The Merchandise Bowl: A Look Into How Apparel Adds to the Game Experience

TeamIP, the GHSA’s mechanize partner, was recently featured in Sports Travel magazine.  Congratulations TeamIP.

College bowl season can stretch the limits of event organizers. Few sports events of that size and scope have such little time to know which teams and fan bases will even be playing and attending. From ticket sales to marketing to travel, the logistical challenges can be significant.

But another area with its own challenges is the sale of merchandise and apparel. As a result, perhaps few companies are as interested in seeing the final bowl pairings as Stuart, Florida-based Team IP, which this year will provide apparel and merchandise—and oversee their on-site and online sales—at 11 of college football’s 40 bowl games, including nine owned by ESPN Events.

Getting access to team logos and marks, receiving signoff on apparel designs from two schools and the bowls, printing and shipping the items to the venues and the team hotels—where much of the business can be had—all take coordination that has the staff of Team IP doing as much of a dance as anyone come bowl season. After the final bowl slate is announced, “we’ve got seven days to be in our first hotel,” said Randy Sparks, Team IP’s president and CEO.

Team IP, which provides merchandise for more than 1,700 events annually, began in the bowl business in 2014 at the Boca Raton Bowl in Florida. At the time, the bowl was making its debut and was thus an unknown. “We had Marshall and Northern Illinois that first year,” Sparks said. “We didn’t know if it would be successful or not, and it was. It proved if we had 10,000 or 12,000 true fans show up at a bowl, we could make money as a company.”   READ MORE