Los Angeles Rams running back Todd Gurley has already made nearly $10 million in salary and signing bonuses in his 18 months in the National Football League.
Now that the team has moved to Los Angeles, the 22-year-old stands to make an estimated $2 million this year from endorsements.
Being under the spotlight in the nation’s second-biggest media market is helping him and star teammates such as rookie quarterback Jared Goff, 21, join the most valuable players in the advertising world.
“The Rams are going to be in the limelight for the next few years, which means the players will have more opportunity for off-field revenue and, specifically, endorsement opportunities,” said Marc Ganis, president of Chicago sports consultancy Sportscorp Ltd. “There’s a major difference between being a player on the St. Louis Rams and the Los Angeles Rams. The return of the NFL to L.A. is the league’s biggest story.”
Attention on the franchise translates into greater visibility and financial opportunity from brands for many of the players.
But so far it is running back Gurley who has benefited the most from endorsement opportunities, which have been pursued by his agency, Roc Nation, which is owned by musician and entertainment impresario Shawn Carter (Jay Z) and represents superstars such as basketball player Kevin Durant and pop singer Robyn “Rihanna” Fenty.
Hooray for ‘Gurleywood’
From bootleg “Gurleywood” T-shirts that set the player’s name to the Hollywood Sign font to campaigns with Nike Inc. and Bose Corp., Gurley has received a number of endorsement deals since the Rams announced their move in January.
In addition to landing contracts with Gatorade and Campbell Soup Co. since the relocation was announced, Gurley is also slated to be the face of the NFL apparel line, said Michael Yormark, Roc Nation’s president.
Response to the move and Gurley has been so strong, said Yormark, Roc Nation has had to turn down endorsement opportunities in order to avoid distracting him from what he was hired to do: play football.
“At the moment, we’re not looking to add any new partners to his portfolio,” he said.
Gurley’s marketability is multifaceted, Yormark said, citing a combination of athleticism with a personality that’s sincere, charismatic, and affable.
“In a very short period of time he went from a rookie that people had high expectations for to a guy who’s really become one of the most marketable athletes in the NFL,” Yormark said.
Although Gurley’s roster of brand partners features mostly national brands with headquarters across the country, in July he was named brand ambassador for GameFly Inc., a video-game subscription service based in Los Angeles. In June, Gurley was the face of a Carl’s Jr. ad campaign that plays explicitly on the Rams move to Los Angeles. In it, Gurley is handed a Carl’s Jr. California Classic burger by his “agent,” played by actor Jay Mohr, who tells him, “Welcome to California, Todd Gurley!”
It’s rare for a running back, especially one who’s not a top draft pick, to receive so many ad opportunities, said Sportscorp’s Ganis, who estimated the player’s endorsement earnings this year will reach about $2 million.
He attributed much of Gurley’s off-field success to Roc Nation.
“They are known as being very aggressive in the endorsement and promotion side of the agent business,” said Ganis.
Handing off
Representatives of Irvine’s Rep1 Sports, which represents quarterback Goff, the No. 1 pick in this year’s draft, declined to comment on his current endorsements or prospective advertising opportunities, but their client is not without commercial success.
Over the course of one day in April, Goff went on a Twitter advertising blitz, name-dropping a series of brands such as Gillette and Pantene. Although there has been no confirmation he was paid for those posts, they were marked with the telltale hashtag “ad,” which indicates sponsored tweets.
In May, Gurley and Goff (along with Rams defensive tackle Aaron Donald and wide receiver Tavon Austin) were selected to be on the NFL’s list of the “Top 50 Rising Stars.” This list, assembled by the National Football League Players Association’s licensing arm, NFL Players Inc., ranked Gurley No. 1 among players “best positioned to rank among top-sellers of all officially licensed merchandise and become future retail stars.”
The list is intended to provide business partners, licensees, and retailers with insight on whom they should plan future media campaigns.
Gina Scott, vice president of partner services with the players association, said that when assembling the rankings, they consider on-field performance, popularity in fantasy leagues, and demand from licensees, among other factors.
“It’s our attempt to really project who are the future stars when it comes to popularity,” said Scott, “who’s going to be able to be that new face in those strong markets.”
Honeymoon phase
For the Rams first three seasons in Los Angeles, the team will play at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, where they’ll share the space with USC’s football squad until the team’s stadium in Inglewood is completed. This transition will serve as a bit of a grace period for the pro team, giving them time to improve their record, gain momentum, and show their commitment to being winners on the field, said Matt Hill, senior vice president of global sports and entertainment consulting for GMR Marketing in New Berlin, Wisc.
“This is certainly the honeymoon, this season,” said Hill. “If the team can begin to piece together success on the field, I think that will go a long way …to driving both the team sponsorship revenue as well as the marketability of athletes like Gurley and Goff.”
NFL endorsement opportunities are organized into three tiers; the more a sponsor spends, the more explicit its connection to the NFL or a specific team can be. If a company signs only an endorsement deal with an individual player, there can be no mention of the team he plays for and no images of him in uniform or on the field, Hill explained. This can be a challenge, as football players, with their faces obscured by helmets, aren’t as widely recognized as basketball players, for instance.
If a company inks a team sponsorship in addition to a player endorsement, the sponsor is able to feature the player in uniform and reference his team, but the campaign must be focused in a local market.
The holy trinity of endorsement comes when a business secures a deal with the NFL while also sponsoring a local team and endorsing a player. This opens the floodgates of access to on-field clips and official league branding.
Players generally receive anywhere from a couple of hundred thousand dollars to a few million for endorsements, although the big paydays are generally the exclusive purview of superstars such as New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady. From there, the cost only increases with NFL sponsorships, hitting $50 million to $100 million, depending on the breadth of the deal.
For the second tier – the sponsorship of the team – the Rams appear to be playing the long game, waiting for the new stadium to come on line in 2019.
Meantime, there is plenty of pressure to perform well on the field to justify big sponsorships.
“If you’re not performing well in a major market like (Los Angeles) … (it won’t) go unnoticed,” said GMR’s Hill.
