Are Bowl Game Sponsorships a Good Investment?

On New Year’s Eve I was watching the Chick-fil-A Bowl and instead of focusing in on the action on the field, my thoughts went to the return on investment (ROI) from having the naming rights to a bowl game. According to Sports Business Now, the cost to brand a bowl game can range from $300K for the Heart of Dallas Bowl to $17.5M for the Sugar Bowl or the Fiesta Bowl. Chick-fil-A falls into the economy bowl plan with a mere investment of $2.5 million.

When I dug a bit deeper into how the naming rights for bowl games are sold, I found that the fee is not just for having your name on the marquee. According to Sponsorship.com, these naming rights are really just “value adds” for multi-year season-long media buys with ESPN. Under their 5-year deal with ESPN, Chick-fil-A has media buys on ESPN as well as the naming rights to the Peach Bowl. With their brand renaming the Peach Bowl, Chick-fil-A can use that exposure to help promote their brand on a national level. Currently Chick-fil-A operates in 39 states and Washington D.C.

In addition to having exposure to a predominately male audience that is an ideal target for Chick-fil-A, there are also those hard-to-measure benefits for the Company such as the goodwill from the community for sponsoring a local event or the hospitality aspect of having a luxury suite at your own bowl game. In the case of Chick-fil-A, sponsoring the former Peach Bowl makes sense since the bowl game occurs in the Company’s hometown of Atlanta. Although the bowl sponsorship clearly has some tangible benefits, I’d be interested in seeing the results Chick-fil-A is achieving from earned media and search. Some metrics I would measure to determine ROI would be as follows:

• Nielsen ratings - # of viewers
• Number of social media hits on game day - mentions, follows, posts and shares
• Number of news stories - blog mentions, articles written or press releases
• Lift in branded keyword searches on game day and the days following
• New visits to Chick-fil-A’s website during or immediately following the bowl game
• Unique visits to the website that end on a search for the nearest Chick-fil-A location
• Any bumps in sales in the days following the bowl game

Chick-fil-A has several options to measure the success of their bowl game sponsorship campaign. Do you think owning the naming rights to a bowl game provides a demonstrable ROI?