North Texas

Unapproved High School Sponsorship Company Changes Name, Continues Business

Football season will be here before you know it, and there's a warning about a company that promises to help high school football teams. NBC 5 Responds first reported about the North Texas company selling sponsorships that teams knew nothing about, and now they're back at it.

It seems Richland Hills-based Touchdown Sports has an "F" with the Better Business Bureau and countless claims online from people saying they paid money to help a school and it never happened.

Now those sponsorships are back.

Michael Jennifer Driscoll and her husband, Preston, just opened an Anytime Fitness in The Colony. Days before their grand opening, Preston Driscoll got a call from Boost Sports.

"They hooked me up with a special deal that they could do for this opportunity with the high school," Preston Driscoll said. "I got a T-shirt spot on like 300 T-shirts, I think they said, and then call-outs over the PA system at every home football game."

The problem is The Colony High School says it never agreed to any deal with Boost Sports.

It sounds an awful lot like what happened to Edgar Garcia.

He paid a company called Touchdown Sports for T-shirts and PA announcements at Denton's Braswell High School.

"My daughter is in band, so I went to every single game," Garcia said. "I never saw anybody wearing the T-shirts or people out there, like cheerleaders throwing T-shirts out to the crowd."

And just like at The Colony, the school district hadn't given this its blessing.

"I didn't personally do any dealings with Touchdown Sports," said Mario Zavala, the community relations director for Denton ISD.

There was a difference. Garcia bought from Touchdown Sports, the Driscolls from Boost Sports.

But a look at the paperwork helps clear that up.

"When we got our receipt, they had Touchdown Sports at the bottom," Preston Driscoll said.

Preston Driscoll said the salesman told him Touchdown simply changed its name to Boost. That's why the receipt said Touchdown.

The Boost website has no address and no phone number, just an e-mail address. NBC 5 Responds tried to contact them repeatedly with no answer back.

The Driscolls did get one T-shirt in the mail. It listed their business as being in Celina, not its actual location in The Colony. It had the wrong wrong ZIP code, and the one that was there was missing a digit.

And if you called the number printed on the shirt, you got Preston Driscoll's cellphone – not the business.

"It's just something that needs to stop," Preston Driscoll said.

Sponsorship deals for athletics do exist and are big business in North Texas.

If someone contacts you, be sure to ask specifically how your money is helping the team. Also, talk to school administrators to make sure the company is really paired up with the school.

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