8 ms·

The economics of stadium names

93 points by the88doctor 4y ago

VoidWhisperer 4y ago
They mention the Crypto.com arena at the start, but it is interesting that they seem to have skipped over the history of the arena before that - The Staples Center and how that may have impacted their business
- roseway4 4y ago
  The author mentions randomly sampling companies for the analysis.
  - VoidWhisperer 4y ago
    Edit: Reading again, they specify that the randomly sampled companies are NFL stadiums, but I still wonder why Staples Center was skipped in the section that talks about qualcomm/target
- the88doctor 4y ago
  Staples is a great example to study. Also Sports Authority, PSINet, Enron -- there are many fascinating case studies. The article would be way too long if I included all of them though. However, the upcoming Market Intelligence newsletter issue I mention at the end of the article will go into more detail on certain examples via the lens of a checklist that anyone running, advising, or investing in a company can use to vet a particular naming rights deal.
candiddevmike 4y ago
Wonder if this applies to cities that subsidize stadiums too? Are they worse off financially?
- enkid 4y ago
  It seems like public subsidies for stadiums doesn't add as much economic activity as similar investments. https://econreview.berkeley.edu/the-economics-of-sports-stadiums-does-public-financing-of-sports-stadiums-create-local-economic-growth-or-just-help-billionaires-improve-their-profit-margin/ https://econreview.berkeley.edu/the-economics-of-sports-stad...
- mkl95 4y ago
  Cities claim to subsidize stadiums as an investment. However data doesn't usually back up those claims. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadium_subsidy#Criticisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadium_subsidy#Criticisms
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- the88doctor 4y ago
  As a couple others have mentioned, this is a different analysis, but the answer is that generally localities that subsidize stadiums do not see a good ROI. Local residents typically end up paying the bill through e.g. a slightly higher sales tax. Corollary: If you want to pay less local taxes, don't live in a city that has a major league sports team.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    > Corollary: If you want to pay less local taxes, don't live in a city that has a major league sports team. Or a state. Here in NY we’re chucking hundreds of millions at the Bills. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/28/buffalo-bills-stadium-new-york-taxpayers-850m-00020872 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/28/buffalo-bills-stadi...
MontyCarloHall 4y ago
How can companies quantify the ROI of extremely non-targeted advertising like stadium naming rights? For targeted campaigns, they can survey whether that specific campaign influenced customers' perception of the product. But for non-targeted campaigns, I don't see how a company can reliably survey whether the implicit brand awareness stemming from e.g. stadium naming rights has any influence on consumer behavior. I think buying naming rights is mostly done as a signaling factor to company stakeholders. If the company reports that brand awareness declines, it can cover its ass to board members and shareholders by claiming "well, we did all we could in the advertising department—we even bought naming rights to a stadium! Clearly the decline is due to market conditions and not our own advertising failures." If, on the other hand, the company reports that brand awareness increases (likely due to factors other than the naming rights), it can trumpet that buying the naming rights was a genius strategic move. As an aside, I think this is a large part of why companies hire management consulting firms, knowing full well they will yield zero effective results. It gives them another CYA excuse if things go south: "we tried all we could to restructure; we even hired McKinsey and Bain, the best of the best! Our declining revenue must be due to factors beyond our control."
- the88doctor 4y ago
  My original article actually included an entire section on how to measure the effectiveness of stadium advertising, but I ended up cutting it due to length. Essentially, you can try to break down the benefits into more understandable pieces. E.g. seconds of stadium dome signage shown on TV, seconds of press conference backdrop with stadium name shown on TV, number of eyeballs passing a sign during a game (classic billboard problem), etc. If you run through these estimates (which clearly not all companies do before buying), it almost always looks like a bad deal. The stock ROI analysis confirms this, and is also a bit more compelling imo because it's harder to argue that something was left out. However, there are exceptions (such as Target) where the advertising components of a stadium deal can actually appear to be quite favorable, and interestingly the stock performance backs that exception up. My next Market Intelligence newsletter mentioned at the end of the article will go into more detail on how to do that analysis for an arbitrary deal.
- mkmk 4y ago
dinkleberg 4y ago
