It's the National Football League's championship game and the most-watched sporting event of the year. But the Super Bowl has some big winners off the field too. A look at how small businesses cash in on the big game.
Super Bowl Sunday has become a national holiday of sorts, arguably the biggest media event of the year, when millions gather in front of their TVs for the commercials, the snacks, and, oh yeah, that football game.
But the annual economic boomlet doesn't just extend to the National Football League, the broadcast networks, and snackmakers. Indeed, entrepreneurs in a variety of industries have found a way to cash in on the big game.
Super Bowl-related sales approached $10 billion in 2008, with consumers spending an average of $59.90 each on everything from beer to new TVs, according to the National Retail Federation. Because of the recession, those figures will probably deflate this year, according to Patrick James Rishe, a professor at Webster University in St. Louis, who studies the economic impact of sporting events. Still, he notes that the Super Bowl's iconic status could insulate it from the economic downturn.
"People do like to treat it as a national holiday, so you could argue that the recession's effect on consumer spending might be a little less for the Super Bowl," he said. "People are going to be less sensitive to the prices because they want to get those things for the big game."
This year, the Super Bowl will be held in Tampa, Florida, on Feb. 1. And recession or no recession, businesses across the country are banking on this game to be one of their biggest sales drivers, akin to the holiday shopping season for other retailers. Here's how four entrepreneurs are capitalizing on pro football's signature event, and how they plan to buoy sales during these tough times.
"A very big impact on our business"
Last year, before the economy was in tatters, the NRF released a report estimating that consumers purchased 3.9 million televisions in anticipation of Super Bowl XLII. Now, as consumers cut back on frivolous spending, many people planning Super Bowl parties will forego buying a new television in favor of renting one for the weekend.
The business of short-term audio and visual equipment rentals kicks in to high gear before the Super Bowl, and firms like Meeting Tomorrow, a Chicago-based company that rents equipment for corporate events such as sales meetings and trade shows, have seen substantial increases in their business because of the event every year since their inception.
Mark Aistrope, Meeting Tomorrow's president, says his company never actively marketed its services for the Super Bowl, but people kept inquiring anyway. As the calendar turned to December and January, the company's phones were constantly ringing with earnest football fans requesting equipment for their Super Bowl blowouts.
In recent years, Meeting Tomorrow's Super Bowl business has been thriving. The increase began in 2006, when Aistrope created specially-priced package offerings and advertised them on the company website.
The company's Super Bowl packages now account for up to 60 percent of their business during the week of the event. This year they are on pace for a 65 percent growth in orders for their packages, according to Aistrope. The company even managed to land an A-list client in the Chicago area -- a player for the Chicago Bulls reserved Meeting Tomorrow's services for his Super Bowl party's AV setup, Aistrope says.
Meeting Tomorrow's Super Bowl success blossomed in spite of Aistrope's initial reluctance to embrace directly marketing the company's services to football fans. "I was cynical over whether people would go for it because we never really targeted private events, since our company is so corporate event-oriented," Aistrope says. "While I wasn't quick to embrace it, once we did it, it had a very big impact on our business."
The Super Bowl helps Meeting Tomorrow weather a usually slow season for corporate events, according to Aistrope. "It helps us smooth out what would otherwise be a difficult time of year when our other business is flat," he says.
Meeting Tomorrow's specialty packages start at $599, including roundtrip delivery and setup of all equipment, meaning its services might make more fiscal sense for those throwing large-scale gatherings. The company touts its ability to alter setups based on a customer's needs, as well as its quick turnaround time. As Aistrope says, "One of our core beliefs is that we can just about get anything done even in very tight timeframes, in any major city in the country."
"The entrepreneur in me just saw a huge opportunity"
Equipped with just an SUV and a card table, Steve Sodell first started hawking T-shirts at major sporting events in 2001. The Arizona Diamondbacks made it to the World Series that year, and Sodell, hoping to score some extra cash, set up shop in a parking lot outside of Chase Field in Phoenix. In a few hours, he completely sold out of the 200 logo-clad T-shirts he had bought earlier that day from Sam's Club.
"I felt like I struck gold that day," Sodell says. "The entrepreneur in me saw a huge opportunity, and I said to myself, 'There's got to be a local demand for these products.' Honestly, I didn't know much about retail at the time. I just knew how to hustle T-shirts."
Sodell is the CEO of Sports Fan Marketing, a Scottsdale, Arizona-based company he founded in 1999. Following a chance meeting with a representative from Reebok -- the NFL's top sportswear licensee -- he overhauled his company's business model to revolve around the Super Bowl. After submitting a proposal to the NFL, he soon joined an elite group of fewer than a dozen companies with reselling rights to the league's branded products. Temporarily renting retail space in the host city, he started selling the swag in 2003 at Super Bowl XXXVII in San Diego. Today, it generates more than 75 percent of his business.
