Elk Grove Village To Sponsor 2018 Makers Wanted Bahamas Bowl

ELK GROVE VILLAGE, IL — In a first for college football, Elk Grove Village will sponsor a bowl game this season. The village will lend its business tagline — Makers Wanted — to the 2018 Bahamas Bowl, which will be played Dec. 21 in Nassau, Bahamas, the town announced Tuesday.

Elk Grove Village's sponsorship marks the first time a non-tourist municipality has backed a college football bowl game. The Makers Wanted Bahamas Bowl also will give the community a chance to tout its industrial park — the largest in the country — and the businesses that call the town home to a huge national audience.

In its fifth year, the game is one of 14 postseason bowls owned and run by ESPN Events, and the sports network will broadcast. The bowl matches up teams from Conference USA and the Mid-American Conference and is played at Nassau's Thomas A. Robinson National Stadium.

"Our relationship with the Makers Wanted Bahamas Bowl and ESPN Events is a perfect opportunity to use college football to share our message with the entire country," Elk Grove Village Mayor Craig Johnson, who's led the community for 21 years, said in a statement. "We were impressed by how the bowl game has been developed in the Bahamas over the past four years, and we share in the excitement that this event brings to their community."

In order to back the Makers Wanted Bahamas Bowl, Elk Grove Village, which was incorporated in 1956, ponied up a $300,000 sponsorship fee, the Daily Herald reports. Attaching its slogan to the game is part of the community's continued marketing campaign, which started with the Makers Wanted tagline in 2015 and has included commercials, billboards and the TV sponsorship of Chicago Cubs games on Comcast SportsNet, the report added.

After this week's announcement, some residents objected to what they considered a frivolous way to spend village money.

"Is this the best use of village funds?" wrote one Facebook commenter. "Is anyone keeping an eye on this? I realize the importance of attracting businesses but to me this seems excessive and raises a red flag."

Image via Makers Wanted Bahamas Bowl