Infiniti Revs Up March Madness Sponsorship

Months after forging an historic partnership to share the broadcasting rights to the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship, CBS Sports and Turner Sports have nailed down their first major sponsorship deal. The broadcaster and the cable networks group have teamed up with automaker Infiniti in a pact that extends well beyond the margins of March Madness. Having signed on as an official NCAA corporate partner, Nissan’s Infiniti marque will run a multiplatform campaign on CBS, CBSSports.com and NCAA.com throughout the regular season. Once the the newly expanded 68-team tourney tips off on Turner’s truTV, Infiniti will begin running its spots in each March Madness broadcast.(Per terms of its NCAA contract, Infiniti will also back ESPN’s prime-time Game of the Week, which airs each Saturday throughout the regular season.)All opening round through Sweet 16 games will be shown in their entirety on CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV, marking the first time fans will be able to watch every game of the tourney brackets. And Infiniti will be there every step of the way, airing co-branded “Inspired Performance” features during live game coverage and sponsoring in-game “Coaches Spotlight” segments.The automaker also will serve as the presenting sponsor of each pre-game show broadcast on TNT, TBS and truTV. As the brackets fill up and the field gets whittled down, Infiniti’s on-air and online presence will continue on CBS. The network holds the rights to carry the Final Four and National Championship game through 2015, whereupon coverage of the biggest three games of the tourney will alternate between CBS and TBS.“Together with CBS, we have the ability to activate Infiniti across all 89 NCAA Championship games,” said Will Funk, svp, NCAA partnerships and branded programming, Turner Sports Ad Sales. “With customized NCAA-Infiniti branded content distributed across out-of-home, online, mobile and [linear] TV . . . the NCAA Corporate Marketing program offers the most unique opportunity in the marketplace to reach passionate and engaged consumers.”Terms of the Infiniti pact were not disclosed, but an NCAA corporate sponsorship can cost as much as $5 million per year. Infiniti first signed on as an NCAA hoops backer in March 2010, unseating Pontiac as the official car of March Madness. Last season, Infiniti leveraged college hoops as a means to draw attention to its line of luxury sedans. NCAA roundball fans are a particularly desirable bunch, as they skew young (nearly half are age 44 or younger) and well-heeled, with 42 percent taking in an average household income of $75,000 or more.TBWA\Chiat\Day, Playa del Rey, Calif., is Infiniti’s lead creative agency. OMD handles media buying.Consumers drove 103,411 new Infiniti vehicles off the lot last year, a 28 percent increase from 81,089 in 2009.

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Infiniti Revs Up March Madness Sponsorship

Anthony Crupi

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Anthony Crupi