UNLV’s Sports Sponsorships Strategy: ‘We Don’t Use Wins and Losses To Do Business in Town’
By ALAN SNEL
LVSportsBiz.com
The UNLV football team is struggling through another losing season, while the UNLV basketball squad draws crowds that don’t look like they fill half the seats in the lower bowl at Thomas and Mack Center.
But in the face of these meager crowds, UNLV’s sports marketing business squad is hustling to sign up new sponsors that probably couldn’t afford to drop $500,000 on a center ice logo spot for Vegas Golden Knights games at T-Mobile Arena or a quarter-million dollars for an on-ice logo position at the goal lines at VGK games.
Dan Dolby, general manager of Learfield’s UNLV Sports Properties, said his UNLV Learfield team has signed up 20 new sponsors to bring the sponsor roster to about 100 this past year. They include DC Solar, which manufactures and leases renewable energy products, which signed up within the past few weeks, Dolby said.
The DC Solar deal came about because of one of Learfield UNLV’s salesmen, Joey Swanner (a former UNLV baseball player), cold called the renewable energy company. The DC Solar deal was a five-year agreement that hit seven figures, Dolby said. Several on Dolby’s staff are UNLV grads.
Other recent sponsors that signed up to support UNLV sports was Children’s Hospital for a deal valued at a “couple hundred” thousand dollars and Tough Turtle Turf, which sells artificial grass landscape.
“We don’t use wins and losses to do business in town,” Dolby told LVSportsBiz.com during halftime of UNLV’s easy 96-70 win over Pacific at Thomas and Mack Center Tuesday evening. Last year, UNLV recently picked Plano, Texas-based Learfield as its new multi-media sports rights holder for 10 years..
My team can’t control the play on the field but we can sell the stories of student-athletes.
— Dan Dolby, Learfield UNLV sports marketing and sponsorships chief
Dolby said the Learfield UNLV sports marketing team generated the highest net sales growth year-to-date among Learfield’s 133 universities.
“It’s no secret. It’s just hard work,” said Dolby, a veteran sports business player on the Las Vegas scene who has a son who works on corporate sponsor accounts for the Golden Knights.
The UNLV sponsorship deals can be affordable alternatives for local small companies that cannot afford the more expensive deals at the Golden Knights and Raiders at the major league sports level. “They might not fit with the Raiders or Golden Knights,” Dolby observed.
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To create a business relationship with sponsors, Learfield UNLV tries to shape deals that can potentially involve UNLV students. For example, DC Solar has a mentor program that helps get UNLV students into the renewable energy industry, Dolby said.
The DC Solar deal is so new that signage was not ready for Tuesday’s UNLV basketball game, which had a stat sheet attendance number of 7,338.
After Dolby acknowledged “the first year was a struggle,” Learfield UNLV signed up law firms such as Ed Bernstein and Naqvi Injury Law this past year.
Dolby said some companies like UNLV’s multiple sports that can be played and marketed year-round, plus the opportunity to sell women’s sports. University Medical Center, for example, bought space on the women’s basketball court for its UMC logo in Cox Pavilion, while lawyer Bernstein also wanted to support women’s sports, Dolby said.
And here’s UMC signage in Thomas and Mack Center
“It’s a challenge,” Dolby said, “but we’re having a great time.”
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