Georgetown Ranks 59th in Royalties from Merchandise

[hoyasaxa2003]

The Collegiate Licensing Company recently released it's list of schools with the most merchandising royalties from July 1, 2012 to June 30, 2013. Not surprising, Texas is number one, and the top 20 is filled with SEC football programs and southern schools. The one caveat is that the CLC only has 92 of 125 FBS schools, so there are some schools like Baylor, Indiana, Iowa, Iowa State, Kansas State, Michigan State, Mississippi State, N.C. State, Ohio State, Oregon and Southern California, that are not on the list.

The reason I found it interesting is that Georgetown ranks 59th on this list. I actually think that's pretty good considering we do not have a Division I-A/FBS football program, and we haven't really made any waves in March since 2007.

Check out the full list, but the top 10 are: Texas, Alabama, Notre Dame, Michigan, Kentucky, LSU, Florida, Georgia, UNC, and Arkansas.

If I am reading this list right, we are the highest ranked school that doesn't play FBS football. I don't see any other Big East programs on this list, but for old times sake, the "old" Big East schools:

Notre Dame - 3
West Virginia - 17
Louisville - 25
Syracuse - 32
Pittsburgh - 52
Connecticut - 53
Rutgers - 57
Georgetown - 59
USF - 63

Other notables:

Duke - 34
Boise State - 38
Maryland - 45
TCU - 46
UVA - 47
East Carolina - 54
Boston College - 56
UCF - 62
Memphis - 66
Gonzaga - 73

I haven't done a thorough analysis, but clearly the big football and SEC schools dominate the top 75, in general.  The new Big East barely makes a showing through Georgetown.  The AAC will have a number of schools in the top 75 (mostly at the bottom), and the ACC does decently well here too. 

[kghoya]

Below Boston College? That hurts.

[skyhoya]

lost some of glitter from JT2 days, I think we still have the brand, just not spending money on our stuff. Secondly, we do pass out a lot of free T-shirts, which is cool for our fans.

[jgalt]

Last week, when the NCAA announced it was going to stop selling school merchandise and Johnny Manziel was causing such a stir, I saw it reported that Texas A&M only made $65K from jersey sales last year. Thats only jerseys not t-shirts, but it was way lower than I would think.

[Highsmith]

For as much as football adds to all those other schools--#59 is pretty darn good.

[Boz]

Ice Cube needs to make some more movies!

And not the "ferrying around and watching over bratty kids" kind of movies.

[nashvillehoyas]

It was not long ago that Georgetown was a top 5 program with CLC sales. Any sporting goods store was stocked with Georgetown merchandise, especially in the south and enter cities.

[prhoya]

Aug 14, 2013 22:11:17 GMT -5 nashvillehoyas said:

It was not long ago that Georgetown was a top 5 program with CLC sales. Any sporting goods store was stocked with Georgetown merchandise, especially in the south and enter cities.

"Long ago" is relative.

[hoyasaxa2003]

Aug 14, 2013 22:12:31 GMT -5 prhoya said:

Aug 14, 2013 22:11:17 GMT -5 nashvillehoyas said:

It was not long ago that Georgetown was a top 5 program with CLC sales. Any sporting goods store was stocked with Georgetown merchandise, especially in the south and enter cities.

"Long ago" is relative.

Obviously, Georgetown's heyday was the 1980s and early 1990s, and I am sure their merchandising would have ranked a lot higher on any list at the time. This is directly related to the Patrick Ewing teams of the early 1980s, the championship, and the solid teams that followed with Mourning, Mutumbo, etc. If you watch Hoop Dreams, from 1994, there is Georgetown apparel all over the place, and that was in Chicago - far from DC.

In my mind, the period that killed Georgetown as far as its profile in basketball was the mid-1990s through the Esherick era (and without Allen Iverson, you could probably push that back even farther back). While Georgetown faltered and disappeared from the limelight, other programs came to the forefront at a time when sports exploded because of ESPN and more of a focus on college basketball, in general.

That said, people are fickle, and I think that if Georgetown could put together a strong run of NCAA success within 4-5 years, I think Georgetown's profile would grow, and you'd see us shoot up those rankings. Of course, a national championship would be the ultimate boost.

That said, I don't think Georgetown could ever compete with the Texas, Alabama, and LSU's of the world. In those places, nearly the entire state is COVERED with apparel for those teams. If you go to Louisiana during football season, there is purple gold everywhere, there are a bunch of unofficial shops dedicated to selling LSU gear, and people buy the stuff in large amounts. Not only do you get the typical t-shirts and jerseys, but you also have coasters, tissues, and cake cutters (really, I've seen all of these these).

