Visa, IBM Renew with the NFL

Reuters this morning reports that Visa and the NFL have extended their sponsorship dating back to 1995, with a five year extension. Visa will be the exclusive payment service of the league. With the extension Visa is a sponsor of the NFL, Super Bowl, Pro Bowl, NFL Draft, NFL Kickoff, as well as the Atlanta Falcons, Carolina Panthers, Cleveland Browns, Denver Broncos, New England Patriots, New ...

Jack & Jim Fall Down the Hill; Nascar in Bad Spirits?

Can Bud, Crown, Miller and others back them up? For the second day in a row, a Nascar team has lost their primary sponsor - in each case a major spirits brand. Yesterday Jack Daniel's announced it would not extend its 5-year sponsorship with Richard Childress Racing's #7 team when the existing deal expires after this year. Today, we officially learned that Jim Beam will not renew its deal to ...

Quick Hit Aims for Lasting Impression with Sponsors

QuickHit, a free MMOG football game with $13 million in VC behind it, is currently being tested in beta and soon aims to gain favor with disgruntled Madden fans. They hope to reach millions of football fans, as they launch the first massive, multiplayer online video game designed for them. So what's interesting about this to us? The Boston Globe's Hiawatha Bray reports: "Quick Hit will soon...

Deal Flow 9/22/09

Visa extended their existing sponsorship deal with the NFL and will remain the exclusive payment service of the NFL. IBM has also extended their official partnership with the NFL and will remain the league's official IT partner. STANDARD Bank has signed a new eight-year deal with Africa football governing authority CAF to sponsor elite continental tournaments including the African Cup of Na...

SpongeTech to Shareholders: We Can Spend With The Best of Them

SpongeTech has become the sponsor salesman's best friend this year. Give us some moola, throw up a sign... whaaalaaa! Today, in a letter to shareholders, SpongeTech laid out some of the what, where and why's of the company's massive marketing spend. Here's an excerpt: Dear Shareholder, We want to address various questions many of you have asked over the past few weeks and to share with you...

How the New Music Model Mixes Up Fans

After ending an 18 year relationship with Sony, there was much speculation in early 2009 about how Pearl Jam would distribute their next album. This new Target advertisement has thrown some PJ fans into bouts of hysteria. Pearl Jam has traditionally been about has anti-corporate as you can get. Here's a smattering of some of the responses to the deal from PearlJam.com: "I don't understa...

Sponsorship is like Sailing

Ever wonder why Christopher Cross' iconic song, Sailing, never mentioned anything about operating costs? The 80's song probably wouldn't have reached #1 had he started reeling off the costs for sails, slugs, slides, shackles and spinnaker socks. Like your local yacht dealer, the person selling you a sponsorship probably can't tell you exactly what you need (and what the cost) will be to make YO...

LG Electronics Taps NCAA Official Partnership

The NCAA and CBS Sports today announced that LG Electronics USA has signed on to become an Official NCAA Corporate Partner. Through this multi-year partnership, LG Electronics will have exclusive category marketing and promotional rights related to all 88 NCAA championship events across 23 different sports, including the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship and NCAA Football Championsh...

What do you want?

As of this post, we've done some heavy lifting in an effort to make this part of SponsorPitch more of a resource, than a run of the mill blog. We are continually seeking to aggregate ideas, both here and across the web, that create valued and shared insights for sponsorship professionals. It has been about four months since I started writing posts for SponsorPitch. My posts to date have be...

Could Furyk Crash FedEx's $44MM Day?

In case you aren't familiar with YRC Worldwide, it is one of the largest transportation and logistics providers in the world, and a member of the Fortune 500. If you have heard of them, there's a good chance you're either a golf fan or a teamster. In 2008, Jim Furyk inked what sources say was a four-year, $6 million sponsorship deal with the Overland Park, Kansas-based company that specializes...