SPONSORSHIP & PROMOTION
The St. Louis Blues and Enterprise locked in a building naming-rights agreement, renaming the home of the Blues “Enterprise Center.” The 15-year agreement calls for interior and exterior signage featuring the Enterprise logo. The venue was formerly named “Scottrade Center” and the new agreement goes into effect on July 1.
Major League Baseball and USA Baseball unveiled “Hit and Run Baseball,” a program supporting modified forms of the game that allow players to develop their skills in a more interactive format while also promoting player health and safety.The program falls under the “PLAY BALL” initiative, will serve youth leagues, tournament providers and amateur coaches with recommended game formats that can be easily applied at all levels of youth & amateur baseball.
On the collegiate front, the University of Cincinnati reached an agreement to extend its multimedia rights and licensing agreements with IMG through 2027. IMG College will continue to provide exclusive representation of the corporate partner program and commercial business for Bearcats Athletics including radio broadcasts, television features, club level sponsorships, hospitality, coaching endorsements and in-venue signage and continue to manage the university’s trademark licensing program for the duration of the agreement.
Meanwhile, Van Wagner Sports and Entertainment and the Kennesaw State University Athletic Department announced a long-term partnership on Monday, naming VWSE as the department's exclusive multimedia rights partner and sales agent for the department's corporate sponsorship program. VWSE Collegiate Services division will launch KSU Athletics Sponsorships, the local team that will be dedicated to representing the University in the marketplace.
San Manuel Casino and the Los Angeles Football Club announced a new partnership for the 2018 Major League Soccer season. Throughout the MLS season and other events at Banc of California Stadium, San Manuel Casino will take part in pre-match Fan Fest activation experiences, and sponsor the City View Club in addition to presenting post-game highlights via in-stadium “Thrill of the Match” broadcasts.
DIGITAL & STREAMING
STATS unveiled STATS GPS, a system that uses a 50-Hz sampling frequency to provide the “most advanced real-time GPS technology available.” STATS GPS allows teams to monitor player performance with customizable metrics like accelerations/decelerations, energy expenditure, count of zone entries, and time, distance and power thresholds. The solution uses real 50-Hz sampling frequency and allows practitioners to monitor up to 100 players in real-time and post-session with over 300 GPS, IMU and HR derived metrics.
ESPORTS
Epic Games is lining up $100 million for Fortnite competitions during the 2018-19 season, with funding dedicated toward esports prize pools. “We’re getting behind competitive play in a big way, but our approach will be different - we plan to be more inclusive, and focused on the joy of playing and watching the game,” the company announced. “Stay tuned for more details about competitive structures and eligible platforms in the weeks ahead!”
State Farm signed on as an official partner of the NBA 2K League and will present pregame segments titled Game Mode that capture strategy and insights from NBA 2K League players on Twitch broadcasts throughout the season. State Farm will also have a weekly highlights segment called Game Time on NBA2KLeague.com. State Farm will also receive courtside signage during in-season tournaments and NBA 2K League Finals games. “As a longstanding partner of the NBA and the WNBA, State Farm has a proven history of authentically connecting with fans and has demonstrated a commitment to eSports,” said Brendan Donohue, Managing Director, NBA 2K League. “We’re excited for State Farm to engage with our NBA 2K League community through helping create unique content and compelling storylines about our players.”
In other deal news, AMD and Fnatic are partnering up, courtesy of an agreement that further expands AMD’s engagement in competitive gaming. AMD will serve as Fnatic’s exclusive partner across four competitive gaming hardware categories: motherboards, GPUs, CPUs and laptops. In this third year of collaboration, the partnership will include AMD’s top-tier brands, Ryzen and Radeon RX. “Fnatic is extremely proud to have AMD, a premium gaming hardware brand, on our side for the third year now,” said Wouter Sleijffers, CEO at Fnatic. “AMD and Fnatic both share a passion for high performance and top quality gaming hardware. Recently, Fnatic won the European Sponsorship Award and the exciting partnership with AMD was a big catalyst for this achievement. Fnatic will always strive to excel on-stage and off-stage, to bring maximum results for our fans and partners alike.”
ROSTER MOVES
Whistle Sports hired Joyce Parente as SVP of marketing brand partnerships. Parente was previously VP of integrated marketing at Evolve Media’s Craveonline, now known as Mandatory Media, and served as group director of global corporate partnerships at National Geographic, but will now oversee the Whistle Sports brand partner portfolio to drive revenue and relationships between the company’s brand clients like Nike, Marriott, Gatorade and Metro PCS, and its 500+ creator talent pool.
NBC Sports Washington named veteran media sales executive Darryl Heggans as Vice President of Sales. Heggans will oversee NBC Sports Washington’s multi-platform national and local sales efforts, which will include budgeting, forecasting, and strategic planning, along with the development of new business opportunities across all platforms.
French soccer club Paris Saint-Germain is creating an overseas office in New York. This third office for the club outside of France follows the first opening in Doha and a second in Singapore. With this new permanent base in the United States, Paris Saint-Germain hopes to increase brand visibility, cultivate new partnerships and nurture its growing fanbase. The office will be managed by Jerome de Chaunac, who is joining the club as Managing Director of the Americas.
THE MAIN EVENT
Rockets/Warriors on TNT at 6p.
