Morning Edition’s Cathy Wurzer interviews reporter Andrew Tellijohn about the Minnesota Twins success on the field is translating into more, and bigger, corporate sponsorships. Tellijohn covers the story in this week's edition of The Business Journal. He says the while Twin's sponsorship revenue has gone up the past two years, the Twins think it will increase even more next season.
Twin’s Vice President for Sponsorship Eric Curry says the Twin's playoff run will help the team attract new companies and renew with others at increased rates. Getting corporate sponsorship is trickier for the Twins than for some other major league teams, because their lease limits how much space they can sell for companies to hang signs in the Metrodome.
Transcripts
text | pdf |
SPEAKER 1: The team is expecting at a very minimum, a 30% increase this next year. And they think probably a little bit more than that because of the success that they've had this year. It's just a lot more worthwhile to sponsor the Twins right now. Attendances has more than doubled. They had almost two million fans this year.
And the team's just doing so much better public goodwill. I mean the public's interested. So revenue's done quite well for them. However, if you compare them with a lot of the bigger market teams, once again, I mean, they can still fall considerably short.
SPEAKER 2: What companies are the Twins talking to when it comes to maybe being new sponsors?
SPEAKER 1: Sure. Among the bigger sponsors from this past year were first bank, Bank One, International Dairy Queen here from Edina has always been a real big sponsor for the team. One of the big new ones this year was Affinity Plus Federal Credit Union, which became the official financial sponsor of the team.
I did a story in January before the season started that indicated they've had a minimum of four new sponsors that were going to increase revenue, or there was going to end up being about a tenth of the team's overall corporate sponsorship revenue for the year. So that gives a sense of how successful they've been at attracting some new people this year.
SPEAKER 2: But because of the limits on signage, where do some of these new clients go? How do their messages get out?
SPEAKER 1: They've had to be a little bit more creative. They've got companies doing such things as sponsoring mini bobblehead takeoffs on the big bobblehead doll promotion from a couple of years ago. Affinity Plus, the credit union, sponsored this year, the Minnesota Twins checking account. And also I mean, companies like Krispy Kreme donuts came in this year and donated a bunch of donuts for a bunch of the events, fan events that the team had surrounding its success at the end of the season.
It's all sorts of different ways that the teams and companies can work together to promote the Twins and to get their own names out there. The Twins are limited by Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission, which runs the dome, gets a lot of the permanent signage inside the facility. So that's why Curry's got to be a little bit more creative than some.
SPEAKER 2: What do analysts say? That a new stadium would help this problem?
SPEAKER 1: I think without question, the Twins would have some sponsorship opportunities that they don't have right now if they were to get a new stadium. The biggest one out there is the naming rights deal, the potential of a naming rights deal, which Curry told me immediately, could double the Twins sponsorship revenue. Apparently those naming rights deals are going for about $5 to $7 million a year, which is pretty close to what the team's budget is, right, or a corporate sponsorship budget is right now.