Companies are spending unprecedented sums on naming rights of sports venues despite evidence that playing this name game has little measurable value.
Companies are spending unprecedented sums on naming rights of sports venues despite evidence that playing this name game has little measurable value.

Corporate players love the name game

Owners of the Giants baseball team have never struck me as stupid. Greedy, perhaps, since they shamelessly sell a bottle of Bud for eight times what it’s worth, but not stupid. So when they announced the other day that they have accepted a reported $20 million annually to change the name of their stadium for the fourth time in less than 20 years, I figured they must know what they’re doing.

The Giants, like virtually every sports franchise in the nation, are cashing in on corporate vanity. Flush with cash thanks to Trump economics, companies are spending unprecedented sums to place their names on sports venues despite growing evidence that playing this name game has little measurable value.

When the Giants opened their stadium in 2000, it was known as Pacific Bell Park. A few years later, the name changed to SBC Park, and then to AT&T Park. Now it’s Oracle Park.

The Bay Area tech giant suffered ego damage when it lost out on naming rights to the basketball arena where the Warriors play. The Oracle name has been on the venue in neighboring Oakland since 2006, but the Warriors are moving to a new facility in San Francisco, branded Chase Center, for which JPMorgan Chase paid an estimated $200 million. Oracle quickly agreed to pay a similar sum to the Giants, whose fans already suffer naming fatigue.

For their first 35 years in San Francisco, the Giants were happily ensconced at Candlestick Park, named for the finger of land on which it was built. In 1995, naming rights were purchased by 3Com Corporation, and Candlestick became 3Com Park. After the Giants moved out, the rights were sold to Monster Cable, a maker of electric cables, and 3Com became Monster Park. Enraged San Franciscans voted to require that the name be legally changed back to Candlestick as soon as Monster’s contract expired.

The stadium’s football tenant, the 49ers, moved to a new facility in Santa Clara, for which Levi Strauss paid $220 million for the right to call it Levi’s Stadium — or as sportscaster Chris Berman dubbed it, The Big Bellbottom.

Corporate naming can be traced back to 1921 when chewing gum magnate William Wrigley Jr. purchased the Chicago Cubs. Six years later, Wrigley put his name on the iconic Addison Street stadium, and the rest is history.

Today, just about every pro sports venue bears a corporate name. Notable exceptions are Fenway Park, named after its Boston neighborhood; New York’s Madison Square Garden, named after a president; and Lambeau Field in Wisconsin, whose name honors the beloved football player and coach Curly Lambeau.

Daniel Rascher, who examined 85 North American naming-rights deals, estimates that if a team had three losing seasons, the value of its naming deal dropped by 5 to 7 percent.

Research by Sports Market Analytics found that among the three major pro sports — baseball, football, and basketball — over half the fans indicated that a venue’s sponsorship had no influence whatsoever on their purchase of the sponsor’s product or service.

How could it, when some venues change names as quickly as their teams change players? Consider the place where the NFL’s Chargers play in Carson, California. Known as recently as 2012 as the Home Depot Center, it next became the StubHub Center and is currently called Dignity Health Sports Park.

Enter a wireless company called Rokit. For the season just ended, the company arranged to buy naming rights to the playing field, while Dignity Health’s name was on the stadium itself. It’s called Rokit Field at Dignity Health Sports Park.

Meanwhile, the Giants shrewdly managed to sell naming rights to the broadcast booth inside what is now known as Oracle Park to Hawaiian Airlines.

As P. T. Barnum might have put it, there’s an egomaniacal corporate marketing exec with a checkbook born every minute.

The viewpoints expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Independent.

How to submit an article, guest opinion piece, or letter to the editor to The Independent

Do you have something to say? Want your voice to be heard by thousands of readers? Send The Independent your letter to the editor or guest opinion piece. All submissions will be considered for publication by our editorial staff. If your letter or editorial is accepted, it will run on suindependent.com, and we’ll promote it through all of our social media channels. We may even decide to include it in our monthly print edition. Just follow our simple submission guidelines and make your voice heard:

—Submissions should be between 300 and 1,500 words.

