Officials for Papa John’s International Inc. said Friday that the shift in sponsorship focus from college football to the pro gridiron in part reflected the larger investment it would have been required to make to continue sponsoring the Papajohns.com Bowl.
The game, to be played Jan. 8, 2011, in Birmingham, Ala., now will be the BBVA Compass Bowl following Birmingham-based bank BBVA’s decision to become the title sponsor. Papa John’s said in August, right around its announcement of a three-year deal to become the official pizza of the National Football League, that it would withdraw its sponsorship of the bowl game and devote its marketing dollars to the NFL.
“We enjoyed our four-year partnership with the bowl game,” Chris Sternberg, Papa John’s general counsel and senior vice president of communications, said Friday. “Having said that, the sponsorship amount for renewal would have been a substantial increase. We were sort of a victim of our own success, since the attendance and ratings for the game had grown every year. We decided at that point that our preference would be to devote our sports marketing dollars to activate the NFL sponsorship.”
Outback Steakhouse and Chick-fil-A have been the title sponsors of eponymous college football bowl games for years, and Little Caesars Pizza bought the naming rights last year to change the Motor City Bowl in Detroit to the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl. Last year, Beef ‘O’ Brady’s entered into a two-year agreement to rename the St. Petersburg Bowl the Beef ‘O’ Brady’s Bowl.
Sternberg added that Papa John’s would still be involved with the BBVA Compass Bowl locally through Birmingham franchisee PJ United, which would sell Papa John’s products at the stadium.
In an earnings conference call this week, chief marketing officer Andrew Varga said Papa John’s was pleased with initial results from the NFL partnership and that the campaign’s exposure was increasing with each week of the NFL season.
Sternberg said Papa John’s commitment to college football would remain closer to home. The chain is keeping its 30-year agreement for the naming rights to the football stadium at the University of Louisville, Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium.
Papa John’s operates or franchises 3,583 restaurants in all 50 states and 29 foreign countries.
Contact Mark Brandau at [email protected].
