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“You’ve got fins to the left, fins to the and you’re the only bait in Ross, a real estate developer who hadpaid $1 billion and took over the team in knew that on-field performance was the most important aspecg to his team’s bottom line. Nonetheless, despit the team’s success undef first-year executive Bill Parcells and coach Tony he saw figures showing thatthe season-ticket sales had dipped to from a high of 60,000 as recentlg as five years ago.
Ross knew he needed an off-the-field game plan, and set out to add star power to infuse a new entertainment experiencwe throughout DolphinStadium “Football is not continuous like soccer, and theree are so many TV timeouts,” Ross said. “You have to keep the peoplre entertained ¬ from tailgate to leavingt theparking lot.’’ The plan was to recruitr some of the biggest names in pop musicf to join his team. First, he went hard after team owner Jon Bon but the last ofthe ’80e big-hair stars insisted upon an exclusive arrangemenr during their talks late last Ross, recalling the familiar tune, then turned to Buffett, a Floridaa icon with national appeal.
Talkss started last year about apromotional partnership, and Buffetgt bought into the concept immediately. The relationship grew to included naming rights tothe Dolphins’ home Buffett explained the attraction in early May at a concerft when the lid was takemn off the deal that rechristened the Dolphinsd home as Land Shark Stadium. “We gave half the tickets to Parrotf Head clubs and halfto Dol-fans, and you can’t tell the said an ebullient referring to the moniker of each group’s fan In a business where combining sports and entertainmenft is incessantly discussed, but almost never Ross wanted to put fins on Dolphin Stadiunm and give fans reasons to attend a game that go well beyondf a passion for football.
The NFL’s reputationj as America’s most popular sports propertu is largely based on its symbiotic relationship with and the advent of HDTV could make the NFL largelg astudio sport. For Ross, the solution is to make the NFL in-venuer experience an even bigger show. “What’s Miami about?” he asked. “Entertainment, celebritiex and lifestyle. So we have to play to those I know what puts people in the seatdsis winning, but you need to do these thingsa to compete and get peoplee in the stadium.
” The Dolphins have sold 6,000 to 7,000o additional season tickets this Whether it was the addition of or the turnaround from a 1-15 season to an 11-5 playofvf squad ¬ tying the biggest single-season turnaroundc in league history ¬ isn’t If NFL football is the steak, then Ross sees entertainerz like Buffett and his new minority Gloria and Emilio Estefan, as the sizzle in the Dolphinsx brand.
The parallels between interest in expanding the live experience at an NFL game and the populafr music business forged an early bondwith “There’s not as much money left in recorded music, so our emphasia has been to make the live experience somethinfg fun and memorable,” said John Cohlan, Buffett’s manager and CEO of Margaritavillse Holdings, the singer’s marketing and merchandising company. “Thwe tailgating that is now such a big part of our shows originatedd atfootball games.
So maybe we’ve come full Even as the Dolphins and Buffett were initially combiningforcesa promotionally, the team was also seeking a more traditionakl path in selling naming rights to theidr facility. A package in the marketplace for month wasseeking $15 million a year for namingv rights to a building that is home to the as well as the , the footballo team, the FedEx Orange Bowl and next year’s Pro Bowl and Super Bowl. Companies includin g , MetroPCS and Hard Rock, which operates a hotel/casino in nearbu Hollywood, Fla.
, were negotiating for naming However, the financial implosioj fueled by the mortgag e crisis last year madeany naming-rights deal as sports marketing became a favorite targert for politicians. With the economy naming-rights deals even at the new $1 billion plus NFL palace in Dallas and New York wereon ice. senior adviser, Arlen Kantarian, adviseed early on that there weretwo “We could wait until the storm passed, or do somethinv creative,” Kantarian said. Seeing a shifting Dolphins executives started making entreaties into themusicap world.
Land Shark Stadium, as the building will be called from now through any home Dolphineplayoff games, didn’t start as a naming-rightsz deal. It started with the Buffett tune. The Dolphins have been known as the Finsfor years. “Itg was always about ‘fins to the left’ and ‘finds to the right,’” said Kantarian, whose career has included stintzat , the U.S. Tennis Association and . “Ae far back as November, Stevr was talking not only about Buffett, but havinvg that particular song [Fins].
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