Planning the addition to any school program can often be a daunting task. Tax payers don’t want to be burdened and yet schools want the best they can get. When the Thomas High School Patriots Boosters in Maryland decided to get an electronic scoreboard, they did an imaginative outreach to help pay for it.
The Thomas Johnson High School has a wonderful history for education, the arts and music. They are one of the National Blue Ribbon Schools of Excellence, with around ninety percent of their graduates continuing on to higher education. The lineup of awards for both the arts, music and sports, is quite impressive. The community supports their local teams and the sports events encompass a variety: tennis, swimming, volleyball, basketball, baseball, cross country, football, gymnastics and soccer. The teams themselves have proven a level of incredible excellence and this can be seen by the number of attendees to every type of game.
When the electronic scoreboard was added to the school, it was understood that the expense would not be passed on to either the school or the local taxpayers. The booster club rallied to develop one of the best sponsor and advertising programs to not only pay for the cost of the electronic scoreboard, but add a recurring revenue stream for maintenance, additional features and, eventually, a profit for the school.
The Thomas High School Patriots Boosters sent out a bevy of letters to the local retailers with a complete list of all of the advertising opportunities for the electronic scoreboard. Whether a sponsor was a fan of basketball all the way to cross country, the sponsor ads would be seen and viewed in high resolution for all of the games. Options included banners for outside the stadium as well as inside and the booster club offered very wise and reasonable pricing. This means that even a smaller retailer could afford an electronic scoreboard sponsor ad to show their support for their favorite team.
In years gone by, many schools opted to keep sponsor ads as well as any personal stadium or field names away from the games and teams. While the concept might have had its roots in the separation of team spirit and politics, the funding of the sponsors has been a long time return-on-investment for the savvy schools to help pay for well needed sports items. As professional sports began adding very high tech sponsors, advertising and marketing, it has slowly trickled down to the high school stadiums and fields and school boards as well as booster clubs across the country are finally realizing that some of the new high tech offerings are a welcome add-on to pay for such things as electronic scoreboards, team uniforms, team trips and awards. The additional reduction in pricing of electronic scoreboards has given high schools an opportunity to get some of the flashiest scoreboards for their teams, offering their fans and attendees the wow-factor. This brings in a higher attendance and an even better return on their investment.
Sources:
http://www.tjathletics.org/siteRepository/99/userfiles/file/TJHSboosterssponships2011-2012.pdf
http://apps.fcps.org/sp.cfm?i=62