Ten top football contests for 2011

While the marketing department looks at contests as a way to drive email – and thus daily deals, etc. - football contest generate big sponsorship dollars.

This Top Ten list includes a number of contests  with a middle range of sponsorship revenues in the mid-five figures, and one or too close and at $100,000 for the 2010 season. One football contest with just 3,000 circulation paper generated $10,000 using these concepts. All contests come from Second Street Media's network of media partners, using their resource center. See also Ten Tips for Monetizing Football for best practices from these media partners, including a list of potential sponsors. 

Also in the top ten list, are some contests which can run after the season starts, such as photo contests, Tailgate recipe contests, Team trivia, and
sweepstakes for tickets to highly coveted away and rivalry games. Because these are shorter, the revenue opportunity is  smaller, however, media companies have been able to pick up major cash sponsor such as Budlight for fan photo contests, so this is not a category to overlook. 

Basic Football demographics

While football sponsorships are not a hard sell, it is helpful to have a real set of deomographics. Here are some basic profiles to use:

*“Avid fans” spend 32 hours a week watching games and tracking statistics.

*NCAA football has the 2nd highest average attendance of any league sport in the world, only behind the National Football league) with and average attendance of 46,000 per game.

*Two of three NFL fans are male. The average male viewer of football on Fox is 44 while Fox's average baseball viewer is 50. For ESPN, those figures are 43 and 49.

*NFL football also enjoys a younger crowd than baseball,  average five years younger for both men and women, and compares favorably with baseball demographics in general. 

*According to interviews and network viewing profiles, the average NFL viewer makes about $55,000 a year. 

Recommended vendor

A number of LMI members have done contests on their own platforms, and later moved up to Second Street, which is our recommended vendor.  Second Street has a number of advantages: 

*National contests, Top 15 College are already set up, ie contests-in-a-box with national prizes supplied by Second Street, so the local sponsor just adds local prize and sponsorship structures. Survivor's games and other contests are also pre-set.

*Evolving software; every year the platform adds new features including the abilityto play mobiley and directly from Facebook posting your picks to your wall.

*Resource Center; where members can find and share great ideas and best practices. This is way more than the typical set of sales testimonials. We wish more media tech-partners had this great service. 

*Customize everything - ad sizes, voting periods, and so on. 

*A low price of $136 a month.

Top ten contest ideas

After reviewing all the contest ideas from from the Second Street network, here's a round-up, starting with ones that generate top dollars. Half of these contest ideas can run after the season starts, but the full season contest generates the highest dollars because it is a full 22 weeks, followed by the Top 15 College contest which is 13 weeks. 

1. “Pick the Pros” national and local contest

This is the basic, big contest that runs 22 weeks September 1 through the SuperBowl, and allows people to pick game winners every week. Media on the UPickem platform can take part in a national contest across the network for a trip to Hawaii, supplied by Second Street, and also compete locally for local prizes supplied by the media partner (Second Street does not bring sponsors in, so all the revenue is sold by the media partner). 

TV sites use on=air personalities to play in the contest and talk about it on the air, while print companies can let readers compete against a well-known sports colunist. A detailed case study on how this contest works from WLUK.com, Fox11online.com’s “Pick the Pros” is here. They run this contest with one major sponsor, Pepsi, and two “advertisers,” both car dealers, which accounted for $25,000 in revenues in 2010 and was their highest revenue contest of the year. The main source of promotion was incorporating the contest in to the sportscast and morning show. 

The Wichita Eagle Model
In the Second Street community, the Wichita Eagle has become known for creating a model that generates the highest revenues - $100,000 for the season. 

It takes advantage of the full 22 weeks to combine multi-media (print and online) with multiple (12) advertisers. Advertisers pay just $295 per week. Multiply that by  22 weeks, times 12 sponsors and the revenue adds up. There are two levels of buy in, but no "title sponsor" so all advertisers share  "top billing" during the contest.

The print component of the sponsorship package includes placement on a weekly color double truck promotion that runs inside the sports section. Advertisers chose from two sizes, “Single box,” 2 col x 4” and “Double box,” 2 col x 4.”

Advertiser participate as VIP’s with their mugshots on the page next to their weekly scores and current rankings to-date. This high ego-appeal paid off when sponsors customers tease them about their scores. Relevant news coverage flows over the top of the section. 

The online contest page – with a unique URL, wepicks.com - also has placements for multiple advertisers (a neat feature of using the unique platform/url is that it allows a variety of ad sizes and positions on the contest page without recoding issues). The large 900x300 ad at the top of the home page rotates among sponsors, while a series of smaller 211x125 banner ads link to coupon offers runs down the left side.

