ABOUT ATLANTA’S BOWL
Started: 1968
Name history: Known as the Peach Bowl from 1968-96, Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl from 1997-2005, Chick-fil-A Bowl from 2006-13 and now, again, the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl.
This year's game: 1 p.m., Dec. 31, Georgia Dome
Role in College Football Playoff: It is one of six bowls that will serve as rotating sites of semifinal games in the four-team playoff that starts this year. Each of the six bowls will host one semifinal every three years. The Rose and Sugar bowls will host the semis for the 2014 season, the Orange and Cotton bowls for the 2015 season, and the Fiesta and Peach for the 2016 season. The six bowls will be played on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day each season.
Role in national championship game: The playoff group bids out the right to host the national championship game similarly to the way the NFL chooses Super Bowl sites. The first championship game of the playoff era will be played in Arlington, Texas, and the next two in Glendale, Ariz., and Tampa, Fla. Atlanta plans to bid for the 2017 season's championship game.
The name won’t be the only change as Atlanta’s bowl game, rebranded last week as the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, transitions into the new College Football Playoff.
The bowl no longer will select its teams. It no longer will receive revenue from TV and naming-rights deals. It will have to relocate some fans from their customary seats. And ticket prices will rise sharply.
The changes stem from the bowl’s deal with the playoff and, in turn, the playoff’s deal with ESPN.
“It’s a whole new business model,” said Gary Stokan, the bowl’s president since 1998.
He willingly accepted the changes, which take effect this year, as the price of admission to a prestigious group of six bowls that will alternate as hosts of national semifinal games in the new playoff system. Still, the changes are dramatic in at least three areas:
Team selection: For 46 years, the Atlanta bowl picked its own teams. But in the new system, the playoff's selection committee will assign teams to the bowl, not only in the one year out of three that it serves as a national semifinal, but in the other years as well.
TV and title sponsor: In the past, the bowl negotiated its own broadcasting and title-sponsorship deals. But in the new system, those rights (and revenue streams) were assigned to the playoff group, which then sold them to ESPN. To remain the title sponsor, Chick-fil-A spent a year negotiating an agreement with ESPN.
Tickets: The ascent from mid-tier bowl to marquee event will bring dramatic price increases and changes in the seating configuration. Tickets will range from $110 to $260 this year, up from $80-$125 last year. Lower-level sideline seats will cost $235, up from $90. The participating teams' ticket allotments were in the end zones in the past, enabling the bowl to sell the sideline seats locally, but the new deal mandates that the teams get about half of the sideline seats. That means many renewing local buyers will have their seat locations downgraded.
The new business model calls for the six bowls in the playoff rotation to get their revenue primarily from ticket sales.
“It’s incumbent upon us in the new model to sell the bowl out,” Stokan said. “The only revenue streams we have now to meet the expenses of overhead, salaries and putting on the game are tickets and some local sponsorships in categories that ESPN doesn’t have. … That’s why corporate Atlanta and the fans of Atlanta are so important to keeping this game successful.”
After covering expenses, the bowl will retain a management fee and then 15 percent of its profits, with the other 85 percent going to the playoff group, Stokan said.
The playoff group is responsible for payouts to the participating teams, previously the bowl’s responsibility. The bowl paid a combined $7.4 million to the teams last season.
Stokan said the bowl is determined in the new model to continue its history of giving to charities — $1.6 million last year and $17 million since Chick-fil-A became title sponsor in 1997.
After Chick-fil-A negotiated with ESPN for the right to keep its name on the game for at least the next six years, with an option to renew for six more, the company quickly worked out a supplemental deal with bowl officials regarding issues such as tickets, hospitality and some signage. The bowl also can sell local sponsorships in product categories outside the 15 controlled and sold by ESPN, Stokan said.
In the years it has a semifinal game, the bowl will feature matchups of the nation’s No. 1 team vs. No. 4, or No. 2 vs. No. 3. In other years, including this one, it’ll be assigned a non-playoff matchup of teams likely ranked in the top 15. Atlanta’s 22-year tradition of guaranteed annual ACC-versus-SEC postseason matchups ends.
The bowl began its ticket-renewal campaign last week, promising those who buy tickets this year and next an opportunity to buy them for Atlanta’s first national semifinal in the 2016 season.
The changes also affect Chick-fil-A, which substantially increased its ESPN advertising buy as part of the title-sponsorship deal and accepted sharing the bowl name with Peach again after having it solo for eight years. The playoff group required a moniker as well as a corporate sponsor in the names of the six bowls in the semifinal rotation.
Bowl and Chick-fil-A officials think the upside of being in the playoff system easily justifies all of the changes.
“It … is going to take the bowl and college football in the city of Atlanta to a whole other level,” said Steve Robinson, Chick-fil-A’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer. “It’s a whole new dynamic.”
