Thoughts on Staples Center 'Lifetime' Sponsorship

News of the week is that Staples has signed a “lifetime” extension to be the title sponsor of the Staples Center.

Let’s leave aside the semantic issue of whose lifetime precisely – that of the Center which will inevitably be knocked down and replaced by some future uber-center in a few years, or that of Staples until it gets taken over or becomes Office Staples in a merger.

Either way we’re a little puzzled by this deal. Here’s why:

If Staples stopped being the sponsor tomorrow, pretty much everyone would still call it the Staples Center for the next five years anyway, no matter who the new sponsor was.
All of our research that we’ve done for naming rights sponsors tells us they really aren’t sponsorships at all, but just big billboards. A true sponsorship forms a connection w...

We just completed a big consulting exercise for a major NASCAR sponsor to help them figure out what they should do next season. It was a pretty interesting exercise and by doing so revealed some facts which may be of pretty broad interest to those involved in the sport.

For the first time some of the top teams in NASCAR are offering signficant incentive schemes to reward wins. Instead of paying $700K-800K per race, primary sponsorship for the Top four teams (RCR, Roush, Hendrick, JGR) and around half that for the rest, you can find some packages at a base rate of 50% of the price with the rest payable on a sliding scale, according to performance. Only if you win do you end up paying full whack, which means that since you don’t win every week, this is a way to cover up a pretty signif...

If you are in the same boat with a huge percentage of American sport fans, you are already well aware that the college football season officially kicks off on September 3. As the sports media shifts its focus away from baseball and toward the gridiron, it’s not too late to get off of the sidelines and into the game.

I know what you brand marketers are thinking, “Can I really afford to be in football?” The better question might be, “Can I afford not to be?”

According to recent fan interest studies, college football is now the number two sport (only behind the NFL) in terms of fan interest in the United States. And while the NFL may be the most popular, it is also the most expensive.

Here’s the silver lining – due to economic conditions, there are plenty of deals to be had i...