The banner ads pop-up to special offer coupons:

To sell the program, Witchita created a “plan book” that included a bullet point reference sheet, mini spec layout of what the double truck looked like with the single box and double box, sales sheet with early bird pricing and the program agreement. 

Smaller markets have copied the multiple advertisers/multi-media concept. The Shenectady Daily Gazette, a 45,000 circulation daily generated $70,000 for its campaign, acquiring major sponsor was Northbay Toyota, who was “skeptical” until customers regularily began mentioning the contest when they arrived at the business (by the end of the contest he calls to secure next year’s). All were new and upsold companies.

The smallest success story is The Chillicoth News with just 3000 in circulation gained $10,000 in sponsorships, could not afford the color doubletruck every week, ran one page black and white.

2. High-school football

High school football contests were an up-and-coming trend in 2010, generating not just community engagement but also some five figure revenues in a few cases.

The key is to combine the contest with a traditional media buy, which enhances the sponsor's community image. A top revenue producer in this category is  Friday Night Overtime Created by Channel 7, WJHG TV. Four category exclusive sponsors paid a total of $42,000.

The key to generating revenues is creating two exclusive sponsorships. The  Player of the Week and Score Board sponsor, who both received significant on-air and online campaigns including spots on the Sunday night Pro games, although the contest had its own unique revenue category. 

To get a feel for the high-touch community engagement that high school sports can bring to sponsorships - and the detail required to execute - we've included their two packages:

The player of the week sponsor package

*Logo on shared weekly promos, category exclusive. Airs min. 20xper week on WJHG, CW and MY 7
*Logo and Audio Mention during Player of the week segment
*1xad (160x250) with click through on the FNO Bracket Contest at WJHG.com
*40,000 impressions per month on WJHG.com (3 display sizes 510x60, 160x600, 300x250
*Logo inclusion on shirts worn by photography staff while shooting game
*Exclusive logo on 1/3 of the souvenir footballs to be thrown at weekly games (20x game)
*Sponsor to provide weekly prize for online bracket giveaway and weekly plaque for the player of the week winner
*1x:30 commercial spot during FNO broadcast for the duration of the season

Scoreboard sponsor details 
*Sponsor logo on shared weekly promos (category exclusive). Airs Min. 20x per week on wjhg, CW, and My 7
*1x (160x240) ad with click through on the Friday Night overtime bracket contet at WJHG.com
*40,000 imporessions per month on WJHG.com (3 display sies 510x60, 160x6000, 300x250)
*logo inclusion on shirts worn by photography staff while shooting gaes
*Exclusive logo on 1/3 of the souvenir footballs to be thrown at weekly games (aporx 20 per game)
*Sponsor to provide weekly prize for online Bracket giveaway


Another top success story for high school sports contest is WSAZ TV’s, who secured one with two major title sponsors, Turnpike Chevrolet as the “presented by” sponsor and Dairy Queen as the prize sponsor. Between the two the contest generated five figures, and 900 entrants.

Dairy Queen runs a text-opt-in promotion: Text DQ to 754324 for a buy-one-get-one-free Blizzard for a coupon on the contest site and emails (the offer changes weekly). Both sponsors were also packaged with on-air advertising for Pro Games on Sundays. Keys to success for this campaign was the exclusivity, including all high school in the coverage area (this was more than one hundred), and to beginning sell for next year as soon as season is over.

While   contests require pre-season planning and sponsors, the next set of contests can all be run after the season starts. 

3. College Bowl contests

While the Top 15  Contest is created by Second Street as a similar “contest in a can” program  runs 13 weeks, or bowls, for 15 weeks  a  Bowls-only contest is a great way to “get in the game” if you waited. It runs just three weeks in December for college bowl games. KY3TV earned $5000 - $1000 per month - from online only Bowls contest, by upselling Wendy’s an online coupon promotion.   Keep in mind that for college sports not ony bar food but all kinds of fast food reach their best demographic. 

2. Tailgate Photo and recipe contests
The Statesboro Herald’s The “Eagle Nation” contest has run for years, designed as a photo contest for best photos of tailgate parties. It has two main sponsors, and three rounds of voting with three prizes including highly-coveted away game tickets, the Ultimate Tailgate Prize Package and gift certificates to a local bar and Grill. Local bars are great “weekly sponsors” for any football contest, if you have a tier with multiple sponsors.

