From Crain's Detoit Business

New Ford Field college bowl game gets a name: Quick Lane Bowl

By Bill Shea

 

NATHAN SKID/Crains Detroit Business

 

The Lions announced in July 2013 that they'll host a new bowl matching Big Ten Conference and Atlantic Coast Conference teams at 64,500-seat Ford Field under six-year deals that begin this year.

 

Related links

Little Caesars Pizza Bowl at Ford Field canceled

Not surprisingly, the name of the new college football bowl game at Detroit’s Ford Field will have an automotive connection: The Dec. 26 game will be called the Quick Lane Bowl.

Quick Lane Tire & Auto Centers is the Dearborn-based chain of more than 700 auto service outlets created by Ford Motor Co. for its Ford and Lincoln dealerships.

Members of the Ford family also own the Detroit Lions, organizers of the bowl.
Financial terms of the multiyear title sponsorship were not disclosed.
The team and company officials announced the deal this morning at a Ford Field press conference, ending a year of speculation about who the bowl’s title sponsor would be.

The game will air at 4:30 p.m. Dec. 26 on ESPN.

In July 2013, the Lions announced that they would host a new bowl matching Big Ten Conference and Atlantic Coast Conference teams at 64,500-seat Ford Field under six-year deals that begin this year. Rather than an automatic tie-in based on conference finish, the participating bowl teams will be selected by the conferences and the bowl staff at the end of the season.

The intent is to grow the game into a local and national fixture, Lions President Tom Lewand said.

“This has the potential to be, in the winter, what the grand prix is in the summer,” he said, referring to the Detroit Belle Isle Grand Prix races on Memorial Day weekend that draw about 100,000 fans.
“It’s an opportunity to plant a tree in the city in the middle of December that the nation can gather around.”

A source familiar with the situation who agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity said Detroit mortgage giant Quicken Loans Inc. was interested in being the bowl’s title sponsor, but a deal couldn’t be worked out.
Lewand declined to name any other companies the Lions had talked to about the bowl. He said Quick Lane emerged “several months ago” as a contender for the title sponsorship.

“We looked at a lot of different partners,” he said.

The new game supplants the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl, which will not be played this year. That game, which leased Ford Field, previously had been called the Motor City Bowl when it launched in 1997 at the Pontiac Silverdome.
The game’s executive director is Kelly Kozole, the vice president of events at Ford Field.

Marketing effort

Quick Lane will use the new bowl as a marketing opportunity.

“We’re hoping to continue to raise awareness among consumers for the fast service, value and convenience our Quick Lanes deliver,” Frederiek Toney, a Ford vice president who also is president of the Global Ford Customer Service Division, said in a statement.

The bowl could provide up to $10 million worth of media exposure value for Quick Lanes, one local analyst said.
“In terms of national exposure for title sponsors of a bowl game held prior to 

New Year’s Day, those brands have averaged slightly more than $5 million of in-broadcast exposure,” said Eric Wright, president and executive director of research at Ann Arbor-based Joyce Julius & Associates Inc.

The firm calculates exposure by comparing the brand’s visibility and number of mentions during the telecast to the ad rate charged for the game. Wright was speaking in general terms rather than specifically about the Quick Lane deal.

“Additionally, media coverage via highlight TV programs, print articles and Internet news stories, along with on-site sponsorship elements and promotions conducted by a bowl game, typically generate about another $4 million to $5 million for a bowl sponsor,” he said. “So, all together, Christmas week bowl game title sponsors average around $10 million of exposure value.

“Generally speaking, the bulk of the media coverage, national TV highlight programming notwithstanding, occurs in the game’s local market, as well as the local markets of the participating teams.”

The first Quick Lane opened in 1998, and for several years, Ford has expanded the network across the country and into a few overseas markets. There are now 700 in the U.S., another 50 in Canada and a total of approximately 1,000 globally.

The automaker had 3,260 domestic Ford and Lincoln dealerships in 2013, so the Quick Lane chain has some ways to catch up.

The plan is to double the number of Quick Lane stores over the next five to 10 years, Toney said this morning. Ford also is creating a scalable option that will allow smaller dealers to add Quick Lane service, he said.
Dealers with Quick Lane stores are more profitable than those without, Toney said.

Quick Lane stores offer routine vehicle maintenance and light repairs, such as brake repairs and tire replacements, on all vehicle makes and models.
Quick Lane, along with the Motorcraft-branded line of Ford original and replacement auto parts, sponsors the No. 21 Ford Fusion owned by Wood Bros. Racing in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.

Internal expertise

The new bowl will be handled by the Lions’ in-house entertainment division, DLI Entertainment. It has promoted many large-scale shows and events at Ford Field, including seven consecutive sold-out Kenny Chesney concerts, a Taylor Swift concert, the 2003 Basketbowl, 2008 NCAA Men’s Basketball regionals, 2009 NCAA Men’s Basketball Final Four and 2010 NCAA Men’s Frozen Four ice hockey tournament.
“It’s because we have that capacity internally, we felt we could host a bowl,” Lewand said.

Tickets for the game — the participating teams won’t be known until the end of the football season — go on sale at 10 a.m. Thursday at the Ford Field box office, quicklanebowl.com or by calling (877) 212-8898.

There is precedent for an NFL team hosting a college bowl game: The Houston Texans, through their Lone Star Sports & Entertainment event marketing arm, since 2006 have run the AdvoCare V100 Texas Bowl (known until last year as the Meineke Car Care Bowl of Texas) at 71,054-seat NRG Stadium (formerly Reliant Stadium).

The game, also called the Texas Bowl, replaced the Houston Bowl and has tie-ins with the Big East and SEC.

Ford connections

The bowl’s organizer, sponsor and venue are all linked to the Ford family.
The Lions’ sole majority owner is Martha Ford, who took over ownership after her husband, William Clay Ford Sr., died of pneumonia March 9 at age 88. He bought the controlling interest in the team for $4.5 million in November 1963 and assumed majority ownership in January 1964.
Their son, Ford Motor Executive Chairman William Clay Ford Jr., is the Lions’ chairman. He is one of the automaker’s largest individual shareholders.
While the Ford family owns the Lions and Ford Motor Co., it doesn’t own Ford Field. The football team operates it under a lease from the Detroit-Wayne County Stadium Authority.

Ford did pay to name the stadium — the Lions got $50 million from Ford Motor under a deal that had the automaker pay the money in three lump sums in 2002 to put the its name on Ford Field: $30 million in February 2002, $17.5 million in March 2002 and the balance in December 2002, according to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission documents.