I know little about finance, but this seems pretty clever. Actions like this can definitely give some insight into how their leadership operates (at least the leadership at the time of the action —- can’t pin that on the team who comes in 15 years into a 20 year agreement)
ntoskrnl 4y ago
I have always wondered about the economics of these massive marketing campaigns. Take crypto.com for example: > Crypto.com buying the naming rights to the L.A. Lakers’ home arena for $700 million I guess they hope people see the stadium name and go use their site, right? crypto.com makes their money from trading fees. Let's take their most expensive fee of 0.4%[1]. $700M ÷ 0.4% = $175B. They would need to do $175 billion in trading volume just to make their money back. That's not happening any time soon. Do these companies even care about ROI? [1]: https://crypto.com/exchange/document/fees-limits https://crypto.com/exchange/document/fees-limits
- mwill 4y ago
  I would guess the ROI from their perspective is legitimization, both of their brand and of crypto in general. Presumably the have exposure to the crypto market as a whole, I've always guessed big crypto companies doing advertising blitzes are mostly concerned with the market going up and new money entering, if it enters via them that's just a bonus? This might be cynical, but I suspect its bigger scale version of the ads and spam for random coins, assuming the coin isn't an outright rigged scam, whoever is paying for the ads probably collects marginal fees, the real aim of the ad/spam is to hopefully increase the value of their own holdings.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- gumby 4y ago
  It’s 175B over (presumably) 20 years, so only something slightly less absurd like $10B/year. Still a major drag on free cash flow.
- MR4D 4y ago
  Interesting stuff. Here’s a couple more pieces to add: The contract is for 20 years. Presumably the money will be spread out fairly evenly (as governments prefer predictable revenue). So for simplicity, let’s say $35 million per year. Second, according to this article [0], it seems the arena hosts over 240 events per year, including the Grammy’s. That works out to roughly 145,000 per event. So the question I would have is does Crypto.com expect to make $35M ÷ 0.4% = $8.75B per year in trading volume. That is a much more reasonable proposition, even though the overall number sounds insane [1]. [0] - https://theathletic.com/2995939/2021/12/06/why-crypto-com-made-a-700-million-bet-to-rename-staples-center-and-doesnt-even-expect-you-to-use-the-name/ https://theathletic.com/2995939/2021/12/06/why-crypto-com-ma... [1] - you also have to take into account inflation which reduces that effective cost a bit each year, so year 20 will be cheap compared to year 1 when measured in real dollars (dollars after adjusting for inflation)
mrandish 4y ago
Not a bad rule of thumb, especially if the company is spending money on long-term brand marketing that's investor capital (or otherwise borrowed) and not from operating cash flows.
mediascreen 4y ago
In Stockholm, Sweden, two of the largest arenas are named by companies who paid to have the arena named something not associated with their company. Friends Arena is named after the Swedish anti bullying foundation Friends as part of the Swedbank sponsorship of the foundation. Avicii Arena is named after the artist by the companies Trygg-Hansa and Bauhaus.
- zach_garwood 4y ago
  That's pretty cool! I wish that would catch on in the US. I live next to Guaranteed Rate Field. :/
  - 0110101001 4y ago
    Amazon bought the naming rights to Seattle's newly-renovated NHL arena and named it the "Climate Pledge Arena."
    - zach_garwood 4y ago
      I believe that's what the kids call "cringe ".
- listenallyall 4y ago
  ... but you knew exactly which companies were the sponsors, and you have a positive association with them. That's not an accident.
  - mediascreen 4y ago
    Of course. Companies will not spend money without expecting something back. But the sponsorships are not very obvious and you have to ready pretty far down on the about pages to find out. I would be surprised if 10% of the visitors to the arenas knew about the sponsorship. In these cases I think it's mostly about employer branding and I think it's communicated much more within the sponsoring companies.
gumby 4y ago
Yet a further example of the absurd economics of sport franchises. Quite nice work. A minor quibble: not every investment a company makes can have the same GAAP ROI. A small example that comes up frequently on HN is the free drinks for staff, which is a small expense that has a large benefit. At the opposite end can s like these, companies often have complex relationships with their local communities (expanding facilities, traffic, pollution, etc). Stepping in, like Qualcomm did, or just “local boosterism” like Target or AA can be valuable but only appear as a hard-to-quantify avoided expense. Whether a stadium is better than some “keep the highway clean” campaigns and some school programs is hard to determine, though the article manages to touch on it (the rigidity of being locked in). Of course when the campaign is unambiguously a national or international one (as with crypto.com’s) an analysis like ntoskrnl’s is right on.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
lordnacho 4y ago
