CITI drops Rose Bowl

cyptomcat

cyptomcat

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Citigroup Inc. has decided not to renew its sponsorship of the Rose Bowl, Sports Business Journal reported on Monday.

Citi, which has sponsored the nation's oldest bowl game for the past seven years, made the decision largely based on flexibility and price, sources said, according to the report.

According to the report, Citi balked at the season-long college football sponsorship that is being asked of all BCS sponsors, saying that was more ad inventory than it wanted.

Sources said AT&T, which in 1999 became the Rose Bowl's first presenting sponsor, is considering resuming its sponsorship of the game, according to the report.

ESPN is responsible for lining up title sponsors for the BCS bowls as part of its contract to broadcast the games, which runs through January 2014.

An ESPN spokesman declined comment on the report Monday.

The Rose Bowl is the second Bowl Championship Series game to lose a longtime sponsor this year. FedEx withdrew as presenting sponsor of the Orange Bowl in May, ending a 21-year run.

At the time, Sports Business Journal reported that FedEx informed ESPN it was bowing out because the company didn't want a larger season-long sponsorship platform.
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http://sports.espn.go.com/los-angeles/ncf/news/story?id=5311290
 
seems like ESPN is pissing off some of the long time sponsors with whatever package they're pushing
 
When this happened with the Orange Bowl people ripped ESPN for "once again trying to ruin the ACC" (paraphrase.) I wonder if the same will happen now.
 
ESPN is in a heap 'o trouble. This is the third one, right? They lost Fed Ex and Tostitos earlier, IIRC. They over extended themselves and now are having trouble finding sponsors who will underwrite their commitments. We may never see the money they promised the ACC (or SEC, for that matter).

It is for this reason that I'm also skeptical about the business plan for the 16-team conferences. I'm just not sure that the advertising will cover the financial commitments they would have to make.
 
20 years from now or less, there will be 40-ish teams playing major college football in an NFL style league as the money runs tight and 119 D1 teams (or how ever many) can no longer be supported with big money.
 
I work for Citi so I'm glad to see they stopped wasting the money on that sponsorship. Next, they need to take their name off the baseball stadiums. Then maybe they can afford to start giving the employees bonuses and raises again.
 
Nashville Jacket said:
Then maybe they can afford to start giving the employees bonuses and raises again.
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Ummmmmm....I hope that was TIC. Your executives just got millions of taxpayer dollars in bonuses after screwing up our economy. Pretty sure success, not abject failure, should be rewarded with a bonus.
 
The M-Train said:
Ummmmmm....I hope that was TIC. Your executives just got millions of taxpayer dollars in bonuses after screwing up our economy. Pretty sure success, not abject failure, should be rewarded with a bonus.
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I'm not one of those incompetent executives, just a peon who got screwed along with most everyone else.
 
stinger78 said:
ESPN is in a heap 'o trouble. This is the third one, right? They lost Fed Ex and Tostitos earlier, IIRC. They over extended themselves and now are having trouble finding sponsors who will underwrite their commitments. We may never see the money they promised the ACC (or SEC, for that matter).

It is for this reason that I'm also skeptical about the business plan for the 16-team conferences. I'm just not sure that the advertising will cover the financial commitments they would have to make.
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I am all for conspiracy theories, but don't you think the continuing meltdown of the economy is the biggest influence?
 
Yukonwreck said:
I am all for conspiracy theories, but don't you think the continuing meltdown of the economy is the biggest influence?
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Sure. However, the skyrocketing price tag has a limit at some point, and advertisers will simply say, "no thanks."
 
Yukonwreck said:
I am all for conspiracy theories, but don't you think the continuing meltdown of the economy is the biggest influence?
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If they were going to drop it, last year would have been the time. It seems obvious the BCS was asking them to pony up a lot more and both Citi and FedEx balked. Did Tostitos as well?
 
GT flunkout said:
If they were going to drop it, last year would have been the time. It seems obvious the BCS was asking them to pony up a lot more and both Citi and FedEx balked. Did Tostitos as well?
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I heard on 680 the Dawg the other day that Tostitos was a possibility of dropping too.
 
GT flunkout said:
If they were going to drop it, last year would have been the time. It seems obvious the BCS was asking them to pony up a lot more and both Citi and FedEx balked. Did Tostitos as well?
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Companies have to answer to their shareholders first. ESPN is a non-factor in these decisions to spend millions of dollars. The agreements signed between the companies and bowls aren't on a year-to-year basis. They are usually 2-3 year commitments.
 
GT flunkout said:
If they were going to drop it, last year would have been the time. It seems obvious the BCS was asking them to pony up a lot more and both Citi and FedEx balked. Did Tostitos as well?
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They likely couldn't have dropped last year because of multi-year contracts. (Well, they could have found an out, but they didn't need to.) Now ESPN wants new contracts that are probably for more money but also will require sponsoring the full season of college football. Probably they wanted FedEx College Football Primetime on Saturdays and the Citi Big Televen Noon Snoozefest of the Week Called by Pam Ward or something like that. The bowl sponsors wanted to keep sponsoring their bowls but didn't feel like being associated with the full season of college football was for them.
 
On the bright side, because we will be going to the Orange Bowl every year, I won't have to get anymore disapproving emails from the boss for having a FedEx Orange Bowl magnet on my truck last December.

UPS is sensitive to that sort of thing. :laugher:
 
stinger78 said:
It is for this reason that I'm also skeptical about the business plan for the 16-team conferences. I'm just not sure that the advertising will cover the financial commitments they would have to make.
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Business plans for the BTN is pretty sound. The 16-team conferences just need networks.
 
Nashville Jacket said:
I'm not one of those incompetent executives, just a peon who got screwed along with most everyone else.
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Since you feel you deserve a raise so much, why don't you just quit your job and find one that pays more. It's obvious you don't like the hand that feeds you where you are. Since the people that run the company you work for are incompetent, just take your peon self elsewhere. You obviously feel you deserve more that what you have.
 
I think some conferences will be disappointed when its time to reneg their media contracts. Hard to imagine in this economy that some of the recent payouts will be repeated. Like to see the ROI on some of the contracts put in place in the past 5 years. That is no doubt also why corps are dropping bowl sponsorships.
 
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