For programs like those in the SEC, football is almost a religion, and it is all consuming of the state. By its nature, that ensures that those programs will always sell a lot more merchandise than a non-football school (or one with a less prominent program). Georgetown simply cannot compete on the same playing field (it would almost be the equivalent of everybody in northern Virginia, southern Maryland, and DC buying Georgetown stuff all the time - it won't happen).

[jgalt]

Also Georgetown was relatively early to the merchandise game because of relationships with Nike. The economics of the industry have also changed. The cost of custom apparel or small runs has been reduced drastically and margins on cotton items have gone up as production and cotton growing has moved over seas. All this has made it much more profitable for apparel manufacturers to license from smaller schools. As school like Norfolk state for example may only have offered a t-shirt and sweatshirt with the schools name on it in 80s, now they can offer five different official jerseys, dozens of men's and women's t-shirts, and all manner of hats, sweatshirts, blankets, ties, etc. And faster, on demand, production makes it profitable for Nike of Adidas to hold the rights of schools in case there is a temporary, unexpected demand for a schools merchandise (like FGCU after this years NCAAs).

I dont have any evidence, because the revenue for schools isnt published (or at least in a way that is easy for me to find), but I would think that over time the total amount spent on merchandise has grown rather steadily but that the distribution of those revenues has changed drastically. The revenues of big state schools has grown steadily and is probably tied to a certain extant to population (with certain exceptions for schools in the Big 10, SEC and Big 12 who dont compete against Pro teams). And the revenues for smaller schools has jumped way up (though is probably still low). And for schools like Gtown who had big national success early on but have faded over time have seen their revenues grow only in line with inflation (more or less). I would think St. Johns probably shows a similar pattern. Essentially the revenues that gtown used to get has flowed now to smaller schools that did have the same merchandise offerings in 80s.

[wrestlemania]

Agree with Silver, particularly the observation about the Esherick era. JTII recognized, correctly, that the decline would be extremely difficult to reverse if something wasn't done -- enter JTIII. 59th in merch sales might not set the world on fire, but those who remember that period know it could have been a lot worse.

[DFW HOYA]

Placing credit (or blame) on coaches doesn't really address the changes in the licensing business which have moved Georgetown well down the list. I do not claim to be in that business, but a few observations:

1 Georgetown was highly ranked early because they were an very early adopter of licensing agreements. For many years, the football schools did not join CLC and thus were not in the rankings. Outside of a few holdouts (Southern California, Ohio State), almost every major progam is affiliated with CLC, and even a few that aren't major at all but like the idea of merchandise royalties: among them, schools like NYU, Spelman, and Alaska-Anchorage.

2. A winning team does not guarantee merchandising success--Texas Tech had more royalties than Syracuse or Duke.

3. Georgetown has never consistently marketed product to alumni or even donors. As to the Hoop Club's exit from merchandising and donor relations, I'll leave that to some of our committee members here.

4. Royalties can be had from two sources: national or "standard" licenses (Nike, Adidas, UA, etc.) and local licensees. Because Georgetown is so closely tied to Nike, there is not many royalties coming from GU gear from other major merchandise companies. But the lack of the smaller licensees, the ones that sell to local bookstores or pop up around gamedays probably limits Georgetown's exposure as much as anything. If you don't want an Adidas cap for Notre Dame, chances are there are a lot of other choices. Non-Nike gear for Georgetown is a lot less than it could be.

5. As to Nike; OK, I've been skeptical, critical, or just plain sour on them for a while now. One reason is that Nike offers very little, if any, GU merchandise outside basketball, and after your kid has two or three Georgetown shirts, what's the point in buying them anything else? In the merchandise business, football attire sells and frankly, most people wouldn't care where Georgetown was playing in football, but if they saw a jersey they might buy one, or a baseball jersey or even a soccer jersey. Ole Miss or Missouri or Maryland can sell lots of sports, but Georgetown only has one sport in Nike's warehouse.

6. I do not know for sure, but would guess that international sales play a role in overall royalties, and aside from a very small number of educated students, a "Georgetown" sweatshirt may not be as marketable as one that says "Florida", or "Texas". It's probably like soccer--the kids in the US want the Man-U shirt, a little less for Swansea or Hull City.