Same as skyscrapers, isn't it? While things look like they're exponential, you can pay for anything. A stadium tells everyone your business has arrived in the big leagues. One thing that I didn't see is whether you can sell on the naming rights to a bigger fool.
- the88doctor 4y ago
  Typically stadium name deals prohibit any reselling or sublicensing of the naming rights because the Team want's to control what companies they are associated with.
  - lordnacho 4y ago
    Sure you can't just sell your stadium rights to anyone but can you recoup some money if the team is ok with whoever is found?
ncphil 4y ago
When Gov. Whitman and her crew first implemented "leasing" of stadium names, I think it was actually Plan B. What they _really_ wanted to do was privatize those publicly funded stadiums themselves. But that wasn't something that would fly at the time because ordinary voters still hadn't fully embraced full on privatization of everything.
smohnot 4y ago
This article is interesting but I picked up on several errors. For example: In case you were wondering how Q2 Holdings ($3B market cap) could possibly pay $260M to name a Texas soccer stadium... they can't and didn't. That number is the amount it cost to build the entire stadium. Q2 said the deal cost less than 1% of its annual revenue... Their annual revenues are <$500M. https://twitter.com/SportsPro/status/1354033011302477826?s=20&t=4f-LNNCq3C34sYoZiNiiIA https://twitter.com/SportsPro/status/1354033011302477826?s=2... An interesting naming right to consider is Overstock.com... in 2011, they bought the rights to the Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum, where both the Raiders and Athletics played... for a 6 year total of $7.2M. It was always a head-scratcher for me how that went so cheaply. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakland_Coliseum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakland_Coliseum)
el-salvador 4y ago
I was wondering... Do this name changes change that people refer to landmarks in their day to day speech? At least nearby, there are some places and companies that people still use their original name, even years after renaming. For example as a foreigner I still occasionally refer to Mexico's capital as DF, instead of CDMX/Ciudad de México. And I've heard Costa Ricans still refer to their local airline as Lacsa instead of Avianca.
AlbertCory 4y ago
Funny. As a (sometime) SF Giants fan, their park is now on its fourth name, and it's only ~20 years old [1]. > The Giants' waterfront arena on 3rd and King Streets is on its fourth name change in 19 years. It was first named Pac Bell Park when it opened in 2000. In 2002, it was renamed to SBC Park before changing again to AT&T Park in 2006. Life goal when I'm a billionaire: erect a stadium for some sport, call it "<Your name here> Park." Enjoy listening to all the announcers say that. [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/oracle-park-is-the-new-name-of-the-sf-giants-stadium/ https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/oracle-park-is-the...
- kbob 4y ago
  But those are just tracking the merger and acquisition status of one company. My father-in-law worked at Bell Labs. He received AT&T stock as part of his compensation, from before the 1984 breakup. When we settled his estate, that AT&T stock had turned into over 30 different companies.
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    You're right. We still had to keep changing what we called it, though.
    - dylan604 4y ago
      You could just say let's go see the Giants play. It's not a question of which stadium they are going to be playing. For American sports, I rarely refer to a stadium by sponsor name. In fact, I prefer to know the irreverant names for them. In Dallas, the cowboys play at Jerry World. When Barry Switzer was coaching, the stadium was referred to as Switzer-land. I also refer to stadiums by their Stadium Formerly Known As like I always used Candlestick instead of whatever corp name stamped on it.
      - AlbertCory 4y ago
        re Candlestick: at 3Com, we used to refer to that as Building 11 (that was when 3Com had a corporate sponsorship). Even if you don't use the name, you still have to hear the announcers say "The Angels are playing the White Sox at Guaranteed Rate." Yuck.
bruceb 4y ago
The Staples center has been mentioned a couple times in this thread. If one is going to pay to name a stadium, make sure its a new stadium. As buying the rights to a stadium that expired after many years means you are paying a lot of money to put your name on something that people just call by the old name anyway.
- Spivak 4y ago
  It just becomes a generational thing at that point which can actually work for you. There’s a concert venue that’s known by three different names depending on your age. So not everyone will continue to use the old name.
mathattack 4y ago
I remember when PacBell bought rights to the new Giants stadium for ~$2mm per year. Usually these are testaments to executive ego, similar to large HQ purchases. Sometimes it works out (Salesforce and Apple) but many times it doesn’t (Bear Stearns and Enron)
dreamcompiler 4y ago
After reading this article I'm more certain than ever that stadium naming rights are just very expensive NFTs.

