Barstool Sports, the sports and pop culture website, has secured title sponsorship and exclusive broadcasting rights to US college football’s Arizona Bowl.
Under the agreement, the game will move from linear television and be streamed on Barstool’s website, app and social media channels.
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Barstool will replace national network CBS which has shown the game on its main channel and CBS Sports Network since the bowl game was first held in 2015.
Naming rights to the Arizona Bowl were held by real estate company Offerpad last year.
Barstool has agreed a multi-year deal for both the sponsorship and media rights.
This year’s Arizona Bowl is scheduled to take place on 31 December at the University of Arizona Stadium in Tucson.
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By GlobalDataThe deal marks Barstool’s first sports rights acquisition and its first college football broadcast.
The online platform is planning an entire week of Barstool Bowl festivities in Tucson leading up to the game.
The bowl game features teams from the Mountain West and Mid-American Conferences and is owned and operated by Tucson-based non-profit TD4Tucson, which donates 100 per cent of net proceeds to charity.
MAC champion Ball State beat Mountain West champion San Jose State in last season’s Arizona Bowl.
The agreement was brokered by Colorado-based sponsorship agency Impression Sports.
Barstool has strategically looked to expand into college sports recently and organised a golf tournament in Arizona earlier this year after the NCAA women’s golf regional was cancelled.
It also launched Barstool Athletics Inc. to partner with hundreds of NCAA athletes as ambassadors in the wake of the recent rule change, adopted by the NCAA, allowing college athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness.
Arizona is an important market for the company due to its Barstool Sportsbook, which will launch in the state this autumn.
Penn National Gaming acquired a 36 per cent stake in Barstool Sports in 2020 in a $163 million deal that led to the launch of the sportsbook.
