Event Brand | Sponsorships
Prep Sports | Sponsored & Signature Events
KHSAA Girls Sweet 16, Region 9, NKFCA All-Star Week and the All-Star Series, the Bluegrass-Buckeye Charity Classic, and Game of the Month. Some were title sponsorships, some were created from scratch, and each one grew bigger as new ideas took hold.
Context
Years of banners and program ads, and not much to show for it.
Sports medicine sponsorship had historically meant wall banners, signage, and scattered paid ads in game programs, with generic messaging about services, locations, and a phone number. The spend was real, but the return wasn’t. Nothing connected the sponsor to what fans actually cared about: their schools, their teams, and the athletic trainers already on their sidelines every week.
Action
One event at a time, each one bigger than the last.
It started with title sponsorship of the KHSAA Girls Sweet 16. Instead of more banners and program ads, we designed a tournament logo with the sponsor built in, launched it with a hype video and commercial spots instead of a standard press release, promoted a $10,000 half-court shot contest at halftime, and carried the branding across every KHSAA state championship. Each success opened the next door. NKFCA All-Star Week followed with its own logo and later grew into a multi-sport All-Star Series. The Bluegrass-Buckeye Charity Classic came next, then a Region 9 brandmark built from nothing, and eventually Game of the Month, a St. Elizabeth-created series that recognized an I’M RIGHT HERE Award winner from each school at every game. Every event got its own mark, because fans ignore a sponsor’s banner but remember, wear, and share an event’s identity, and the St. Elizabeth name traveled with it. When my role shifted from event operations to project operations, I continued to lead strategy and creative, but the added responsibilities meant I could no longer handle the day-to-day work of prepping and running the events. To keep them growing, we added dedicated support. I had already worked with Tom Gamble and In-Game Sports on some of the event work in the early years, so bringing his team on as our contracted event operations and logistics partner was a natural step. They already knew the events and how we worked, which made the transition seamless.
Result
From passive signage to events fans looked forward to.
What had been a line item became part of the high school sports season itself. The Sweet 16 launch video reached nearly 46,000 people at about a penny per view, the first Snapchat geofilter drew 62,600 views, and each year about 100 graduating seniors from 20 schools played in the All-Star games, with $10,000 in scholarships awarded in the first year alone. Game of the Month built to a season finale, the NKYs, a red-carpet awards night for Northern Kentucky high school sports. The events gave the athletic trainers a public stage, finally connecting the name on the sponsorship to the people caring for student-athletes every day.
Video