Franklin Athletic Director: ‘Hopeful New Future’ for Video Scoreboard Sponsorship Effort

After four months of focused attempts at finding sponsors, sports officials have signed a sports medicine center to advertise on a $250,000  in hopes of securing an ongoing source of revenue for the athletics department.

Reisterstown's Life Bridge Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation agreed to a three-year deal that includes sporting event advertisements during timeouts, said Franklin Athletics Director Richard Reed.

Reed said he hopes to get three more major sponsors to sign multi-year contracts for prominent advertising spots on the board, in addition to lower-cost $1,500 yearly commitments from smaller businesses for less prominent advertising space on the video board.

“We are a little bit disappointed where we thought we would be on this day, however after … getting new leads, we have a hopeful new future,” Reed said Thursday. “We are just hitting the tip of the iceberg, and now we are seeing the entire iceberg itself. The amount of businesses we haven’t communicated with--it’s just so large.”

A “major sponsor” contract is for more than $5,000 per year, he said.

In total, Reed said he hopes advertising and sponsorship revenue for the video board would pay for the board and net $30,000 per year for various capital projects and athletic department needs. One major project would be expanding the school's stadium bleachers.

It’s an effort that would have “tremendous value” to the school and community, especially during tight budgetary times in Baltimore County, according to a written statement. 

Reed said since he and assistant Franklin High School baseball coach Andrew Middleman started the effort to find advertisers four months ago,  he has a new understanding of the untapped resources in the Reisterstown, Owings Mills and Glyndon community.

“We knew it was going to be challenging; we knew it was going to be slow when we first started,” he said.

He met recently with Glenn Barnes, the president, who advised the athletics department to target bigger businesses such as car dealerships or financial services firms.

“I think they are having some difficulties,” Barnes said. “That’s a lot of money to raise. A lot of people are just being very selective who they are going to donate funds to.”

Franklin high school teacher Howard Spears said the video board will have educational applications as well. 

He said he plans to get his students in his radio and video course to help make the advertisement and animation that would appear on the scoreboard.

Spears is among those concerned, but optimistic, about efforts to find advertisers and sponsors.

“It’s tough,” he said.  “Every school is trying to pull from every business around. … It’s a really tough economy and people are cutting back more than anything else.

“The score board is going to have a big ripple effect on all the other sports, even if you don’t play in that stadium,” said Spears, who added that he hopes at some point sponsorship revenue would pay for a scoreboard for the softball program he coaches.

“That’s why we’re trying to push this as best we can. “