Posted: 4:50 pm Wed, December 23, 2009
By Liz Farmer
Daily Record Business Writer
It’s been an unprecedented year for the National Football League.
Thanks to a national recession, the year for some teams has been marked by television blackouts, empty suites and undersold stadiums.
But not for the Baltimore Ravens. It was a tight squeeze, said Ravens President Dick Cass, but the team sold its last suite the day before it hosted its first game. And despite raising ticket prices this year when many other teams did not — Cass called that one a “painful” decision — M&T Bank Stadium quickly sold out for the season, as it has since it opened in 1998.
Even after the NFL softened its rules on marketing partnerships, opening up additional sponsorship revenues from state lotteries and from sponsor logos on practice jerseys, the Ravens can afford to be choosy. While the team has taken advantage of the opportunity to partner with the Maryland Lottery to create a Ravens-themed scratch-off game, they still haven’t found the right naming rights sponsor for their Owings Mills practice facility.
More than half the league this year jumped to make more money from sponsors — 18 teams have signed deals with a practice facility sponsor and added the small logo to their practice jerseys.
The new rule, enacted this summer, allows sponsor logos no larger than 4½ by 3½ inches on practice jerseys. Some teams, such as the St. Louis Rams, already had a practice facility sponsor and added the logo in exchange for a bigger deal. Others, like the New York Jets and Giants, signed all-encompassing deals this year. The Giants’ deal with Timex is reportedly worth $35 million over 15 years.
But in an interview at The Daily Record last week, Cass said the Ravens are still looking.
“We’re not going to sell it for the sake of selling it,” said Cass, 63. “We think it has a certain value, and we’ve placed a very high value on that, and in today’s market it’s hard to sell that. It’s hard to sell anything in today’s market.”
It’s not like the team is recession-proof — Cass said hospitality tent sales have fallen off in the latter half of the season as the weather turned cold and companies tightened their year-end budgets. Sponsorship revenue is also flat, according to Cass. But for this year — one of the worst many companies have seen — he said they’ll take it.
And, Cass noted, Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti isn’t in this to make a profit — he’s in it to break even and win games.
“If he told me ‘I want you maximize profits,’ we’d run the team very differently,” Cass said. “We wouldn’t spend as much on players, we wouldn’t spend as much on our facility, we wouldn’t have as large as a scouting staff and we’d certainly have a much smaller coaching staff.”
The Ravens have 21 coaches on their staff — nearly one for every three players. The two teams that played in last year’s Super Bowl, the Ravens’ archrival Pittsburgh Steelers and the Arizona Cardinals, both have 16 coaches listed on their Web sites.
Marketing in the D.C. suburbs
But the break-even approach doesn’t mean the team doesn’t try to maximize its revenue streams — and it doesn’t mean executives are content with where they are. One thorn in their side they’d like to remove is the way the Ravens are televised and allowed to market themselves in Maryland’s D.C. suburbs.
On local television broadcasts in Maryland, the Washington Redskins are the home team for Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, but Cass said enough Ravens fans live in those markets to make them shared territory. Cass said he’d like to see all of both teams’ games televised in both the Washington and Baltimore markets.
Cass acknowledged that would cause a problem with scheduling, but said it could be overcome. For example, two weeks ago, the Ravens played the Detroit Lions at M&T Bank Stadium at 1 p.m. and the Redskins played at the Oakland Raiders at 4 p.m. Both games were on the FOX network. But because it was a CBS network doubleheader week, the local FOX stations could show only one game.
Ravens President Dick Cass said the team is looking to sell the naming rights to its Owings Mills headquarters, but, ‘we’re not going to sell it for the sake of selling it.’
“It’s very difficult to build your fan base when your games aren’t always on television,” Cass said. “I always like to say to our league we are blacked out in our own market even though our games are sold out.”
For a team that arrived here less than 14 years ago, growing its fan base is still a top priority. And, Cass said, Baltimore is at a disadvantage to some other teams because it’s bordered by Pennsylvania’s two NFL teams to the north and the Redskins to the south. Cass said he thinks the Ravens spend more on marketing than most teams because they don’t have a designated secondary market (like Northern Virginia for the Redskins) and have to protect what it has.
When games are blacked out in cities like Laurel, just 14 miles from the stadium, that makes it more difficult.
Cass said there are certain areas — Anne Arundel, Harford, Prince George’s, Montgomery and Frederick counties — that could share the Ravens and Redskins. Companies like Verizon Wireless that sponsor both teams should be able to use both Ravens and Redskins marks and logos in those counties instead of being forced to use the designated home team’s, he said.
Going head-to-head
“They might market us in parts of Montgomery and [Prince George’s] County, and I could see them marketing the Redskins in parts of Anne Arundel and Howard counties, as well as Frederick County,” Cass said. “We would welcome the opportunity to go head-to-head.”
Eliminating the television scheduling conflicts would be a little harder, but Cass pointed to other dual-market areas, like the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City, that make it work with two NFL teams to broadcast.
To make that happen, the Ravens would have to first get the cooperation of the Redskins, then the NFL. But Cass said he believes it’s possible.
“We’re more than happy to have them come into our market if we can go into their market,” he said.
For the more immediate future, the Ravens are preparing for a non-salary-capped season in 2010. Under the existing collective bargaining agreement, which expires after the 2010 season, the 2009 season is the last year of the cap. Talks between the NFL owners and players union are under way, but if a new agreement is not reached by March, the salary cap system will not be in place for next season.
The salary cap, which increases yearly according to a formula outlined in the existing collective bargaining agreement, is about $127 million per team for the 2009 season.
Cass declined to talk about the negotiations, but said he is confident the players and owners will reach an agreement by the time the current one expires. If there’s an uncapped season next year, he said the team plans to set a cash budget and stick to it.
No spending free-for-all
But an uncapped season isn’t going to be the spending free-for-all that some fans may by expecting, Cass said. An uncapped season will limit the number of unrestricted free agents — players whose contracts have expired and can sign with another franchise — and teams’ off-season moves next year may be minimal.
Under the current collective bargaining agreement, in the event of an uncapped season, the number of seasons required to become an unrestricted free agent goes from four to six. So, players who were drafted in 2006 and were expecting to sell their services for top dollar next year (including Ravens defensive lineman Haloti Ngata and New Orleans Saints running back Reggie Bush), would have to sit tight.
All that’s nice if a team wants to easily re-sign a player — but not so nice if teams were hoping to make some big moves before the 2010 season. Although Cass wouldn’t exactly say how the Ravens plan to deal with that market, he said they are ready.
“Neither the owners nor the union wanted to get into an uncapped year,” he said. “There are good things and bad things about it … but we have a plan and we’ll stick to that plan.”