Howard Freeman, a sports event marketer, said he was testing one way out of paying the high cost of two expensive Jets personal seat licenses: selling their naming rights.
“If teams can sell naming rights to buildings, entryways and portals, why not for my seats?” asked Freeman, of Wayne, N.J., who has had Jets season tickets for 32 years.
He envisions placing temporary signage on the seats and offering a sponsor benefits like product sampling rights at his pregame tailgate, free consulting and event marketing, the right of first refusal to buy unused game tickets and a guarantee that those who sit in the seat will wear the sponsor’s logo.
“I think a company that gets it will understand the p.r. value,” he said.
Freeman said he has not consulted his lawyer or asked the Jets about his plan.
But his idea raises a pertinent question about the extent of a licensee’s rights: If P.S.L.’s confer the rights to transfer or sell seats, would they let him display signage?
Marc Ganis, a sports business expert, said that teams can control stadium signs “especially if there’s a commercial purpose,” he said. “They could block a seat cover, but if he wore a jacket that says Joe’s Mortuary on the back of it, and drapes it over his seat, they couldn’t block that.” He said that signage at his tailgate party might be free of restrictions. A Jets spokesman confirmed the team would not allow seat covers.
Even as the Jets are trying to sell the naming rights to the stadium, fans like Freeman are assessing strategies to help defray the cost of licenses and ticket prices — from finding investors or partners to selling more of their game tickets online.
“I think the Jets will have to take a hard look at letting me do this, but they can’t afford any more bad publicity,” said Freeman, a former Nets marketing official and currently the executive producer of the Quick Chek New Jersey Festival of Ballooning.
Freeman has a wish list of sponsors in categories like charcoal (for tailgate barbecuing), outerwear (for those inevitably cold days) and coolers (to preserve beverage coldness on warmer days).
He cannot guarantee a sponsor that his seats in the new stadium will correspond with those he has in Section 113 at Giants Stadium. If Freeman cannot get a naming-rights sponsor, he is not sure he will stay, even for a downgrade from seats that he figures now would cost him a $15,000-a-seat P.S.L.
“One of the guys in my group said why don’t we go to the upper deck, but that’s only a financial solution,” he said. “It could be snowy, windy or cold up there. One of my associates is already saying no, and one of the others just got laid off.”
Source: New York Times
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