July 05, 2010
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News: BofA Gives NFL Cardholders Two Months
If you are a cardholder of a Bank of America co-branded National Football League (NFL) credit card, you have just two months left to spend those remaining reward points before they expire. In June, Britain's Barclaycard announced it signed an exclusive multi-year contract with the NFL to market credit cards with NFL team names. Unfortunately, Bank of America cardholders currently holding an NFL credit card will not have the option of transferring reward points to the new Barclay card. However, there are a number of appealing benefits that current cardholders can spend their reward points on. It isn't known why Bank of America will not be continuing their business relationship with the NFL, however, it will remain the official lender of Major League Baseball.
There has been some speculation that Bank of America no longer wanted to issue NFL co-branded credit cards, but rather was only interested in doing debit card business. On the other hand, the NFL clearly was interested in having team names on cards as well. After being hit hard over the past two months with a massive overload of card defaults, Bank of America has trimmed down its options and looking to focus more on small business lending. At this time, expanding its credit card business in low income producing products does not fit the company's focus.
Co-branded and affinity credit cards have been a growing segment in the card market which includes athletic clubs with the NFL being one of the largest on the market. These cards are a great way for the cardholder to show their team support while earning valuable rewards. Bank of America is one of the U.S. largest card companies sharing the top with Chase Bank while Barclaycard is rather small in terms of the total U.S. card market. However, the company's deal with the NFL is expected to cost Barclaycard over $300 million for the marketing rights that include New Jersey Nets' new NBA arena in Brooklyn. More of that and we could begin to see a changing of the guard rather quickly.