By: Barry Wilner
Hard tackles and long touchdowns aren’t all that rock NFL stadiums: the in-stadium atmosphere includes enough music to substitute a concert for the actual game.
Though traditional stadium songs are well-loved and recognised, most people don’t realise that they are also an expense for teams, who do not own the rights to them. Teams pay a public performance license to use music in their stadium- at a typical cost of around $30,000 a year- in addition to separate licenses if they want to use the same songs they affiliate with their team on gameday elsewhere in their marketing.
However Banshee Music, a division of GMR Marketing in Wisconsin, has been offering sports teams an alternative option that has helped the NFL transform team anthems and touchdown songs into something that makes a little more wallet sense. Banshee has already made its name working with NFL teams, and even some college sports programmes in the U.S. to create original music that not only saves money licensing popular music but also elevates their brand identity, in part by giving leagues and their teams more control over their music.
“The songs are designed to celebrate that club and match them with an authentic artist who is a fan of the team,” says John Canaday, Banshee’s vice-president of sports marketing. “We try to do that as often as we can, localise it.”
“Once the music is created, we want it to be used in-game, heard in team broadcasts and marketed through digital and social media and online elements, and we have opened up the distribution scenario that touches sponsorship.”
Banshee Music’s tie-in with the NFL began in 2009 with the Green Bay Packers, who were seeking an original song for a new player introduction campaign dubbed “G-Force”. For more than a decade, the Packers played the Rolling Stones classic Start Me Up- as popular a sports anthem as there is- but given their new campaign, the Packers weren’t certain of it with regards to how it fit into the initiative.
Instead of searching through the thousands of already recorded- an heavily licensed- songs available, Banshee suggested creating something the Packers could own, also giving them a voice in the creative and approval process.
That song created, entitled G-Force, has lyrics specific to Green Bay and their Lambeau Field home, and the Packers have control of its use. The Packers even teamed with one of their licensees, Johnsonville Sausage, for a promotion in which fans were able to get a free download of the song by going to a local store and purchasing specially-marked packages of their product.
Banshee followed its partnership with the Packers by collaborating with three more NFL teams: the Atlanta Falcons, Dallas Cowboys and Carolina Panthers.
Because of the business model Banshee Music has put into place, restrictions on the use of the songs created have been eliminated for teams, and they can use the music anytime, and through any channel they want. In all its agreements with teams, any profit made from the music created is distributed on a revenue share basis with Banshee who foots the bills for developing and recording the music.
The partnership between the Panthers and Banshee resulted in a seven-song CD featuring local musicians, something the team requested. On matchdays, the Panthers play popular hits and mix in their seven songs from the CD for fans in the club levels before the teams kick-off. They also play one or two of the songs during the game and one post-game, believing it adds to the fan experience in a unique way.
“We were blown away how fast they came back with quality stuff,” says Kyle Ritchie, the director of the Panthers’ scoreboard control room PantherVision, who adds that the franchise’s music initiative with Banshee is “driven by fan requests for what little bit of music we had- an interesting fight song- and a desire to connect with our team at tailgate parties and other events.”
The Panthers teamed with Banshee on a second project of songs for children that the club’s mascot will use during personal apperances, or that can be played at school functions. Those songs are not on a CD, but are downloadable from the internet.
The Broncos meanwhile do their player introductions to Mile High, a song originated through Banshee. The team produces video content that plays on the stadium scoreboard with the song right before the players exit the tunnel from underneath the stands.
For the Falcons, Banshee put together a piece with a local band made up of die-hard fans- Falcons On Top- which is played for each touchdown the team scores at the Georgia Dome.
Last year Banshee went one step further and directly to the NFL, seeking to create a centralised approach to open up the platform to all 32 teams and to get the music exposed across NFL- controlled digital rights, signing a multi-year deal described as a “music-branding partnership”.
Under the deal, Banshee has, and is in the process of, creating new, proprietary music for teams across the league that can be used by any of the league’s teams during games and in their own media, be it through highlights packages or online marketing.
“[The deal] ties music directly back to the game,” says Tracy Perlman, the NFL’s vice-president of entertainment marketing and promotions. “It gives us a national platform to expose the in-stadium experience to all fans and heightens the awareness of the local teams on a national level. It also provides an outlet for us to directly connect to the music industry through artist and label relationships and the partnered creation of music.”
Among the artists to have recorded football songs for Banshee are Darius Rucker, Jordin Sparks, Hinder, Chickenfoot and James Durbin- in addition to dozens of local bands, singers, and musicians who have submitted material to NFL teams or to Canday’s agency.
The artists are just as eager as the NFL to collaborate, which is a big nod to the dynamic power of the league’s audience; the NFL is becoming an increasingly important platform for musicians to get heard- and this gives these artists a new method of reaching the masses that they’re missing elsewhere.
“Any opportunity you get to take your brand and music to the masses, you jump all over it,” says Chief Zaruk of the band Hinder, which has played concerts for the Buffalo Bills, Indianapolis Colts and Baltimore Ravens. “We are a straight ahead rock ‘n’ roll band and we feel that our music appeals to the demographic of football fans. No matter what age of the crowd, we think that our music works with football fans.
“Also it can only help as our music gets to reach new fans and a mass audience that we would not normally be able to tap into.”
A cottage industry might also be in the making: with producers, engineers and mixers on staff, Banshee Music can take a demo record submitted by a group and, as Canady puts it, “bring it to life”.
“We have artists coming to us all the time,” he says. “Obviously, artists have been going to teams and the league often with music, and now the teams and league are referring them to us to do some screening and manage that process.”
Expansion to other sports isn’t far off- Banshee already has deals with major college sports programmes at Michigan, Ohio State, Florida, Texas, and Louisiana State.
“There’s always going to be applications because music always is such a part of sport and the fans love their teams and the sport so much,” says Canaday.
“We’re open to taking this model and applying it to other platforms, but let’s build a model that works and we know we can take from the NFL and apply it elsewhere.”
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By: Mike Boykin
