The Indianapolis Colts have few problems drawing fans to Lucas Oil Stadium, their sparkling year-old home.

The National Football League team easily sold out all of their 2009 home games. In fact, the team is so popular that it has waiting lists for both club seats and season tickets. Getting on each waiting list requires a $150 non-refundable fee.

Yet owner Jim Irsay, team president Bill Polian and senior vice president of sales and marketing Tom Zupancic all see a big opportunity for growth in Indianapolis' Hispanic community.

Starting this season, the team's two pre-season home games and all eight regular-season home games will air in Spanish on locally owned WSYW-AM 810 "La Que Buena" and WEDJ-FM 107.1 "Radio Latina"

The inaugural broadcast is set for August 14, when the Colts host the Minnesota Vikings. An August 20 pre-season match against the Philadelphia Eagles is also on the schedule. Regular-season matches start September 13, when the Colts host the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Serving as the en español play-by-play announcer is Armando Quintero, who was first hired by the Colts in August 2003 after spending 21 seasons as the Dallas Cowboys' Spanish-language broadcast voice.

The hiring of Quintero was a major move for the Colts. But the move may have come too soon for the team. After the 2004 season, the team stopped its Spanish-language broadcasts. Quintero moved on, becoming the game-day commentator for CBS Radio Sports/Westwood One's Spanish-language NFL coverage.

"We were a little bit ahead of the curve," says Zupancic, who lobbied heavily for Quintero's hiring. "We were ready. We had Armando, who is an excellent spokesman for the Hispanic community. But we made some assumptions and errors in judgment."

The worst assumption, Zupancic admits, was that the Colts thought the advertisers were ready for Spanish-language team broadcasts. They weren't.

"From grocery stores to car dealers, they knew they had to attract the Hispanic consumer," Zupancic says. "But they didn't know how - and they had no budget for it."

Enter Mark Clark, a local radio sales executive who saw a big opportunity for the Colts in the Hispanic market. At first, Clark approached the team about Spanish-language television coverage. Rights issues ended those discussions, but the Colts and Clark soon started talking about radio possibilities. Clark, a member of the WSYW and WEDJ sales team, discussed his strengths in attracting advertisers to stations that targeted Latino audiences.

The Colts liked what Clark offered to bring in sponsors, and the team agreed to sell him statewide rights to all Spanish-language broadcasts for the 2009-10 season.

Clark jumped at the opportunity, forming his own company - dubbed Compelling Content - to focus solely on selling the Colts' Spanish-language broadcasts. He then went and approached Quintero about returning to the Colts' broadcast booth.

Quintero agreed, signing a deal with Compelling Content. 

Meanwhile, Clark is primed for attracting advertisers and sponsors. He says his phone has been ringing off the hook, with Regions Bank and Burger King actively negotiating for advertising opportunities.

"The market has grown, and marketers have become more sophisticated," Clark says. "It's now about establishing value in the marketplace, and making an informed decision on where to place your buy."

Since the team's mid-July announcement that all of its home games would be broadcast in Spanish, Clark has received several verbal commitments from key advertisers. "I am 100 percent confident we will have the season sold out by August 14," he says.

Clark says he's also been negotiating with a "who's who of Fortune 100 companies that are teetering on doing business" with the Hispanic market in Indianapolis.

Zupancic hints that regional superstore Meijer and local financial institution Huntington Bank, as well as Toyota, are close to agreements as Spanish-language broadcast sponsors.

Zupancic also has faith in Clark's abilities to lure advertisers. In fact, the team is already talking with him about offering every Colts game - home and away - in Spanish for the 2010 and 2011 seasons.

Meanwhile, Zupancic turned to a friend in New York to serve as the official English-to-Spanish translator of game-focused articles appearing on the Indianapolis Colts' website. The team has also made sure that it has Spanish-speaking guest services employees, so that Hispanic fans that do get to the stadium feel welcome.

There is also the presence of wide receiver Anthony González, a Cleveland native who was selected by the Colts in the 2007 NFL Draft following a successful collegiate career at Ohio State University. With bonuses, González earns $1,306,250 a year as a member of the team.

Zupancic sees González's presence on the Colts as highly valuable both on and off the field. "He has done a lot for us in the Hispanic community," he says. "I think it is a big plus to have him on the team. He's a quiet guy, and he's all about playing football. But he's also a community guy, and that is a huge help for us."
HSB

* Although Indianapolis' emerging Hispanic market is gaining notice from the advertising community, local Spanish-speakers lost their only television station on New Year's Eve 2008. WIIH-Channel 17, which signed on as an Univision affiliate in March 2003, went dark after the network and the station's owner - LIN Television Corp. - were unable to negotiate a new contract. For more details, click here.

Hispanic Indianapolis - Facts and Figures

120,375 - Hispanics in the Indianapolis DMA who speak Spanish at home - accounting for 4.2 percent of the population.

98,035 - Hispanics of Mexican origin that reside in the Indianapolis DMA. Other Latino ethnic groups of significance include Puerto Ricans, who number 8,200, and Colombians, who total 2,300 in population.

20,000 - The average audited circulation of La Voz de Indiana, a bilingual newspaper that publishes every other Wednesday.

Source: Geoscape's American Marketscape DataStream: 2009 Series
 

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