SBJ Football: Local sponsors flock back to red-hot Commanders

Even before QB Jayden Daniels and the Commanders became the top-scoring team in the NFL , the club’s business side was already scoring often. The team has signed 21 new sponsorship deals in the last year, including 14 new regional brands. Most of these aren’t top-tier revenue drivers, but the volume -- these deals are about a fifth of the entire portfolio -- indicates how rapidly the business has recovered after Dan Snyder sold.

The club said that it's in the top 25% of new business in the NFL this season.

Chief Partnerships Officer Jim Rushton previously sold sponsorships for the Dolphins and Chargers amid major organizational changes. He said the Commanders’ effort is different because of the intensity of the region’s latent love for the franchise that was forced underground during the Snyder era. “The overwhelming uniqueness here is how passionate and how quiet this fan base has been, and how much of a sleeping giant it is,” Rushton said. “And it’s all starting to come to fruition.”

Virtually every introductory meeting with sponsors since he started in March, Rushton said, included anecdotes from the buy side about how they’d been huge Washington fans as children and were eager to regain that passion. Rushton was an unofficial guest of honor at a recent Washington Board of Trade event, with business community leaders exclaiming “we’re back!” or expressing relief that being a season-ticket holder was a point of pride again.

Even at its darkest hour, the Washington football business held onto many major brand sponsors with comprehensive national sports strategies. But the classic bread-and-butter regional deals, which comprise 84% of all sponsorships, per SponsorUnited, were absent. 

“That was our big void,” Rushton said. ‘We were doing large enterprise companies who stayed above the fray -- or very, very small businesses. But the mid-market regional players were staying away from the organization.” He also credited Northwest Federal Credit Union, a local brand that recently took on stadium naming rights , for validating the team’s platform. Elevate Sports Ventures assisted on the Northwest deal, but all other sales are run in-house.

All told, the Commanders say, there’s been 23% growth in sponsor business under Josh Harris compared to the last season under Snyder.

Leaning into the Washington area strengths

The list includes two labor unions (LIUNA, UA Plumbers Local 5), two tourism groups (Visit National Harbor, Visit Williamsburg) and ManTech, a defense contractor. 

With half of its 10,000-person workforce counted as armed forces veterans, ManTech sees its “Salute to Service” game platform as both employee and community relations and its “Securing the Future” logo on Northwest Stadium signage as a powerful message to government decisionmakers and the community.

Others new regional sponsors include: Arthur-Wheeler Spirits Company (spirits); Golden Bear (environmental and sustainability services); Hercules Fence (commercial/residential fencing); Novavax (COVID-19 vaccination); Nissan (mass market import auto); PBI (remediation, renovation, construction); Veterans First Healthcare (health care); WUSA-9 (exclusive media); and the Maryland Department of Transportation (government/transportation).

Along with the new deals, the team has also secured 15 renewals (six regional and nine national) since last year.  

Chiefs owner Clark Hunt and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell made a big splash last month when they ID'd a goal of 16 games outside the U.S. annually , which would be about 3x the current international schedule and 2x the current policy limit of nine (eight league-run games and the Jaguars' side deal in London).

Adding further fuel to the fire: The steady drumbeat of reports about additional NFL games maybe being exported into ever-more-exotic locations.

But not so fast.

Key NFL owners, including powerful Cowboys boss Jerry Jones, are less enthusiastic about hitting the gas pedal abroad than Goodell and his staff, sources say. A proposal to increase the limit on international games would not pass if it came to a vote right now, sources say. 

Despite warming enthusiasm, most owners still are not willing to give up home game revenue for the international strategy more often than they absolutely must. This means, in practice, it’s hard to see dramatic expansion to the international schedule happening without an 18th regular-season game creating more inventory.

It would be wrong to say owners are hostile; they want to support Goodell. But some feel like maybe this is moving too fast. In a few years, NFL International has evolved from a cautious concept based on a handful of one-off events into an all-encompassing league priority (just four years ago, teams only "gave up" home games for international if they volunteered or hosted a Super Bowl, and were reimbursed. Now, all teams must do this at least once every four years and are not reimbursed). Most teams are not convinced the league has done sufficient research and strategic planning to justify an even faster pace.

