Sponsors aim for deeper community connection
“We’re trying to talk to the community. And you can’t do that during the 81 games at a baseball stadium, or the eight games at a football stadium. It has to be 365 days per year, and these mixed-use developments help us do that.” — Gallagher CMO Chris Mead
GALLAGHER CMO Chris Mead is all in on mixed-use development sponsorship.
Gallagher, a 100-year-old company and one of the world’s largest insurance brokers, has its name on Gallagher Way, outside of Wrigley Field, as well as Gallagher Square just beyond the outfield at Petco Park in San Diego. Mead expects to add several more developments to the company’s sponsorship portfolio before year’s end. He described the impending deals as “big ones” that are further evidence of the value major corporations, like Gallagher, which booked $8 billion in revenue in 2021, see in sponsoring sports venue-adjacent neighborhoods and spaces.
“Paying for LEDs and jersey patches, that’s all good and fine, but that doesn’t embed you in the community,” Mead said. “We’re trying to talk to the community. And you can’t do that during the 81 games at a baseball stadium, or the eight games at a football stadium. It has to be 365 days per year, and these mixed-use developments help us do that.”
There is a whiffle ball field and a playground at Gallagher Square in San Diego, which hosts beer festivals and is surrounded by bars and restaurants. Gallagher helps build sports facilities and the surrounding mixed-use developments through its insurance brokerage, “and we’re going to work out of them,” said Mead, by leasing office space within the developments.
That’s also the case at The Battery Atlanta, where several companies have moved significant regional or national headquarters, including Papa John’s and Truist, which has naming rights for the Braves’ stadium and a retail space where it tells its community service story. It is also moving its Truist Advisors business to an office tower that’s under construction, bringing significant high-net-worth foot traffic to the development on a daily basis.
The Braves own The Battery, which enables them to protect their corporate partners and enhance the value of deals with them. Coca-Cola has been a longtime and important partner of the Braves, thus all restaurants in The Battery must serve Coca-Cola products, and there is no risk of a development partner allowing Pepsi to put up a signage anywhere in the neighborhood. Braves CEO Derek Schiller said that all the team’s sponsorships are integrated — one Braves sponsorship team sells Truist Park and the mixed-use development — which generally results in deals 10 years in length, or longer.
“You want to keep this seamless,” said Mike Plant, president and CEO of Braves Development Co., which oversees The Battery. “You want to keep control so that you can use all the assets very effectively.”
Gallagher’s mixed-use development deals are well over a decade, though Mead wouldn’t give specifics. The value is obviously greater, too, than the company’s more traditional sports sponsorship deals. Mead said he’d put a 4x premium on someone walking through, or living in, a mixed-use development, compared to a fan in a stadium.
“Eyeballs are eyeballs, but hearts are different,” he said. “And with this mixed-use stuff and community-embedded branding, yeah, you’re getting some eyeballs from a promotional perspective, but if you’re getting families and their hearts and you’re embedding yourself in their culture, you can charge a hell of a lot more for that, a hell of a lot more. But it’s also more valuable.”