Mini Footballs At Super Bowl XLVI
Mini Footballs
Well, once again, the Super Bowl has come and gone. The long anticipation of the 2011-2012 season led us to the World Champion New Giants. Congratulations to Eli and Company for the exciting win in the 4th quarter.
This doesn’t, however, mean that all football stops. Indeed not. Now kids of all ages, including those “older kids” of 30 or 40 or even 50 years old, are now
throwing footballs with their fathers, their brothers, their friends, and their sons. Mini Footballs that were caught or bought at the spirit items booster clubs from previous football games are now being tossed all around the house breaking lamps and getting kids in trouble. Football excitement is higher than ever. It will eventually dwindle down only to pick up steam again toward the beginning of August when high school football season begins. Then the excitement will ramp up even further when College football starts. Will it be yet another SEC National Champion next season? I hope so.
So all of you kids (a.k.a. Dads), if you break a lamp throwing footballs around the house after your wife has already fussed at you, just blame it on your son. So now we just have to wait another year for the next Super Bowl. Congratulations again to the Giants as well as the Giants fans (of whom I’m sure many are still hung over from the celebration last night).
Week 1 of College Football 2011
Week 1 of college football proved to be an interesting one with a few upsets, as expected. #14 TCU fell to Baylor 50-48 and South Florida upset #16 Notre Dane 23-20. While I really wouldn’t call it an upset, but #4 LSU took down #3 Oregon. Those SEC teams are tough as usual and the conference is very strong this year with 6 teams still in the AP Top 25 after the first full week of football. My Mississippi State Bulldogs look promising routing Memphis 59-14 and are now ranked #16.
With Tropical Storm Lee coming through the Southeast this weekend, Saturday was a great day to kick back and watch some College football games. While watching, I saw many different spirit items including thundersticks and mini footballs.
These school spirit items are not only great for college teams, but also for high school and middle school football teams. They make great fundraisers to help raise money for new uniforms, equipment, and field maintenance.
Root-N-Toot Stadium Horns
Spirit Pom Poms
Mini Footballs
Thunder Sticks
Stadium Seat Cushions
Foam Fingers
How To Make Money From Football Games With Mini Footballs
I’m not talking about betting here but making money by throwing out mini footballs. Football season is starting this month for many high schools so now is the time to take advantage of this opportunity. Mini footballs typically come in either a 6″ plastic size or a 7″ vinyl size. The vinyl is, of course, softer, and is only a few cents more per ball. The main idea is to have some promotional mini footballs printed with your logo printed on one side of the football and a special offer printed on the 2nd side. You definitely want to put an expiration date on the special offer, so someone doesn’t try to redeem it years later. Here are some ideas and some examples that other businesses have used in the past:
- Smoothie chain: Bring in this football for a FREE smoothie of your choice.
- Oil & Lube Shop: Bring in this football and receive an oil change for only $10.
- Nail Salon: Redeem this football for a FREE manicure.
- Hair Salon: Bring this football for FREE standard hair cut.
- Restaurant: Bring this football in for a FREE appetizer.
- Restaurant: Redeem this ball for Buy 1 Get 1 FREE entree of your choice.
- Grocery Store: Redeem this football for a FREE Grocery Tote on your next shopping visit.
- Bar: Bring this in for a FREE draft beer.
- Convenient Store: Redeem this football for a FREE fountain drink.
- Bank: Bring in this football and receive a $20 deposit with any new checking account.
- Print Shop: Redeem this football and receive 100 FREE business cards.
- Hair Salon: Bring this in to receive $20 off any hair coloring.
- Restaurant: Redeem this for a FREE kids meal with adult entree purchase.
- Fitness Center: Redeem this football for a FREE 2 month membership.
- Massage Therapist: Bring this in for a FREE 10 minute massage.
- Fast Food Restaurant: Redeem for a FREE small order of fries.
- Church: Bring this in to learn how to receive FREE eternal salvation.
- Sandwich Restaurant: Redeem this ball and receive a FREE 6″ sub with any purchase.
