ESPN’s College Football’s a Touchdown for Home Depot
The Home Depot is building on a three-year relationship with ESPN scoring a new deal to return as the presenting sponsor of the cable network’s college football show College GameDay.
As part of the new three-year deal, The Home Depot will present a weekly series of vignettes in Friday’s SportsCenter and Saturday’s College GameDay shows covering favorite moments from the show’s first 20 years as part of the program’s 20th anniversary.
The College GameDay show travels to campuses across the country to produce the broadcasts and routinely draws thousands of spectators. This season’s program will kick off Sept. 2 from the site of Notre Dame at Georgia Tech. To cross-promote its ESPN affiliation, The Home Depot will advertise the show in its store circulars, through in-store mentions and at HomeDepot.com.
The show will continue to be called ESPN College GameDay Built By The Home Depot and will give the Atlanta-based company continued branding on the main desk of the set. Commercial spots and a series of The Home Depot-sponsored features aired during the program will extend to other ESPN properties including ESPN.com, ESPN Radio, ESPN Wireless, ESPN Podcenter for a College GameDay Podcast, and ESPN The Magazine. The Home Depot will also continue to activate branding during the network’s more than 20 National Collegiate Athletic Association championship broadcasts and through The Home Depot College Football Awards Show.
“Consumers often decide on Saturday mornings exactly what home improvement project they plan to tackle for the weekend,” said Roger Adams, senior VP-marketing, The Home Depot in a statement. “So having a prominent presence on College GameDay provides us a national platform to connect with our customers and offers The Home Depot brand a unique point of differentiation.”
As a part of the sponsorship, Home Depot will also tap ad opportunities on ESPNU, a 24-hour college sports network launched last year.The Home Depot operates 2,082 retail stores and had sales of $81.5 billion last year.
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