Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment and Cooper Holdings' successful collaboration on naming Barclays Center, Brooklyn, N.Y., helped propel formation of a new partnership, Entitle.
Two clients have already signed on with the new, yet old, partnership between Brooklyn Sports and Entertainment (BSE) and Cooper Holdings Inc. called Entitle.
Announced Nov. 28, Entitle is a formalization of an existing relationship which has seen the two entities collaborate on naming rights deals in the past, including Barclays Center, Brooklyn. Cooper Holdings is based in Atlanta. Both firms will have dedicated staffs working for Entitle.
Mike Zavodsky, BSE’s executive vice president of Global Partnerships, will expand his current role to serve as president of Sales for Entitle. He recalled the successes BSE has had in the past, which started when the state of New Jersey asked Nets Sports & Entertainment (now known as BSE) to help secure a new title sponsor for what was then Continental Airlines Arena, East Rutherford, N.J., the Nets’ home basketball court. BSE was able to secure Izod.
Mike Zavodsky, president of Sales, Entitle
Fast forward to construction of Barclays Center in Brooklyn, new home to the Brooklyn Nets, and BSE was able to secure Barclays, working with Lonnie Cooper and his Cooper Holdings, Zavodsky recalled.
“We took time off enroute to Brooklyn from doing any third-party stuff to home in on getting the building open,” Zavodsky said. Four years later, they are back at it. This summer, they helped secure the title sponsor for Ford Amphitheater on Coney Island. “A few companies contacted us and the timing was right, so we said let’s formalize it,” Zavodsky said of Entitle.
“Lonnie’s team does the backend research, analytics, creative and narrative that goes into it,” Zavodsky explained of the partnership. “We look at it as ‘how do you become part of the fabric of the story.’”
For Barclays four years ago, it was a matter of planting a flag in the U.S. after the U.K. institution purchased Lehman and came across the ocean. For New York Community Bank, which became the presenting sponsor of the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum (prior to the launch of Entitle) which opens April 5, it was being heavily involved in the veteran community and the community in general in Long Island, he said. “Each one is different.”
Zavodsky said that now, with Entitle, they will aggressively seek naming rights business through new builds and expiring deals on venues and will expand beyond physical properties into sponsors for touring events, both music and sports. “We’re open to anything.”
While it is a crowded field as branding has grown in sports and entertainment, Entitle will rely on its playbook and track record, he added. As to categories that might be especially prone to exploration in this space, Zavodsky pointed to the tech space.
Lonnie Cooper, CEO of Cooper Holdings, who has known Brett Yormark, CEO of BSE, for 15 years and has built his business over 30 years, represents a lot of corporations and works with a lot of corporations looking for venue opportunities.
Lonnie Cooper, CEO, Cooper Holdings
“I think venues today are a different platform because of all the extension of social media and the experiential and association of media exposure. It’s been a great playground. This is the perfect time for us,” Cooper said. “The building is the hub of activity. The recognition it gets on a regular basis has become the fabric for the consumer. It’s a blank slate for sponsors to take advantage of.”
Cooper’s role at Entitle is the analytics and creative side through his company, Vantage. “We help identify the type of sponsor that matches up to the demographics and profile of the venue. From there we will work with the potential sponsor in matching up the metrics so they can measure the success. We will stay with the sponsor the length of the time of the contract to measure it on a regular basis so they get the ROI they are looking for.”
Vantage takes into consideration what type of media exposure the venue gets, national, regional, local and the types of events in the venue and the demographics that attend. “It’s very specific to the venue,” Cooper said.
Of particular reassurance to Cooper is the fact that consumers today take ownership of the identity of the arena. They go to Staples Center (Los Angeles), not the Lakers arena, he said. “Watching the behavior of the consumer, it’s working. They really are embracing the identity of these venues.”
Interviewed for this story: Lonnie Cooper, (770) 955-1300; Mike Zavodsky, (917) 618-6100