'Yes, I'll just take
the last five minutes'
Foxwoods deal with MSG could have a huge impact
By Toni Fitzgerald
Dec 10, 2010
We've seen of advertisers sponsoring TV shows and radio shows and even entire sports teams.
But it's been years since we've seen something quite like this: Sponsoring the final minutes of a major sporting event.
With a deal signed on Tuesday, Foxwoods Casino will become the sponsor of the final five minutes of hockey games as well as basketball games played at Madison Square Garden as part of a wide-ranging deal reached with MSG.
The deal covers games played by the New York Knicks, New York Liberty WNBA team and New York Rangers.
The agreement is believed to be the first time a single portion of a game has given over to a single commercial sponsor.
The sponsorship includes in-arena advertising. The name and logo for Foxwoods will flash on the scoreboard, courtside and in other areas of the arena during the final five minutes.
Also during those last five minutes, viewers watching the games on MSG and MSG Plus will see the Foxwoods name and logo on their TV screens. Further, through the magic of TV graphics, the logo will also be superimposed on the glass near the hockey goals, much like ads are superimposed behind the backstop on baseball games.
Foxwoods will also be mentioned by the game announcer.
The deal is rumored to cost $1 million and will run five years.
Of course it raises the question: If you can sponsor the end of the game, what's next?
Already the Super Bowl has a halftime sponsor. And nearly every golf tournament has a sponsor, as does the season-ending Fed Ex Cup playoff.
Will it come to pass that sponsors gain rights to the opening minutes of baseball game or, say, all the fourth downs in one quarter of a football game?
Will we see the day when a sponsor brings us one of Tiger Woods' tee shots in a particularly critical golf tournament?
It may sound absurd, but if this MSG deal is a success, it probably won't be long before we see a lot more such deals, and the impact on sports marketing could be widespread.
The Foxwoods-MSG deal is not the first in which an advertiser bought a set block of time in sporting events.
Back in the late 70s and early 80s, Alcoa put together a deal to air a sement called “Fantastic Finishes” at the two-minute warning of Sunday afternoon NFL Football games. The spot began with a 30-second vignette of great ending to an NFL game and was followed by a :30 Alcoa commercial.
Pat Summerall and Dick Enberg regularly introduced the break with “Here comes another “Fantastic Finish.” The concept was later extended into the PGA tour.
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