CSU arts management expert explains why sports and the arts are teaming up for the Snoop Dogg Arizona Bowl

As the Colorado State University Rams gear up to play the Miami University (Ohio) RedHawks Dec. 28 at The Snoop Dogg Arizona Bowl, the game’s new sponsor is getting almost as much attention as the teams themselves. 

The game is being sponsored by its namesake, Snoop Dogg and presented by Gin & Juice by Dre and Snoop, just one of the rapper’s many non-musical collaborations with businesses and organizations, including Adidas, Grubhub, T-Mobile, Solo Stove, BIC and the Summer Olympics. 

“It’s time that we get back to the roots of college football. When it was focused on the colleges, the players, the competition, the community, the fan experience and the pageantry,” Snoop said in social media video at the time the game rebrand was announced. “It’s only fitting that I step up and help get this thing right. I’m ready to bring the juice back to college football.” 

It’s the first time a musician has tied his name and brand to a college bowl game. But Michael Seman, director of the CSU Arts Management program, says it won’t be the last.  

SOURCE spoke with Seman, a former executive with the Los Angeles talent and sports firm Creative Artists Agency, about the collaboration and what it could mean for sports, music and college football. 

So, CSU is going to the Snoop Dogg Arizona Bowl. This is the first bowl game named after a musician but it’s definitely not the first time sports and music have mixed. There’s a long history there. Why do these worlds so frequently mix?

When you get down to it, whether you’re looking at sports or looking at the arts, it’s all entertainment. The person that is on the court playing in the NBA or for the CSU Rams is no different than that musician who has come up through the music scene and dedicated their lives to one single endeavor. It’s the same thing. 

Just the other day I was watching the Broncos win, and the absolute dedication, physical strength, agility and mental acumen of the players is, to me, no different than that of a principal dancer in the American Ballet Theatre or the Bolshoi. 

Research shows that music during sports enhances the experience, heightens our allegiance to a team or a player and connects us to the experience more, but I’m wondering what does the music side get out of the deal?

Well, look at The White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army.” That’s quite the payday for Jack White. When you have a song played that much at sporting events there’s definitely a financial windfall. 

But that’s also a song that shows how music can reach a very visceral level in human beings. It can boost your adrenaline. In terms of sports, there are songs like that that just really get a crowd going. Honestly, I don’t know if that song will ever die out. The White Stripes will always have some sort of popularity because of it.

It’s often said that the arts are over here, and sports are over there but really, they’re both great uniters. If you look at it in the context of social cohesion, you have things that bridge audiences and things that bond audiences. 

With bonding, you basically bring together the same types of people who like the same sorts of things. With bridging, you have these groups of people that normally wouldn’t ever interact, but because of a sporting event or a music event they’re all there at the same time in the same place enjoying the same thing. 

Look at Willie Nelson. He is great at that. Look at any number of sports teams that have broad audiences, say for example the Las Vegas Raiders, that cover a broad swath of people that might not normally hang out with each other, but they’re more than happy to all cheer on the Raiders together. 

Whether it’s sports or music, the baseline is it’s all entertainment, and it’s entertainment that bridges social gaps. 

Do you think more college/music relationships will come about following the Snoop Bowl?

I would definitely say there will be, and I would not be shocked if the next music-driven bowl is from a country artist that is sponsoring a bowl game in Nashville. 

The music industry is very challenging right now. It’s always been a challenging proposition if you’re an artist. It’s not the easiest industry. But there will always be a Taylor Swift. There will always be artists that are in this higher echelon. 

For someone like Snoop Dogg, who is a genius at building his brand, it’s just natural that at a certain point when you’re making a certain amount of income, you’re looking for ways to leverage your brand across multiple revenue streams beyond your core product, and one of those streams could be sports via a bowl game. 

Again, if we think about that level playing field of entertainment, this is just one more channel that Snoop can push his brand into, which to me makes absolute sense. 

What about from the other side of things? Do we often see sports stars getting into the music world and other forms of entertainment?

Definitely. The list of sports stars who have made in-roads into entertainment is long. You have someone like Damian Lillard who is playing for the Milwaukee Bucks and has a great career as hip-hop artist Dame D.O.L.L.A. Blake Griffin, who played for many teams in the NBA, is now going into comedy. Then there is LeBron James and his solid work in film and television. Long before all of this, former Cincinnati Bengals star, Mike Reid left professional football for a highly successful career as a Grammy Award-winning country music songwriter and artist. 

Some athletes do commercials and endorsements to a certain level, and then there are some who truly become the brand, and that’s why they are so sought after to work with. Snoop, as he always does, is taking it to a new level though, without a doubt. 

Before entering academia, I was an executive at Creative Artists Agency in Los Angeles not too long after the explosion of what was dubbed “gangsta rap.” Several of those artists, including Snoop Dogg, have had fantastic careers outside of music. When I was at CAA, they worked with Ice Cube and one of my tasks was to help the agents suggest ways he could expand his brand across multiple revenue streams. And that clearly worked.  It’s interesting to note that one of Ice Cube’s most recent endeavors is founding the successful Big 3 pro basketball league. 

All of this makes sense when you think about it. That music scene was based in South Central Los Angeles, which includes Inglewood and Compton, and that’s only a couple miles from Beverly Hills. So, you have this intense concentration of raw talent and ambition in close proximity to this intense concentration of money and entertainment industry knowledge. Now it is spilling over into sports. 

What about the fact that this collaboration is with a college bowl game rather than a professional league? Is that the newest platform for these types of partnerships? 

Definitely. With the whole NIL direction universities are embracing, in some ways I would argue that CSU has a great advantage in that not only do we have an arts management program, but we also have a sports management program and a music business minor. 

If you’re trying to attract an athlete, how great is it to be able to pitch them a wholistic program? If they are looking to follow a path like Dame Lillard or LeBron James, they could not only come here and play for the Rams but also get an education that sets them up for success as an entrepreneur with equal footing in the management of a career in sports and the arts. Not every university can offer that.