Selling Stadium Names
The Pitfalls of Park Naming Rights
Naming stadiums for companies began in 1953 when the St. Louis Cardinals’ new owners, the Busch family, wanted to rename Sportsman’s Park for their product, Budweiser. The Commissioner, Ford Frick, pressured the family into naming the park Busch Stadium rather than naming it for a beer. The Busch family quickly began brewing Busch brand beer.
Citibank's $400 Million Advertisement
The practice of selling naming rights for cash didn’t come into being until the 1990s. Now it is so common that it is largely ignored by sports fans. Whether it benefits anyone is hard to say. Recently, Citibank paid $400 million dollars for the right to name the New York Mets’ new stadium. Since then, the bank has been the recipient of billions of dollars in government aid. Did Citibank get $400 million dollars worth of advertising?
It would take many billions of investment dollars to create $400 million in profit. Would a stadium name ever generate that? Obviously many companies thought so. In a September 15, 2008 article, ABC affiliate WCCO claimed that name recognition was important even if a stadium name doesn’t directly impact sales. Further, television and radio ads were becoming less effective, so advertisers were looking for different ways to get their message out.
Naming Rights and the Sports Team
Looking past that, does the team benefit? It is hard to argue with 400 million dollars...really hard...but what about naming rights catastrophes of the past?
- U of Missouri named its new basketball arena after Wal-mart heiress and Mizzou student Paige Laurie. Her parents were generous contributors. Soon after, Paige's roommate turned her in for three years of academic fraud and her parents had her name removed from the structure.
- Villanova built a new home for its basketball teams with the help of the du Pont family. Du Pont Pavilion was a great name for ten years until John du Pont was found guilty of murdering amateur wrestler Dave Schultz. The du Ponts let the University change the name after that little faux pas.
- The pros don't take a backseat to the schoolboy circuit when it comes to stadium names. TD Banknorth Garden in Boston has had thirty-some names in its history including a brief period when the company that owned the naming rights auctioned them off on ebay each day. For $3000 or so you could name the Garden for a day.
- The right to name Philadelphia's Spectrum II was purchased by CoreStates Bank, leading to the uninspiring but inoffensive CoreStates Center. No problem until CoreStates was bought by First Union Bank in 1998 and the First Union Center was born. Philly fans immediately nicknamed it the F.U. Center, a nom de guerre that stuck until 2003 when Wachovia bought First Union Bank and the name changed again to reflect new ownership.
- As it did so many times, Enron sets the curve for a total lack of class. They bought naming rights to the Astros' park just before the news of their epic scandal broke. Naturally the team wanted out from under that contract but Enron lacked the decency of the du Ponts or Lauries (or a tiger shark) and they forced the Astros to buy out the remainder of the contract before the tainted name could be removed from the field.
Teams like the Baltimore Orioles and Boston Red Sox have been lucky in this regard. Camden Yards and Fenway Park are fine names. One day though, ownership will be tempted by some company offering good money to hang their name on the stadium. A team could use that money to sign a dream free agent. The purchaser might even be an ethical company with strong local roots, but don't be fooled. In no time flat, that nice local company would be gobbled up by some heartless conglomerate and fans would find themselves going to watch their team play at Cialis 24 Hour Park, home of the wooden bats.
Safeco Field, where fans go to consider insurance
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