—Submissions must be sent to editor@infowest.com as a .doc, .docx, .txt, or .rtf file.

—The subject line of the email containing your submission should read “Letter to the editor.”

—Attach your name to both the email and the document file (we don’t run anonymous letters).

—If you have a photo or image you’d like us to use and it’s in .jpg format, at least 1200 X 754 pixels large, and your intellectual property (you own the copyright), feel free to attach it as well, though we reserve the right to choose a different image.

—If you are on Twitter and would like a shout-out when your piece or letter is published, include that in your correspondence and we’ll give you a mention at the time of publication.

Articles related to “Corporate players love the name game”

Men who don’t like sports need a support group

When your kids dont play sports, its not the end of the world

Why I’m ready to buy a gun

Click This Ad
Previous articleLegalized marijuana revenue
Next articleTexting While Driving
Peter Funt
In print and on television, Peter Funt continues the Funt Family tradition of making people smile – while examining the human condition. After 15 years hosting the landmark TV series “Candid Camera,” Peter writes frequent op-eds for The Boston Globe and The Wall Street Journal as well as his weekly column distributed by the Cagle Cartoon Syndicate. His writing contains the same pointed social observations that have made “Candid Camera” so popular since its invention by Peter’s dad, Allen, back in 1947. His new book, "Cautiously Optimistic," takes America's temperature in six-dozen essays, guaranteed to make readers think and smile. It's available at Amazon.com and through CandidCamera.com. Peter is a frequent speaker before business groups and on college campuses, using the vast “Candid Camera” library to bring his points to life. His newest presentation for corporate audiences, “The Candid You,” draws upon decades of people-watching to identify factors that promote better communication and productivity. Details about Peter Funt’s speaking engagements are available at: www.CandidCamera.com. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naYXOGIktsw for video. Peter hosted the newest versions of “Candid Camera” in recent years with Suzanne Somers and Dina Eastwood, with complete collections now available on DVD. Peter Funt actually made his first appearance on “Candid Camera” when he and the legendary series were each just three years old. Peter posed as a shoeshine boy who charged $10 per shoe! Since that time he has appeared in hundreds of “Candid Camera” sequences, hosted over 200 network episodes. In addition to his hidden-camera work, Peter Funt has produced and hosted TV specials on the Arts & Entertainment and Lifetime cable networks. He also spent five years as an editor and reporter with ABC News in New York. Earlier in his career, Peter wrote dozens of articles for The New York Times and TV Guide about television and film. He was editor and publisher of the television magazine On Cable. And he authored the book "Gotcha!" for Grosset & Dunlap on the lost art of practical joking. Peter’s essay on the evolution of television is included in “The Story of American Business,” published in 2009 by Harvard Business Press. Peter also follows in his father's footsteps as President of Laughter Therapy Foundation, a non-profit organization started by Allen Funt in 1982. Drawing from the Candid Camera library, Laughter Therapy sends special videos, at no charge, to critically ill people throughout the U.S. When Peter took over as host of the CBS specials, "Variety" wrote: "The latest new 'Candid Camera' specials seem to be getting funnier. Peter Funt is as personable as his dad..." Following Candid Camera's Battle of the Sexes special, "The Hollywood Reporter" observed: "This show is great fun. Peter Funt has a remarkably effective presence." Peter Funt received his degree in journalism from the University of Denver. In 2010 he returned to the Denver campus to be honored as a Master Scholar in Arts and Humanities. He is a past winner of the annual Silurian's Award for radio news reporting, for his ABC News coverage of racial disturbances in Asbury Park, NJ. Peter is founder of the Monterey County Young Journalists program in California, which provides hands-on training for high school students pursuing careers in news. He also inaugurated the Courtroom Journalism competition in Monterey County in conjunction with the Lyceum Organization, and conducts a similar statewide event for the Constitutional Rights Foundation in Los Angeles, as part of its Mock Trial program. Peter resides in Central California with his wife, Amy, and two children, Stephanie and Danny. His favorite pastimes are golf, baseball, tennis and people-watching.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here