For all the decades we’ve been parked at the corner of sports and commerce, a single truth has been most constant: No one runs auctions as successfully as the NFL.
So, when you’ve read here first about the NFL’s tripartite sponsorship triumph in transforming its 30-year-old Visa corporate sponsorship into three separate deals — AmEx for credit/payment cards, U.S. Bank for retail banking and PayPal for peer-to-peer payments — the most cogent fact is rooted in that original notion about NFL auctions. Sources involved in the deal say the league upped its return from one deal that became categories at between 3:1 and 4:1. That’s a healthy improvement regardless of the payment method employed.
In an unusual move in early 2025, the NFL originally issued a broad RFP across the category. Given its success, that probably shouldn’t be considered uncommon anymore.
Financial services as a whole remains the largest sponsorship category, and we continue to see additional fintech brands hatched daily, adding to the abundance of traditional banks, insurance brands, brokerages, exchanges, financial advisories, accounting firms and real estate concerns which have long comprised the sector.
According to sources involved in the deal, early competitors for a consortium were Mastercard, PayPal and another bank. When that didn’t work, PayPal reemerged solely seeking peer-to-peer rights. One source said PayPal pursued these NFL rights for 18-24 months.
Now, there’s a scramble to claim credit for the notion of division — which resulted in multiplication. The whole exercise was a vibrant showcase of how broadly the sector has evolved over those three decades in which Visa had exceptionally broad NFL sponsorship rights, which now might be considered archaic.
Swimming in the proper lane
The difficulty in having three where there were one (1.5, if you count Truist’s pass through from Visa) will be intriguing to track. Designation-wise, AmEx gets “Official Payments,” U.S. Bank was christened as the league’s “Official Bank and Wealth Management” sponsor, and PayPal garnered “Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Payments.” IP sellers and activators often refer to their overlapping sponsors as “staying in their swim lanes.” Which one of these categories doesn’t involve payment? And that’s just the most obvious of the business conflicts.
Those lanes had better be broad ones, with sufficient room for NFL storytelling by each brand.
“Not simple for anyone involved,” said a marketer who worked on the deal. “There was a lot of needle threading, because over 30 years it changed dramatically — from category to categories, for one.”
Added another involved marketer: “The reason this took so long was being thoughtful about defining swim lanes that will work, so that everyone is satisfied.”
Agencies involved: The Team (formerly Wasserman) handling both AmEx and U.S. Bank; Art & Science Partners negotiating the deal for PayPal; and Horizon Sports & Experiences handling PayPal’s activation.
Meanwhile, activation surrounding these deals started long before this week’s NFL Draft, which will see some from the fin-services trio. U.S. Bank shot an ad in L.A. last week with 49ers RB Christian McCaffrey. AmEx has snapped up stadium/team sponsorships in Atlanta; East Rutherford, N.J. (home of the Giants and Jets); and Miami Gardens (site of the Dolphins’ Hard Rock Stadium). NFL club marketers have noticed how “more vibrant” the credit/payment sponsorship category has become after many desultory years.