3. Packer’s Nation Play-off Sweepstakes

Journal Sentinel  partnered with the cable affiliate, and the Packers to create a contest with a lot of sex appeal. They asked readers to upload a photograph of themselves with a Packer’s “Rally Poster” that was printed inside the Journal Sentinel - and sent a new winner to each play-off game, a big idea for  a contest that starts late in the season. The extent that contestants go to to win makes this contest made it especially exciting. Some wallpapered a car with the rally poster, other shots included the rallly poster in Las Vegas and hanging from a tree. 

People won't do this for an ordinary photo contest. The grand prize winner received two Super Bowl prize-packages, including Super Bowl game  tickets, airfare and hotel for two. Contestants started with wild card game, then went on to the play-offs. 2500 entries from integrated advertising campaign. Second Street’s July Foley advises broadcast sites to steal this contest idea by having entrants simply pick up the posters at the sponsor/s’ locations.  Sponsors include Miller Light and The Boston Store. 

5. Kids fan-photo contest
Create more revenues and reach women with this side contest: The Chattacutie Football Fan contest. This is just a basic cute kids photo contest with pictures of kids dressed up in their favorite football team’s outfit (or cheerleaders). It ran on the mom’s site, sponsored by the Creative Discovery Museum. 

6. Most Out-Rage-Us Bengals Fan photo contest

A collaboration this between alternative weekly City Beat, WCPO TV and Budlight is creating  a contest to find the most outrageous (and not so Chattacutie) fans. Winners get a "Swag package" described below as a prize, so to make sure the best entries make it in, a street team also takes the photos at the game.  The winner every weed also is featured in the next week's promotion. 

The contest promotion ask “Are you the #1 FAN of the Bengals?” and prompts viewers to “click here to show off your team pride.”

Weekly sponsors get a “brought to you by” offer on the site, and contribute an item to the Swag Bag. Weekly winners receive the Bengals “Swag Bag” with items from Citybeat , WCBO, Budlight. and the Bengals, the $100 gift certificate from that week’s local sponsor. Winning photos are compiled at the end of the contest and the seasons winner will receive an “awesome prize pack” with a $500 value. All promotional media co-branded with the two media partners and title sponsor. 

The sixteen weekly prize structure allowed sixteen sponsorship packages, plus the title sponsor (Wichita again?). Since this is  a 2011 contest still underway as this is written, we look forward to seeing the revenue results.  

9. Silly Underdogs
This one came from radio's 104Zone, the sports station. For each round, and before a cut-off time, each contestant picks three underdogs they think will win that week. If they win, contestants get their points from the game. The fan with the most points each week wins. Sponsors include local sports store and a heating and cooling company, who used the banner ad to great effect:

10. Facebook Sweepstakes

The ABC15 affliate in Phoenix, Az ran a pre-season sweepstakes this year aimed at building it's Facebook fan base, http://www.facebook.com/arizonacardinals?sk=app_212077615474453.

The contest runs on the Arizona Cardinals fan page with multiple like gates for both Cardinals and ABC15. While this sweepstakes ran before the season, it could be copied at any time during the season.  The results were huge: They added more new Facebook friends on Tuesday 8/9 - first day of contest - 2,307 to be exact - than any day in the history of the ABC15.com and  more than doubled the previous record set in May of 956 fans in a single day.

There are two prizes: The Grand Prize Winner #1 will be the first winner randomly selected receives four mid-level tickets to the Cardinals versus San Diego Chargers preseason game, ttwo passes to walk on the field and take a photo prior to the game and four passes for a private tour in the broadcast booth prior to game start, one Cardinals merchandise prize pack (ARV: $75) and a $500 pre-paid Visa gift card.  The second winner gets  four mid-level tickets to the Cardinals versus Denver Broncos preseason game and all the goodies. 

10.  Predict the NFL Draft Contest

If your already thinking about 2012, this contest produced by the Dallas Morning News won one of Second Street’s best contests of 2010, by offering Cowboys tickets to whomever could “Beat your friends and our draft guru.” 

Contestants chose 32 picks, one for each team, from a list of 150 players provided. One point was awarded for each correct selection. “Correct” meant, the place the player was picked, regardless of the team. It ran from April 1 to April 21. The night the contest ended, the SportsDay pro-football writer, and “draft guru” Rick Gosselin, made his own picks.

The one who beat Rick with the highest point won two Cowboys tickets and everyone who beat him got an “I beat the Goose” T-shirt.

Summary:  If you’ve read through these ten successful contests you get the draft …we mean the drift, of creating football contests. The best way to come up with ideas is to meet with advertisers and see what gets them excited. See also  top ten tips to monetize football contests, best practices learned from these case studies, including a list of potential sponsors. 

Many thanks to Julie Foley and Matt Coen of Second Street Media for sharing their partners success stories with us. 

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