It's not a complicated question these owners have: Does the international strategy create a realistic path to new league-level revenue (via media rights sold overseas and/or a new Sunday morning domestic package) that is worth the effort, both in lost domestic gate receipts and the operational cost? Owners are not convinced execs can yet answer that question credibly.

There will be a presentation on global strategy at next week's owners meeting in Atlanta.

Current policy would allow for four more international games than are on the schedule, so don’t bet against a few more games in places like Spain, France and Ireland (and a return to Mexico) in the coming years. But a bigger change will take a lot more work.

American football fans in London will see a robust Bears presence at fan-facing activations going into Sunday’s game with the Jaguars, but the team’s execs are focused on a B2B message around their stalled lakefront Chicago stadium project.

More than 70 officials from 40 “current and potential” Bears sponsors arrived Wednesday and Thursday, President and CEO Kevin Warren said, and they’ll get the red-carpet treatment with receptions, dinners, and the game itself. Warren’s goal is have them “see, first-hand, what a new building can add to a city, to a region, and to a franchise when they get a chance to visit Tottenham Hotspur Stadium,” he told me.

Warren hopes the visit can inspire the team’s sponsors in the same way that prior visits to London inspired him. As COO of the Vikings during the construction of U.S. Bank Stadium nearly a decade ago, Warren toured the Tottenham venue construction project and adapted some ideas he saw there for the Vikings. Tottenham opened in 2019.

Warren told the media in London on Wednesday that he remains optimistic about the Bears’ proposed lakefront stadium replacement to Soldier Field even though it’s gained little traction with the required politicians. Selling the stadium to as many Illinoisians as he can, private or public sector, is Warren’s biggest tangible assignment right now. 

But London more generally provides many business opportunities, he said, with so many companies considering both London and Chicago key metro areas. “There are meetings and dinners that are taking place this week that will end up paying mutual dividends a decade from now, and that’s my focus. And I look at it not as one-side benefit, but how can we help our partners grow their business?” Warren said. 

• Tom Brady’s long-stalled deal to acquire a minority stake in the Raiders is on the agenda for a vote at next week’s NFL owners meeting in Atlanta, sources told me. It will require approval by 24 of 32 owners, and transactions like this rarely make it to the full membership without a high degree of confidence they will pass.

• Fitch Ratings said it once again: The NFL is a very strong credit risk. The league’s credit facilities are all either A+ or A rated, with very manageable leverage and a high probability of continued profitability, according to a new report issued this afternoon by Fitch.

• The Seahawks today inked an extension to its sponsorship with Amazon Web Services, which will deploy generative AI tools to help the Seahawks automate transcription, translation and distribution of press conferences across online and social channels globally.

• NFL Network's Rich Eisen is a guest on this week's SBJ Sports Media Podcast, discussing the league's international efforts (Eisen is calling Sunday's game in London and the upcoming Giants-Panthers game in Germany).

• The NFL still remains in charge on the list of the most-watched telecasts through Q3 (sports or otherwise), with 36 of the top 75 -- including 17 from this season, notes my colleague Austin Karp.

• IndyCar has an ambitious new race planned for the Dallas market that will start in 2026, and the effort involves the Cowboys and AT&T Stadium in Arlington, reports SBJ's Adam Stern.

• M&T Bank Stadium launched sales for three new premium spaces on the Baltimore venue's renovated field level called The Trust, The Raven and the Champions Club, reports SBJ's Bret McCormick. The new spaces, which will be ready for the 2025 season, are part of the stadium’s three-year $430 million renovation.

• The NFL expanded its relationship with Cisco to include cybersecurity protection of the league’s entire batch of international games, including the recently played debut contest in Brazil as well as matchups in the U.K., Germany and next year in Spain, reports SBJ's Joe Lemire.