Challenging The Idea of Category Exclusivity

You know the old adage: A job worth doing is worth doing well. When it comes to spending money on sponsorship, this isn’t always the case. Case in point - and for proof - this week’s Sports Sponsorship Symposium. As usual, there is talk about how we need better ROI and measurement, media is not enough any more, yadda, yadda, yadda. How many years in a row are we going to hear these compla...

Sports Sponsorship Symposium - Day 1

Kathleen Hessert of Sports Media Challenge and the SBJ staff have been keeping up with all of the insights from Day 1 at the Relay Sports Sponsorship Symposium. The main takeaway from today looks to be, not surprisingly, that sponsors are moving away from brand sponsorship and towards a greater focus on quantitative accountability against pre-determined metrics, in some cases needing to explo...

Deal Flow 9/30/09

The New Jersey Nets have signed 10 new sponsors heading into the season including Mars, Zappos.com, LTJ Arthur, MetroPCS, CURE Auto Insurance, Electronics Expo, the Fontainebleau Miami Beach, Hotelplanner.com, Lucky Strike Lanes and Pirate's Booty snack food Navistar has renewed its title sponsorship of the LPGA event in Prattville, Alabama. AirTran Airways announced today that it has become...

Small Price, Big Sponsorship Return?

As sponsorship evolves to more complex forms of assets, modeling and measurement, many local sponsorships are still pretty cut and dry. But that doesn't mean they don't work according to a piece penned by Joyce Rosenberg of the AP today. She says: On football and soccer fields across the nation, small business owners are taking advantage of a huge marketing opportunity: sponsoring local spor...

MMA Sponsorship Primer

Mixed Martial Arts, along with the UFC, has exploded over the past couple of years and mainstream sponsors are starting to take notice. Jordan McCreery of MMAAdNet and Magnetic Marketing Associates is going to catch us up on the intricacies of the business side of MMA through a regular series of posts starting today. What is Mixed Martial Arts? When some people hear about the sport of MMA ...

SpongeTech Does Another Deal

SpongeTech will become an official sponsor of the Miami Dolphins and will leverage Land Shark Stadium's high profile platforms to generate brand awareness of SpongeTech's "The Smarter Sponge" product line. "We are thrilled to be able to partner with such a prestigious brand as the Dolphins. We're confident that they will help us take our marketing efforts to another level here in South Florid...

Deal Flow

I have a smile on my face as I sit down to write this … because I know that just seeing the Blog title, it's going to make my staff laugh. You see, if they've heard this expression from me once … they've heard it a hundred times! I'm always preaching the importance of having options. Fact is, you never want to find yourself in a position where you only have limited options – or worse, NO othe...

Vikes to Play at Mall of America Field

The Minnesota Vikings today announced that they will play all games through 2012 at Mall of America Field at Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. “Branding the field as Mall of America Field represents an opportunity to share our name and image with an even larger nationwide audience,” said Maureen Bausch, executive vice president of business development at Mall of America. “It also connects two tre...

Will Live Local Sports Present A New Sponsorship Opp Online?

Streaming live local events, not big enough to be covered by traditional broadcast mediums, sounds like a great idea. The question, is there a logical business model to support it? YourSports.com thinks so and they'll be re-launching their site with a new model in mind: crowdfunding. In doing so, they hope to "eliminate the away game." Crowdfunding is where fans finance the production of ga...

Deal Flow 10/01/09

State Farm has renewed its title sponsorship of the LPGA event in Springfield, Illinois, through 2011. SUBWAY announced a multi-platform partnership with NBC Sports that will enable the brand to engage with consumers during marquee sporting events such as NHL, NFL and the U.S. Figure Skating Championships broadcasts. SpongeTech will become an official sponsor of the Miami Dolphins and will le...