Xavier University Athletics
Xavier Sports Properties
10.16.08 | General
Oct. 16, 2008
By Adam Kiefaber
CINCINNATI - The athletic department at Xavier University had always done it the same way.
For years, it was responsible for doing its own corporate sponsorships, television and radio and scoreboard contracts, selling suites in the Cintas Center and all of its advertising.
On top of all that, until now, the department handled every single one of those duties internally by a staff that already had many other responsibilities.
Miraculously, Xavier didn’t just do an adequate job with those tasks, but it was phenomenal in generating more and more revenue on a year-to-year basis.
With all the success of the basketball program, revenues continued to be satisfactory, but because of staffing limitations, it was not seeing a major increase in revenue.
“We kind of hit the wall doing this ourselves and I am interested, as every athletic director is, in trying to find ways to generate more revenue,” Xavier Athletic Director Mike Bobinski said. “It is the nature of the beast, and we want to find ways to improve our program.”
In order to stay on the cutting edge of collegiate sports, Xavier agreed to a 10-year deal with Learfield Sports, an agency that created Xavier Sports Properties specifically to handle many of the school’s marketing, promotional and advertising responsibilities.
Learfield Sports is nationally considered the leader in the collegiate sports marketing arena. In fact, more than 50 associations and collegiate institutions, like Xavier, trust the company to be their exclusive athletic marketing partner.
The deal between Xavier and Learfield provides the athletic department with a guaranteed stream of revenue and the ability for Bobinski and his staff to know exactly what is in store regarding the financial future of the school’s athletics.
Also built into the contract is a separate stream of payments, scheduled over a period of eight years, that will fund the purchases of a brand new video scoreboard and ribbon scoreboards for the Cintas Center.
“By the fall of ’09, we hope to have a brand new video scoreboard, plus ribbon boards that will ring the entire arena. We think they will give it a really fresh look, and a big-time presentation,” Bobinski said.
Bobinski added that contractually, it is the school’s commitment to have the new scoreboard equipment in place no later than the 2010-11 season, but the department hopes to have it in place by next year.
Another responsibility is handling the radio and television broadcasts.
On the radio side, no longer will Xavier deal directly with Clear Channel Radio. It will work with Xavier Sports Properties, which is now responsible for employing the broadcast team.
Don’t worry; the crew will be a familiar one.
“Xavier is such a premier basketball program, and obviously the quality of the radio broadcast is imperative and we recognize that,” Xavier Sports Properties General Manager D.J. Hodge said. “The last thing we want is any type of transition that would A) upset the fans, B) upset the guy behind the desk or C) upset anyone. So Joe and Byron will both be back and I am thrilled to death to have them back.”
While Joe Sunderman and Bryon Larkin will still be doing the radio broadcasts, Fox Sports Ohio will continue to have the local television rights. However, due to a large amount of nationally televised games, FSN Ohio will only broadcast nine games this season as part of its Xavier agreement. FSN Ohio will also do additional Xavier games as part of the Atlantic 10 syndicated package.
Xavier Sports Properties will also help with a couple of new features that will be added to the radio and television side of things.
On ESPN Radio 1360 AM there will be a daily three-minute radio show that will focus on basketball but will include other university sports as well.
On television, prior to the FSN Ohio broadcasts, there will be a 30-minute pre-game show that focuses on the week that was and the period to come for the Xavier men’s basketball program. FSN Ohio will also be airing an hour-long preseason special on the team, which will re-air multiple times before the season tips off.
Once the tip-off takes place, expect some different promotional features to entertain fans throughout the course of home games. Currently, Skyline Chili is working on a new feature that has Hodge and Xavier Sports Properties extremely excited about. That feature and others will debut at the first game.
The Skyline Chili idea came from another Learfield property, the University of Memphis.
“One of the advantages with Xavier partnering with Learfield Sports is that Learfield has nearly 50 properties around the country, so there is a lot of idea sharing that goes on. We don’t have to re-invent the wheel here,” Hodge said.
Some of the other Learfield properties include major universities such as the University of Wisconsin, Indiana University, University of Minnesota, Purdue University, Penn State University, University of North Carolina, Clemson University, University of South Carolina, University of Miami (Fla.), University of Alabama, University of Missouri, Texas A&M University and the University of Oklahoma just to name a few.
The addition of Xavier to the Learfield family is unique because it is marks the first time that the company has partnered with a non-football institution.
“Learfield has, for the first time, chosen to partner with a school that isn’t a big-time football operation and we are proud to be that partner. We are proud they are willing to look at us as a property that has economic value,” Bobinski said.
One thing that Xavier Sports Properties will not completely control, but will play a vital role in, is the official athletic Web site. GoXavier.com is done in agreement with CSTV, which is now CBS College Sports. Bobinski describes the recent re-design of the site to be a “collaborative effort” among the CBS College Sports’ Web site division, Xavier’s marketing and sports information staffs and also Xavier Sports Properties.
Overall, the deal worked out between both parties is considered to be a win-win situation. Learfield expects to make money and Xavier is guaranteed to see continued growth with its revenue, not to mention more improvements to its facilities, media coverage and fan-oriented events.
“What we try to do every year and each and every day is to improve the professionalism of what we are doing and to improve the level of everything we do, continue to make it as cutting edge and as high level as we possibly can and I think this is just another step in that evolution of our program,” Bobinski said.