93 points by the88doctor 4y ago

They mention the Crypto.com arena at the start, but it is interesting that they seem to have skipped over the history of the arena before that - The Staples Center and how that may have impacted their business

roseway4 4y ago
The author mentions randomly sampling companies for the analysis.
- VoidWhisperer 4y ago
  Edit: Reading again, they specify that the randomly sampled companies are NFL stadiums, but I still wonder why Staples Center was skipped in the section that talks about qualcomm/target
the88doctor 4y ago
Staples is a great example to study. Also Sports Authority, PSINet, Enron -- there are many fascinating case studies. The article would be way too long if I included all of them though. However, the upcoming Market Intelligence newsletter issue I mention at the end of the article will go into more detail on certain examples via the lens of a checklist that anyone running, advising, or investing in a company can use to vet a particular naming rights deal.

candiddevmike 4y ago

Wonder if this applies to cities that subsidize stadiums too? Are they worse off financially?

enkid 4y ago
It seems like public subsidies for stadiums doesn't add as much economic activity as similar investments. https://econreview.berkeley.edu/the-economics-of-sports-stadiums-does-public-financing-of-sports-stadiums-create-local-economic-growth-or-just-help-billionaires-improve-their-profit-margin/ https://econreview.berkeley.edu/the-economics-of-sports-stad...
mkl95 4y ago
Cities claim to subsidize stadiums as an investment. However data doesn't usually back up those claims. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadium_subsidy#Criticisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadium_subsidy#Criticisms
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
the88doctor 4y ago
As a couple others have mentioned, this is a different analysis, but the answer is that generally localities that subsidize stadiums do not see a good ROI. Local residents typically end up paying the bill through e.g. a slightly higher sales tax. Corollary: If you want to pay less local taxes, don't live in a city that has a major league sports team.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  > Corollary: If you want to pay less local taxes, don't live in a city that has a major league sports team. Or a state. Here in NY we’re chucking hundreds of millions at the Bills. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/28/buffalo-bills-stadium-new-york-taxpayers-850m-00020872 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/28/buffalo-bills-stadi...