- Car Dealership: Redeem this ball and receive FREE oil changes for 1 year with car purchase.
- Bank: Redeem this and receive a $500 discount on closing cost for home mortgage.
If you notice the examples above, the majority of the offers have a common theme: FREE. Free gets people in your door. Once they are in, it’s up to you to up sell them or cross sell them. Ideally, they will have a great experience with your business and become a regular customer. Mini footballs are cheap and schools love getting them donated. The cheerleaders will gladly throw the footballs into the crowd each time their team scores. The fans absolutely love catching the footballs and will love it even more when they see the great offer printed on the football. Don’t be afraid to give away products or services for free, just have a plan on what you will do with those customers when they come into your place of business to redeem their coupon. This is a great opportunity to market your business and bring in loads of new faces into your business, so make sure and take advantage of this and make some money!
Top 10 Spirit Items for Booster Club Fundraising
It’s no secret that school budgets are getting cut every year. One of the first things to get cut are the athletic programs. In fact, many schools have opted to completely do away with sports, which is a horrible idea. Sports programs act as a binding agent to help keep school spirit alive. Without football, basketball, baseball, volleyball, and soccer teams, why would the students have a reason to have school pride? With the start of the football season upon us, here are some of the top spirit items purchased by booster clubs for fundraising for their football program.
- Stadium Seat Cushions – These are huge money makers for football teams. Everyone has experience that cold, hard metal bleacher seat for a four hour game. It’s even worse if the seat is wet. This is why fans will gladly fork over between $5-$10 for a stadium seat cushion. What’s better is that you can get multiple local businesses to sponsor and actually pay for the cushions and then the booster club can sell them for 100% profit. Stadium seat cushions can easily hold up to 16 sponsors and still allowing for the school info to be printed on the front of the seat cushions.
- Stadium Blankets – Blankets for the stadium are a great asset once we get into the winter months. Football season is one that begins hot and ends up bitter cold, so fans will buy a blanket if they don’t come to the game dressed properly. Because blankets can be used at other times besides the football game, the value is much higher. The fleece blankets are soft and warm and loved by fans. The great feature about stadium blankets is that they roll up neatly and can be secured with the Velcro straps with a convenient handle for carrying.
- Thundersticks – Thunder sticks are noisemakers which consist of two inflatable sticks which
are approximately 2 feet long that you bang together to make a loud boom. They are a fun spirit items that fans love to use to make noise. These spirit items spread like a virus once others see them being used and fans will flock to the booster club booth to buy these. These like the stadium seat cushions have a large imprint area to have business sponsor logos to pay for them. Then they easily sell for $2-$3 per pair allowing for 100% profit for the club. We have many schools order an initial or of 100-200 pair and report back saying they sold out before the first half was over. Thundersticks are definitely one of the fan favorites. - Mini Footballs – Mini footballs are most popularly thrown out into the crowd by the cheerleaders after the team scores a touchdown. Typically the footballs have a business sponsor logo on one side with the school mascot printed on the other side and are a donation to the team from that business. However, what happens is that kids in the crowd will catch the mini footballs and their brother or friend doesn’t catch one and they want one too, so they have to buy them. This is why it’s a great idea to also sell these at the booster club booth. They would typically sell for around $2.00, which is great if you have a local business sponsor printed on the footballs, since that, too, would equate to 100% profit.
- Stadium Horns – The best way you can help your football team to make a lot of noise for
them,including while their opponent is on offense. If you are loud enough, you can mess up the communication for the competitor. In addition, making lots of noise helps to excite your team and give them an adrenaline rush and play better. Stadium horns are great spirit items to accomplish this. They are compact, easy to use, and extremely loud. These also are great sellers in school booster club stores. The horns pictured have a break-away lanyard attached to them so they can rest around your neck for easy reach when you need the horn and the break-away lanyard feature makes it safer to put around your neck. - Pom Poms – Poms are one of the classic spirit items for cheering on your team. The are many different options of pom poms including a long handle, ring tab handle, Klicker handle (makes noise), and a fatter handle. In addition you can choose up to 4 different streamer colors as well as other options such as glitter added to the streamers. The handles can be imprinted with a business sponsor name or the school or team name. These easily sell for $1-$2 each in the school store. Since the price point is so low, you can easily expect to sell hundreds of pom poms per game.
