By Staff
Athletic Management, 18.6, October/November 2006, http://www.momentummedia.com/articles/am/am1806/wustadiumdeal.htm
From Camp Randall Stadium at Wisconsin to “The Big House” at Michigan, many football fans in the Big Ten consider their home venues to be sacred ground. So it’s little surprise that when the University of Minnesota announced its new football facility would be called TCF Bank Stadium, it raised a few eyebrows. As the first football stadium in the conference with a corporate naming-rights deal, a building that doesn’t yet exist has already drawn a lot of attention.
According to Minnesota Athletic Director Joel Maturi, the decision to seek a corporate naming sponsorship came down to simple economics. “The reality is we would not be able to build this stadium without our partnership with TCF,” he says. “State dollars are difficult to come by today, and institutions are squeezed because they get less tax support. As a result, we simply need to find ways to become more self-sufficient.”
Under the deal, the Wayzata, Minn.-based TCF Bank will provide $35 million of the estimated $248 million needed to build the stadium, which is scheduled to open in 2009 (the rest of the money will come from state funds and other sources). In exchange, it receives the naming rights for 25 years, along with other perks typical of large corporate sponsorships, such as internal and external signage, use of a suite at the stadium for home games, parking privileges on game days, and exposure on the university’s athletics Web site.
Minnesota also came up with several unique benefits to sweeten the deal. For instance, Head Football Coach Glen Mason will be available for a corporate event of TCF’s choosing, along with the school’s mascot and spirit squad. The bank will have rent-free use of the stadium once or twice a year for “employee/customer events,” and endowed scholarships will be set up in TCF’s name. In addition, once a year, four select bank officials will travel with the football team on a “Big Ten road trip,” with the athletic department picking up the bill.
“There are some really unique features in this agreement, and we’re excited about that,” says Maturi. “One thing I learned through this process is that this was a business deal for TCF Bank. There was give and take—they told us what kinds of privileges they were interested in and we came up with something that worked for both sides.”
Not everyone, however, saw the agreement as a win-win. The most vocal critic of the naming-rights deal was state Senator Larry Pogemiller, who claimed to speak for many in Minnesota when he decried the deal as selling out college athletics. “This cheapens our university,” he said in a statement last year. “It’s clear the market value of a land-grant university has been put up for sale.”
While Maturi disagrees, he didn’t discount those sentiments. “I respect Senator Pogemiller and his viewpoint, and I understand philosophically what he is saying,” he says. “Frankly, I’m old enough to remember the days when college athletics didn’t have any commercialism. But this is the nature of running a modern big-time program—it has become a business. And sponsorships like this have become an essential part of it.”
To allay concerns about the deal and build support for the stadium in the state legislature (which has committed state tax dollars to fund 55 percent of the project), Maturi estimates he visited the capital 50 times to meet with key legislators and appear before committees. “I didn’t know I would ever use my government degree in this profession, but it has served me well during this process,” he says.
“I brought to one committee a list of some 20 institutions that have corporate-named athletic facilities, whether it’s the Carrier Dome in Syracuse, Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium in Louisville, or the Kohl Center in Madison,” Maturi continues. “It was important to send the message that this deal was not unique. We also made the point that because of the funds coming from the naming deal, we didn’t have to seek as much support from tax dollars. We knew this was a good deal for our university, our community, and our state, so it was critical to find the right ways to communicate with the legislators. We had to make sure something that was very clear to us became clear to them.”
Another key step was building public support for the new stadium. Minnesota athletics officials employed everything from direct mail, mass e-mails, and newspaper articles to public meetings and presentations to get the word out. They even set up a mock section of the new stadium at the state fair, where people could sit and watch a video about the facility and the future of Gopher football.
“We did a lot to energize our fans and build up a base of supporters, and when we encouraged them to contact their legislators, they did,” says Maturi. “Politicians are responsive to letters, e-mails, and phone calls from their constituents, and that support was a big help.”