MontyCarloHall 4y ago

How can companies quantify the ROI of extremely non-targeted advertising like stadium naming rights? For targeted campaigns, they can survey whether that specific campaign influenced customers' perception of the product. But for non-targeted campaigns, I don't see how a company can reliably survey whether the implicit brand awareness stemming from e.g. stadium naming rights has any influence on consumer behavior. I think buying naming rights is mostly done as a signaling factor to company stakeholders. If the company reports that brand awareness declines, it can cover its ass to board members and shareholders by claiming "well, we did all we could in the advertising department—we even bought naming rights to a stadium! Clearly the decline is due to market conditions and not our own advertising failures." If, on the other hand, the company reports that brand awareness increases (likely due to factors other than the naming rights), it can trumpet that buying the naming rights was a genius strategic move. As an aside, I think this is a large part of why companies hire management consulting firms, knowing full well they will yield zero effective results. It gives them another CYA excuse if things go south: "we tried all we could to restructure; we even hired McKinsey and Bain, the best of the best! Our declining revenue must be due to factors beyond our control."

the88doctor 4y ago
My original article actually included an entire section on how to measure the effectiveness of stadium advertising, but I ended up cutting it due to length. Essentially, you can try to break down the benefits into more understandable pieces. E.g. seconds of stadium dome signage shown on TV, seconds of press conference backdrop with stadium name shown on TV, number of eyeballs passing a sign during a game (classic billboard problem), etc. If you run through these estimates (which clearly not all companies do before buying), it almost always looks like a bad deal. The stock ROI analysis confirms this, and is also a bit more compelling imo because it's harder to argue that something was left out. However, there are exceptions (such as Target) where the advertising components of a stadium deal can actually appear to be quite favorable, and interestingly the stock performance backs that exception up. My next Market Intelligence newsletter mentioned at the end of the article will go into more detail on how to do that analysis for an arbitrary deal.
mkmk 4y ago

dinkleberg 4y ago

I know little about finance, but this seems pretty clever. Actions like this can definitely give some insight into how their leadership operates (at least the leadership at the time of the action —- can’t pin that on the team who comes in 15 years into a 20 year agreement)

ntoskrnl 4y ago

I have always wondered about the economics of these massive marketing campaigns. Take crypto.com for example: > Crypto.com buying the naming rights to the L.A. Lakers’ home arena for $700 million I guess they hope people see the stadium name and go use their site, right? crypto.com makes their money from trading fees. Let's take their most expensive fee of 0.4%[1]. $700M ÷ 0.4% = $175B. They would need to do $175 billion in trading volume just to make their money back. That's not happening any time soon. Do these companies even care about ROI? [1]: https://crypto.com/exchange/document/fees-limits https://crypto.com/exchange/document/fees-limits

mwill 4y ago
I would guess the ROI from their perspective is legitimization, both of their brand and of crypto in general. Presumably the have exposure to the crypto market as a whole, I've always guessed big crypto companies doing advertising blitzes are mostly concerned with the market going up and new money entering, if it enters via them that's just a bonus? This might be cynical, but I suspect its bigger scale version of the ads and spam for random coins, assuming the coin isn't an outright rigged scam, whoever is paying for the ads probably collects marginal fees, the real aim of the ad/spam is to hopefully increase the value of their own holdings.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
gumby 4y ago
It’s 175B over (presumably) 20 years, so only something slightly less absurd like $10B/year. Still a major drag on free cash flow.
MR4D 4y ago
Interesting stuff. Here’s a couple more pieces to add: The contract is for 20 years. Presumably the money will be spread out fairly evenly (as governments prefer predictable revenue). So for simplicity, let’s say $35 million per year. Second, according to this article [0], it seems the arena hosts over 240 events per year, including the Grammy’s. That works out to roughly 145,000 per event. So the question I would have is does Crypto.com expect to make $35M ÷ 0.4% = $8.75B per year in trading volume. That is a much more reasonable proposition, even though the overall number sounds insane [1]. [0] - https://theathletic.com/2995939/2021/12/06/why-crypto-com-made-a-700-million-bet-to-rename-staples-center-and-doesnt-even-expect-you-to-use-the-name/ https://theathletic.com/2995939/2021/12/06/why-crypto-com-ma... [1] - you also have to take into account inflation which reduces that effective cost a bit each year, so year 20 will be cheap compared to year 1 when measured in real dollars (dollars after adjusting for inflation)

mrandish 4y ago

Not a bad rule of thumb, especially if the company is spending money on long-term brand marketing that's investor capital (or otherwise borrowed) and not from operating cash flows.

