FedEx Signs on with NHL, Plots Fedorovian Slam at the Competition

Just weeks before the opening of the National Hockey League season, FedEx is close to signing a two-year sponsorship agreement with the NHL that would make it the league's official overnight carrier.

Sports marketing sources pegged the deal in the low seven figures, likely including a media commitment to the NHL's Fox/ESPN coverage schedule. The nature of NHL hockey gives FedEx an ideal creative platform to promulgate its message of speed and performance. Longtime FedEx agency BBDO, N.Y., already has a spot in the works for which it hopes to sign and use Sergei Fedorov and other members of the Stanley Cup champion Red Wings.

The deal would give the overnight delivery market leader a winter/spring platform to add to its array of sports sponsorships, which include entitlement to the Orange Bowl and CART, along with a USA Basketball sponsorship via the NBA.

League officials would not comment on the pending contract, but a FedEx deal would be the first time the NHL has signed a sponsor in the competitive, sports-heavy category. UPS has been an Olympic and NFL sponsor. The U.S. Postal Service just signed on as a sponsor of the Heisman Trophy (Brandweek, Aug. 24).

The Fedorov/Red Wings ad, as planned, would illustrate what happens when the Stanley Cup is not shipped via FedEx. In what would be a rare commercial use of hockey's most famous icon -- the league will likely insist on the agency using a faux Stanley Cup)-the spot would show the trophy alongside livestock in the fields of a Guatemalan farmer whose name, Jose Luis Arena, is a Spanish-language variant of the Red Wings' home rink, Joe Louis Arena. Meanwhile, a cadre of the champion Red Wings will be shown celebrating their victorious ways by hoisting a bag of feed intended for the Guatemalan farmer, instead of the NHL's treasured chalice. The tag remains, "Don't just send it, FedEx it."

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