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By SCOTT BARANCIK, Times Staff WriterA new training facility means a new way for the Bucs to make money. The team is shopping naming rights for about $2-million a year.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are hoping to turn their state-of-the-art training and office facility into a new revenue stream.
The Tampa football team has approached a select group of companies about buying the naming rights to the $30-million facility. The proposed long-term package, which would includes an assortment of other marketing and branding opportunities focused on game-day audiences, would cost roughly $2-million a year.
The deal is reminiscent of one the Bucs struck in 1998 to dub its new stadium "Raymond James Stadium," named after sponsor Raymond James & Associates, a St. Petersburg brokerage firm. National Football League spokesman Brian McCarthy said Wednesday that making money off a training facility is a shrewd idea. "It could be the next step in the evolution of sponsorable assets," he said.
The Bucs wouldn't be the first to take that step. The Philadelphia Eagles named their training facility, the NovaCare Complex, after a local health care company in 1997. The Indianapolis Colts snagged local Union Federal Bank in 2000, and the two recently extended their five-year pacts. Bank representatives sought increased exposure, market share and recognition for investing in a community asset.
But the Eagles and the Colts are the only two teams among 34 in the NFL with such a deal. And no NFL team has sold the naming rights to its training facility since 2000, including one team that hired consultant The Bonham Group a year ago to explore the option.
Bonham Group president Rob Vogel -- whose Greenwood Village, Colo., firm negotiated naming-rights agreements for PNC Park in Pittsburgh, San Diego's PETCO Park and nine other sports facilities - said a package's value depends on how many consumer eyeballs it captures, whether it is likely to improve a sponsor's image, and whether it will directly drive up sales of the sponsor's product or service.
"You don't get a lot of consumer impressions from that the training facility," he said. "That's why you need to attach it to other benefits, or it doesn't work."
Some observers said the Bucs' roughly $2-million asking price might be a little optimistic. Of all professional sports leagues, the most lucrative stadium deal to date is the $8-million-a-year pact between Fedex Corp. and the Washington Redskins. For that, Fedex gets exposure to more than 50,000 local fans per game, a national broadcast audience, and thousands of music fans and others who visit the stadium during the offseason.
"If they can get ($2-million), God bless them," said Kathleen Davis, president and CEO of SMRI, a sports management firm in Fort Lauderdale. "They'd be lucky if they got $500,000.
"There's not as much interest as there used to be" in naming rights sponsorships, she said.
Tom James, chairman and CEO of stadium namesake Raymond James, said he knows someone whose company was approached by the Bucs but has not himself been approached. James said he is happy with the stadium deal and cannot see how Raymond James would benefit from adding a $2-million training-facility contract, whose target audience would be largely local. "I know nothing about the financial arrangements," he said. "But that seems like a very large amount of money."
OSI Restaurant Partners Inc., the Tampa-based parent of restaurant chains such as Outback Steakhouse and a current Buccaneers sponsor, did not respond to questions about whether it is entertaining the Buccaneers' naming-rights deal.
Neither did two other sponsors, Verizon Wireless and cable provider Bright House Networks, although spokesmen for both companies, which are headquartered outside Florida, described the proposed deal in positive terms.
Spokesman Chuck Hamby said Verizon Wireless would be "honored to be considered, if indeed we are." Though the company currently does not own the naming rights for any sports facilities, he said, it does sponsor half a dozen amphitheaters. The Bucs' deal would provide "instant brand awareness" in an "important market."
Bright House spokesman Joe Durkin said the company has two naming-rights sports deals in Florida, including a minor-league baseball stadium in Clearwater and the University of Central Florida's stadium.
Susan McDermott, a spokesperson for Bucs sponsor Coca-Cola, said the company is not talking with the Bucs about its naming-rights deal and isn't interested in such deals anyway - with the exception of Minute Maid Park (formerly called Enron Field), which is located in the orange-juice subsidiary's hometown of Houston.
McDermott said Coca-Cola prefers getting its product in people's hands whenever possible. Coke is the exclusive on-site soda provider at 18 of the 34 NFL stadiums, including the Bucs'. "We have a way into that venue without having to name it after ourselves," she said.
Times Staff Writer Rick Stroud and Staff Researcher John Martin contributed to this report. Scott Barancik can be reached at barancik@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8751.