by the city, not the school. JMI finally was awarded the rights to Rupp in 2018, marking the first time that one agency owned the rights to both UK and Rupp. The move was lauded locally for cleaning up the marketplace.

  • Central Bank took its UK sponsorship to a completely different stratosphere with today’s announcement. The bank, which was spending in the mid-six figures annually, now has an annual investment of $4.1 million with the school and Rupp. The naming rights are valued at $1.5 million of the $4.1 million.

  • JMI CEO Erik Judson and President Tom Stultz credited their agency's local sales team in Lexington, spearheaded by Paul Archey and Kim Shelton, for running point on the deal.

 

UK and Central Bank today unveiled the first naming-rights deal in Rupp Arena's 44-year history

 

WHEN THE SAINTS GO MARCHING IN

  • In the weeks following the 2019 CFP Championship at Levi’s Stadium, organizers started planning for 2020. That’s when they began studying dates and schedules. Planning around the NFL postseason is nothing new -- all of the championship games are played in NFL stadiums. But with the CFP finale on Jan. 13, later than normal, it fell deep into the NFL playoff schedule. With that, the CFP and the Superdome began preparing for the worst-case scenario -- the Saints playing at home in the second game on Sunday, just a day prior to the CFP championship.

  • I spoke with Exec Director Bill Hancock yesterday for our annual CFP download, which gives us a chance to compare notes. We talked about contingency plans for a Saints home game. He hoped the NFL would have put the Saints on Saturday, but there were no guarantees. “The only decision for us to make was to plan as if the Saints were playing at home the weekend before our game,” Hancock said. “It would not have been easy.”

  • A full flip of the stadium from Saints to CFP would have happened overnight after the NFL game. The most obvious change would have been the playing field. All Saints and NFL marks would have been replaced by Clemson and LSU in each end zone and CFP marks in the center of the field. “That’s actually more difficult than a lot of people think,” Hancock said. “The paint has to have time to dry.”

  • CFP-branded signage had to be placed throughout the bowels of the stadium, directing team personnel, fans and media. Cables, power cords and Wi-Fi had to be run through auxiliary work areas. It would have taken a massive effort, but it was something Hancock’s team prepared for.

 

 

ACC NET HITS EARLY MILESTONE 

  • ACC Network’s signature morning show, “Packer & Durham,” celebrated its 100th episode today. The program’s producer, Josh Macri, told SBJ’s Austin Karp that while it’s hard to pick a favorite episode, one that stood out to him was from Death Valley prior to Georgia Tech-Clemson, the network’s first-ever football game on Aug. 29. “It was a week into the show’s existence, and I feel like it helped to announce the arrival of not just ‘Packer & Durham,’ but our entire ACC Network family,” said Macri. “Being in that setting, talking to the guests we had on and hyping up the first ever football game on our network was simply a thrill."

  • Macri said he and co-producer Andrew Brooks “couldn’t be more enthusiastic” about the future of the show. Should viewers expect the show to leave the comfy confines Mark Packer’s basement in Charlotte more often? “We will continue to evaluate events and locations to take ‘Packer & Durham’ to maximize exposure for both the show and the network.”

 

SPEED READS

  • A dozen sports business leaders gave me their analysis of the CFP at 6 years old -- the hits, the misses and the future -- for a story in next week’s SBJ.
  • ESPN's Emmanuel Acho, who played at Texas under Mack Brown, took to Twitter this afternoon to clarify controversial remarks he made this morning on "Get Up!" Acho, in discussing Odell Beckham Jr.'s behavior after LSU's win in the CFP Championship, said that the Longhorns defense was offered $1,000 for every interception they could come up with in the BCS National Championship against Alabama a decade ago. Acho then clarified on Twitter, "I have no proof that anybody on our ‘09 team ACTUALLY got paid by our NFL alumni. Those were lockeroom convos in jest pre game. Our alumni came to the game and supported us, but again no money changed hands."

  • Brock Huard was effusive in his praise for Pat Chun on the “Brock & Salk” show on ESPN Radio Seattle after the Washington State AD landed Nick Rolovich from Hawaii to replace coach Mike Leach. “You can talk individually or collectively about [the Pac-12] and its struggles, but there are some individual bright spots, and Pat Chun is one of them. … This was a desired job, and that speaks to what has been built there.” While WSU has the smallest budget of any P5 school, it was able to offer Rolovich $3 million annually, which is well above the $600,000 he was making in Honolulu last season, and well above the Mountain West Conference football head coach average of just over $1 million/year, but below the $5 million/annually that Leach now makes in Starkville.

     

THROWBACK THURSDAY

 

 

Editor's note: The deadline for nominations for the 13th annual Sports Business Awards is tomorrow, Jan. 17. Nominations are being accepted in 17 categories. Please be specific possible in your nomination -- submissions that don’t answer the actual question or provide detailed specifics will not be closely considered. Submit your nomination today. For more information on Sports Business Awards nominations, please contact Awards Coordinator Tracey Allsbrook at tallsbrook@sportsbusinessjournal.com or call 704-973-1566.

 

 

 

 

Enjoying this newsletter? We've got more! Check out SBJ Media with John Ourand on Mondays and Wednesdays for insights into all the latest news around the world of sports media. Also check out SBJ Football from Ben Fischer on Friday afternoons.

Something on the College beat catch your eye? Tell us about it. Reach out to either me (msmith@sportsbusinessjournal.com) or Austin Karp (akarp@sportsbusinessjournal.com) and we'll share the best of it. Also contributing to this newsletter is Thomas Leary (tleary@sportsbusinessdaily.com).