Inside the deal for Pitbull Stadium

BULLISH DEAL: Everybody cheered Florida International University’s innovative naming-rights deal for Pitbull Stadium. (AP Photo)

Nontraditional approach works best for FIU Athletics

Florida International University’s naming-rights deal for Pitbull Stadium evolved from the school recognizing its place as a relative newcomer in the annals of college football.

Last week, FIU announced the global entertainer and entrepreneur had signed a five-year, $6 million naming rights deal to brand the school’s 23,500-seat football stadium. The agreement, among the few deals in college sports tied to recording artists putting their names on campus facilities, carries a five-year option.

FIU isn’t a small institution by any means. The Conference USA school stands among the 10 biggest colleges in the country with 55,000 students.

The university as a whole boasts a multibillion operating budget with an enormous economic impact in south Florida, said Mark Donley, chief revenue officer for Van Wagner College, which helped broker the naming-rights deal.

At the same time, its football program is a youngster at 22 years old compared with many schools that have 100 years of history in the sport. FIU’s football program launched in 2002 before moving up three years later to compete in the Football Bowl Subdivision, the highest level of college football.

“Sometimes, the sports teams aren’t always top of mind there,” Donley said.

As a result, when the opportunity came up to resell the stadium’s naming rights. the athletic department decided to take a non-traditional approach, said Alex Kelley, FIU’s senior associate athletic director for revenue generation and engagement.

Now more than ever, colleges are searching for new revenue streams in the era of Name, Image and Likeness and revenue sharing with student-athletes, and FIU felt it was best to expand its pool of candidates by going outside the traditional naming-rights categories in banking, technology and airlines, among other commercial industries.

The discussions started shortly after Scott Carr was named athletic director in November 2021, seven months after the old naming-rights agreement with Riccardo Silva, the Italian investment executive and philanthropist, expired.

As a staff, FIU athletic officials went through a rebranding process internally and came up with a strategic plan after identifying their strengths and weaknesses. Without having a rich history in college football, they thought about approaching things differently in taking inventory of all the marketing assets, starting with sports venues.

“We could look at it as a negative, in that we don’t have that legacy that everyone can lean into, but it can also be an opportunity in that we’re not necessarily bound by the way we’ve always done things,” Kelley said. “We’re not stuck in a precedence of being conservative and not willing to take risks.”

In the process of those conversations, the concept of partnering with a performing artist came up. It was a novel approach and an exciting prospect, and most important, Carr signed off on the strategy, Kelley said.

Officials came up with “Mount Rushmore” of south Florida artists, and began the outreach process. Alfred Caballero, Van Wagner’s director of sponsorships at FIU, came up with the idea of contacting Pitbull, whose real name is Armando Christian Perez, about purchasing naming rights to the stadium.

As multimedia rights holder, naming rights wasn’t in Van Wagner’s scope of work at FIU, although at other schools the agency has the bandwidth to pursue those opportunities. But with the old deal expiring, Van Wagner expanded its work to help the school find the right partner, Donley said.

“Alfred took guidance from the AD and floated the idea specifically to Pitbull’s people,” Donley said. “The school let us know that if we found the right entity, they were OK with us starting the dialogue and bringing qualified candidates to them. That’s how it got started.”

Pitbull was intrigued by the idea. Over the next 18 months, FIU officials negotiated the deal with “Team Pitbull,” the group of managers running the artist’s multiple business interests that run from restaurants to liquor brands and ownership in a NASCAR race team. Pitbull’s manager and attorney were most involved at the bargaining table, and they spent a lot of time tweaking the terms until they arrived at a package everybody was satisfied with, Kelley said.

“We wanted it to be purpose driven, where everything has a reason to it,” he said. “Being able to do something with a musician and celebrity such as Pitbull, creates a myriad of opportunities, resulting in a much more meaningful relationship for both sides. The nontraditional nature of the deal is still in line with everybody’s goals.”

As part of the deal, Pitbull (who did not attend FIU) gets rent-free use of the stadium for 10 days a year, which could potentially include concerts and festivals.

In addition, Voli 305 Vodka, co-founded by Pitbull, will be a preferred brand in the stadium suites and clubs, and the entertainer gets a share of the revenue for any sponsor he brings to the table that advertises at the venue.

Also, SLAM, Pitbull’s nonprofit student education program that stands for Sports Leadership Arts and Management, has opportunities for those folks to attend FIU football games, broadcast the school’s sports events through the group’s SiriusXM station and take part in internships with the athletic department.

Co-branded merchandise containing FIU and Pitbull logos is another piece of the multifaceted naming-rights agreement.

In return, Pitbull committed to promote FIU sports and the school overall through social media and fundraising events, plus creating an anthem to be played at all sports events.

For the venue itself, FIU is busy applying the rebrand with Pitbull Stadium signs attached to the exterior and entrances during the first phase of activation. At some point in the future, school officials will study the stadium to determine upgrades tied to the naming-rights deal, with input from Team Pitbull to gauge their interest on new features they might like to see at the stadium, Kelley said.

“The impressive thing about Armando is he is every bit the entrepreneur that people say he is,” Kelley said. “He has a ton of different business interests that align themselves with these types of things, so it’s going to be interesting to see the types of events they come up with at the stadium, which is going to be exciting for everyone.”

In the future, there could be other opportunities to partner with south Florida artists. FIU has been in talks with other entertainers to brand venues on campus, although Kelley did not identify those individuals and facilities.

“The Pitbull deal reinforces to us that the traditional method isn’t working, try the nontraditional,” he said. “It’s cemented that philosophy as a proven model and opens more doors when you can show them a Pitbull Stadium and say here’s what’s possible, and walk them through how this could be beneficial to them as well as FIU.”