Forget spending a few bucks to put your company?s name in the back of some paper-thin football program. If you?re looking to sponsor a school?s sports program, think big ? like spending millions of dollars big!
For years, schools have gotten more aggressive and ambitious about selling off space to corporate sponsors to make up for money they can?t get ? or would rather not try to get ? from taxpayers, including offering naming rights to facilities. (At my son?s high school, famous alumnus Dwyane Wade and T-Mobile kicked in $150,000 in 2007 to renovate the basketball court?and rename it D-Wade Court, though I noticed at the parent fall sports meeting recently that the ad on the court for the T-Mobile Sidekick has been removed).
But forget a mere $150,000. Why not go for, say, $3 million? That?s what Clark-Pleasant Community School Corp. in Whiteland, Ind., wants to do to fund expansions and improvements to its outdoor sports facilities.
A change to Indiana?s constitution?in 2010 limited the ability of schools to raise taxes or sell bonds without public approval. So the school district, located in Indianapolis? south suburbs, is trying to appeal to individuals and companies to give a little. Recognition levels include ?listing the names of businesses or individuals who commit at least $500 on banners displayed at all sports events up to placing names of donors giving $1 million on the school?s football field and other?venues,? according to an Aug. 30 story from?The Associated Press (which got the story from one of my former employers, the Daily Journal of Franklin, Ind., where in my younger days my beat included the Clark-Pleasant schools).
Wow ? $1 million for naming rights to a high school field? I guess the price has gone up quite a bit since Noblesville High, north of Indianapolis, sold football field naming rights to a local Chevrolet dealer in 2006 for $125,000 over 10 years, or even the $500,000 Gloucester High in Massachusetts got from New Balance for naming rights as a means to help fund stadium renovations.
Then again, Clark-Pleasant may be encouraged by the success of its neighboring school district to the west, Center Grove Community School Corp. of Greenwood, Ind., which in 2011 got a five-year, $1.1 million commitment from a local auto dealer to cover pay-to-play fees, in exchange for the right to paste its name all over school athletic facilities. Even $3 million is doable, given that the Lubbock (Texas) Independent School District in May got that in one fell swoop from PlainsCapital Bank in exchange for naming rights to football, baseball and basketball facilities.
Clark-Pleasant is hardly the only school district with million-dollar ambitions. In Lewiston, Maine, the community and schools are offering naming rights as part of the incentive to raise $3.8 million to renovate athletic fields.
While selling advertising might take some pressure off of taxpayers ? or pressure off of schools having to ask people to pay for bonds ? as you can imagine, not everyone is on board with selling naming rights. In Lewiston, a member of the school committee (the school board equivalent) was very upset by his fellow members? decision. From the Lewiston-Auburn Sun Journal:
School Committee veteran and former chairman [James] Handy said he was opposed and that the school board lacks authority to do anything about inappropriate advertising.
Giving permission to a group not elected by citizens, Handy said, means they could end up with a Hollywood Slots swim team or an Oxford Casino track field. ?They may not have a problem with Trojan Condoms.?
Handy said he doesn?t want students ?to be raised in a school where every inch of flat surface ends up being advertising, including space on public buildings sold to the highest bidder,? he said. ?This corporatizes and professionalizes high school sports,? creating more pressure for teams to win to justify corporate investments.
To improve fields there should be a legitimate capital campaign ?that does not include the selling of our schools. Once we?ve opened that door, it?s free game.?
The other members of the committee said that, at the least, there will be no Trojan Condoms Field. Although I have to point out that, like in many things corporate, China has far looser standards than we have in the United States, given that it has whole schools sponsored by the state tobacco company, with such educational messages in elementary schools as ?Tobacco nutures talent.?
In the end, for both Clark-Pleasant and Lewiston, the fundraising might be for naught. While I have pointed out some examples of successful fundraising, in other cases, districts had ambitious sponsorship plans that went wanting.
For example, in 2009, backers of a new turf football field at Jonathan Dayton High School in Springfield, N.J., started a fundraising effort that included perks such as $250,000 for naming rights and $5,000 to sponsor a flagpole. Construction is scheduled to begin in September on that field, which is scheduled to open in fall 2013. However, the money isn?t coming from the sponsorship effort. Instead, it?s being paid for the old-fashioned way ? with proceeds from a $3.4 million, taxpayer-funded bond issue.
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