- Foam Fingers – How could you have a football game without foam fingers? These have been around since around 1978 with the original #1 foam hand; however, now there are hundreds of different designs including paws, talons, mascot shapes, and many different finger shapes, including the controversial foam middle finger. It is very likely that no matter what your mascot may be, there is already a shape or design that will fit perfectly for your team. If not, you can easily get custom shapes available that will be completely unique just for your team.
- Megaphones – These are also classic spirit items used for yelling and amplifying your voice to cheer for your team and also to show your displeasure with a bad call. Megaphone are cheap to buy; therefore, the selling price to fans can be cheap which will allow for more sales.
- Stadium Cups – These are most commonly used in the concession stand when drinks are purchased so the fans have a souvenir cup to take home. These tend to stick around at the house for years afterwards, and I speak from experience. I have at least a dozen stadium cups from various events, restaurants, and sporting events. You can get stadium cups for around 50 cents and just bump the price of the soft drink up to cover the cup costs and make it easier to sell drinks since the fans are also getting a useful item to take home with them with the team mascot printed on it.
- Signature Footballs – These footballs are great to sell if you can work out autograph sessions at the end of football games, so the players can sign balls for the kids. These footballs have a white panel on the ball specifically for autographs. Kids love autographs from the team and these balls are just another item that can generate some revenue for your club.
There are many items available for fundraising which also generate team spirit with the fans. In order to be successful with your booster club, you must have a wide variety of spirit items available for purchase and get your local businesses involved. Local businesses are often very eager to sponsor their local teams and support their community. All you have to do is just ask them. Don’t let dwindling athletic budgets hurt your football team. With thriving school spirit stores, your team will be on it’s way to new uniforms and equipment in no time with the flow of money coming in from spirit items. Even small schools can sell a lot of merchandise, so don’t let size stop you from offering spirit items through a booster club store.
21 Ideas for Promotional Mini Footballs
Mini footballs are one of the most popular spirit items for the sport of football. You see them at almost all football games. Here are a few creative ideas mixed in with some classic uses of promotional mini footballs.
- Mini footballs make great centerpieces for football banquets and parties.
- Use them in a friendly game of two hand touch football.
- At a festival, set up a booth and let participants try to toss the football through the hole to win a prize.
- Use them as end of the season gifts for coaches, players, and volunteers.
- Have a fundraising event and charge people to peg the coach in the head with a football. The fans can take out any aggression from that previous loss. Make sure and use the vinyl mini football since it is softer.
- Have a distance throwing contest.
- Sell the mini footballs in the booster club to help raise money for the team.
- Get local businesses to sponsor by having their logo printed on the balls.
- Have the cheerleaders throw out the balls to the crowd every time your team scores a touchdown.
- Give out the mini footballs with the game schedule printed on them.
- Give out a mini football with the team mascot printed on them to every season ticket order.
- Use them as birthday party invitations by printing the party time and RSVP info on the balls. We have also sold a lot of these for wedding save the date balls for football themed weddings.
- Toss them around for fun with a friend or your son.
- Bounce them off the wall when you are bored.
- Hang the footballs from the ceiling as a party decoration.
- Print coupons on the balls that say, “Bring this ball in to redeem for a FREE ___” Once you get the ball back, you can give it out to someone else to help bring in more business.
- Use them for autograph sessions if you have a pro player on site.
- Donate them to a Children’s ministry as gifts for kids.
- Use them to squeeze as an exercise tool to build up muscles in your forearm. You will need the vinyl mini footballs for this one too.
- Support your local team by giving them out with a purchase to your local patrons.
- Use them as giveaways for Facebook contests on your business Facebook page to encourage your fans to visit your page often.
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