The University of North Texas athletic department was prepared to scour the country to find a company willing to pay millions of dollars for the right to attach its name to the school's new football stadium.
In the end, a call to a partner it already knew well paid off in the form of a 20-year, $20 million deal with Apogee, an Austin-based Internet and technology services supplier specializing in higher education.
UNT announced it had named its venue Apogee Stadium during a press conference Friday at the stadium.
UNT's deal with Apogee is the second-largest for a college football stadium and is expected to dramatically impact the future of the entire UNT athletic department.
Only the 25-year, $35 million deal TCF Bank completed with Minnesota in 2005 exceeds what Apogee is paying per year in its deal with UNT. The university has been an Apogee client since 2007.
"This will help the whole athletic department, not just the football program," said C. Dan Smith, chairman of the UNT Board of Regents. "[UNT athletic director Rick Villarreal] has done a tremendous job over the last 10 years with very basic financial support. With the financial support we are getting from Apogee, we will explode in all sports."
UNT's 30,850-seat stadium cost $79 million and will be paid for partly by a student fee of $10 per semester credit hour. The fee was approved in 2009 and will go into effect this fall, when the stadium opens.
UNT will play its first game in the new venue on Sept. 10 against the University of Houston.
The school's athletic department will now have at its disposal the additional revenue streams that both the fee and the naming rights deal provide.
"This revenue will be part of our corporate revenue line," Villarreal said of the naming rights deal. "At the end of the year, we will figure out how it will be disbursed. Sometime before I leave here, I would like to create an endowment so that we can have some money tucked away. If we need to use it, we may, but that is something we won't decide today."
UNT spent the afternoon celebrating what school officials described as the latest in a series of landmark moments for its athletic program.
The school hired former Iowa State University head coach Dan McCarney to take over its football program after last season and is just weeks away from playing its first game in its new stadium.
"There are so many things you can look at today that are on the positive side," Smith said. "This is just one of them. They are piling up."
Chuck Brady, Apogee's founder and CEO, said that company officials could see those positives, which was why they decided to enter into one of the more unique naming rights deals for a college venue in the country.
"We look at the challenges higher education is facing and see North Texas as a leader," Brady said. "It's a well-run institution that has a bright future. We were looking for a way to increase awareness of what we do. The stadium is a perfect opportunity."
The deal came together in a matter of months after UNT officials and John Alper, a consultant with CSL Marketing who helped broker the deal, first contacted Apogee officials.
Alper researched the companies UNT has contracts with and selected several potential targets, including Apogee, which differs from many companies that purchase stadium naming rights because the company does not deal directly with the public.
"If you looked at a list of all the naming rights deals for stadiums across the country, less than five are not direct-to-consumer companies," Alper said.
UNT didn't meet face to face with Apogee officials until May 17.
The more UNT and Apogee officials talked, the more they believed expanding their partnership made sense.
In this case, the signage that is typical of most stadium naming rights contracts was reduced and replaced by opportunities for Apogee to promote its technology on campus.
"We have schools all over the country and need one place to take people," Brady said. "It was the perfect venue."
UNT officials welcome that opportunity.
"When people look at Apogee, what they do, how they do it and their mentality about the future, they fit right with us," Smith said. "They are on the cutting edge of their industry, the stadium is on the cutting edge and the university is on the cutting edge in higher education."
UNT and Apogee officials believe that both the company and the Mean Green athletic department will take off largely because of the partnership.
"This stadium puts North Texas on the map and we get to come along for the ride," Brady said. "That is how we see it."
BRETT VITO can be reached at 940-566-6870. His e-mail address is bvito@dentonrc.com.
