E ric Smallwood roots for the Tigers, absolutely, but he's not reliving a moment of glory in front of the television as he watches that series-ending home run make its descent into the left-field stands. He's at his computer, counting.
The timer on his screen marks the seconds -- one, two, three "That's four seconds of the top of the scoreboard," he says, and one second of the sign below it.
Five seconds of screen time, total, for one of the biggest winners in Detroit's unlikely stroll to the World Series:
Comerica Bank.
Check it out next time Magglio Ordonez's homer shows up on ESPN. Watch the backdrop as the ball soars into the seats.
It's the scoreboard, with those big white letters just above the giant screen -- "Comerica Park."
Every time the baseball leaves the field on "SportsCenter," Smallwood says, it's worth $1,583. Every time a Fox broadcaster mentions the name of the stadium, the meter turns.
Every time "Comerica Park" shows up in a newspaper, no matter where the paper or where in the paper, it's worth a measurable amount of money.
Comerica Bank paid $66 million for the right to pin its name on the Tigers' new stadium. These days, it's feeling like a bargain.
And would somebody at a network someplace please cue up that home run again?
"From our perspective," says Comerica's Wayne Mielke, "they can't show it enough."
Five days before Christmas in 1998, Ernie Harwell took the podium at a press conference and became the first person to publicly speak the words "Comerica Park.
" Like Ordonez's home run, that was a bonus for the bank; the three decades of the contract didn't kick in until the stadium opened for business in April 2000.
Never mind that the Tigers' ballclubs were somewhere between weak and abysmal for the next six years. "We knew that sooner or later in a 30-year contract," says Mielke, the vice-president for corporate communications, "this day would come.
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When it did, Smallwood had it on tape, dissected and parceled and priced.
Smallwood, 35, is the vice-president of marketing in the Port Huron office of Front Row Marketing Services, whose specialties include evaluating and analyzing sponsorships. He's an engaging Eastern Michigan alumnus whose job has left him almost incapable of watching a hockey game: All he notices are the signs circling the rink.
He measures sporting events in terms of "media value," the price of a given piece of exposure if it were purchased as an advertisement. ESPN's "SportsCenter" charges about $9,500 for a 30-second ad. Five seconds of Comerica's name as a backdrop to a classic home run equals one-sixth of a commercial, or $1,583.
When Fox broadcasters Thom Brenneman and Lou Piniella welcomed viewers back to Comerica Park during the American League Championship Series, or mentioned the brisk weather at Comerica Park, or noted how happy the fans seemed at Comerica Park, each utterance was worth 10 seconds of a commercial.
The rationale there is that in an average 30-second ad, the product gets mentioned three times. Smallwood deals heavily in averages and projections, and his figures for the playoffs were startling -- $1.
27 million for each home game in the Division Series, $2.6 million for the next round, $6.2 million for the World Series.
Assuming only two home games for the Tigers in the World Series, that's still about $20.1 million worth of national love for Comerica.
Maybe, maybe not
Assumptions, of course, can be dangerous.
At the 2004 Super Bowl in Houston, CBS broadcasters mentioned Reliant Stadium 11 times. The next year in Jacksonville, the Fox crew didn't mention Alltel Stadium once. The game might as well have been played in a railroad yard.
Alltel didn't complain, though, because during Paul McCartney's halftime show, the backlit signs that said "Alltel Stadium" stayed on when everything else went dark. "They lit up like a beacon," Smallwood says. "Sixty-four seconds of exposure.
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The value would seem somewhat negated in markets where a sponsor doesn't do business. But Comerica Bank is more focused on the places it's making inroads, such as California (65 branches), Texas (64) and Florida (8).
"These are places where we're not nearly a household name," Mielke says.
"The media exposure is priceless."
Besides, Smallwood points out, you can buy Comerica shares, even in cities where you can't find a Comerica drive-up window.
"Incidentally," he adds, "Comerica stock is up 45 cents today.
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Neal Rubin appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at (313) 222-1874 or .
Copyright 2006 The Detroit News.
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