mediascreen 4y ago

In Stockholm, Sweden, two of the largest arenas are named by companies who paid to have the arena named something not associated with their company. Friends Arena is named after the Swedish anti bullying foundation Friends as part of the Swedbank sponsorship of the foundation. Avicii Arena is named after the artist by the companies Trygg-Hansa and Bauhaus.

zach_garwood 4y ago
That's pretty cool! I wish that would catch on in the US. I live next to Guaranteed Rate Field. :/
- 0110101001 4y ago
  Amazon bought the naming rights to Seattle's newly-renovated NHL arena and named it the "Climate Pledge Arena."
  - zach_garwood 4y ago
    I believe that's what the kids call "cringe ".
listenallyall 4y ago
... but you knew exactly which companies were the sponsors, and you have a positive association with them. That's not an accident.
- mediascreen 4y ago
  Of course. Companies will not spend money without expecting something back. But the sponsorships are not very obvious and you have to ready pretty far down on the about pages to find out. I would be surprised if 10% of the visitors to the arenas knew about the sponsorship. In these cases I think it's mostly about employer branding and I think it's communicated much more within the sponsoring companies.

gumby 4y ago

Yet a further example of the absurd economics of sport franchises. Quite nice work. A minor quibble: not every investment a company makes can have the same GAAP ROI. A small example that comes up frequently on HN is the free drinks for staff, which is a small expense that has a large benefit. At the opposite end can s like these, companies often have complex relationships with their local communities (expanding facilities, traffic, pollution, etc). Stepping in, like Qualcomm did, or just “local boosterism” like Target or AA can be valuable but only appear as a hard-to-quantify avoided expense. Whether a stadium is better than some “keep the highway clean” campaigns and some school programs is hard to determine, though the article manages to touch on it (the rigidity of being locked in). Of course when the campaign is unambiguously a national or international one (as with crypto.com’s) an analysis like ntoskrnl’s is right on.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

lordnacho 4y ago

Same as skyscrapers, isn't it? While things look like they're exponential, you can pay for anything. A stadium tells everyone your business has arrived in the big leagues. One thing that I didn't see is whether you can sell on the naming rights to a bigger fool.

the88doctor 4y ago
Typically stadium name deals prohibit any reselling or sublicensing of the naming rights because the Team want's to control what companies they are associated with.
- lordnacho 4y ago
  Sure you can't just sell your stadium rights to anyone but can you recoup some money if the team is ok with whoever is found?

ncphil 4y ago

When Gov. Whitman and her crew first implemented "leasing" of stadium names, I think it was actually Plan B. What they _really_ wanted to do was privatize those publicly funded stadiums themselves. But that wasn't something that would fly at the time because ordinary voters still hadn't fully embraced full on privatization of everything.

smohnot 4y ago

This article is interesting but I picked up on several errors. For example: In case you were wondering how Q2 Holdings ($3B market cap) could possibly pay $260M to name a Texas soccer stadium... they can't and didn't. That number is the amount it cost to build the entire stadium. Q2 said the deal cost less than 1% of its annual revenue... Their annual revenues are <$500M. https://twitter.com/SportsPro/status/1354033011302477826?s=20&t=4f-LNNCq3C34sYoZiNiiIA https://twitter.com/SportsPro/status/1354033011302477826?s=2... An interesting naming right to consider is Overstock.com... in 2011, they bought the rights to the Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum, where both the Raiders and Athletics played... for a 6 year total of $7.2M. It was always a head-scratcher for me how that went so cheaply. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakland_Coliseum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakland_Coliseum)

el-salvador 4y ago

I was wondering... Do this name changes change that people refer to landmarks in their day to day speech? At least nearby, there are some places and companies that people still use their original name, even years after renaming. For example as a foreigner I still occasionally refer to Mexico's capital as DF, instead of CDMX/Ciudad de México. And I've heard Costa Ricans still refer to their local airline as Lacsa instead of Avianca.

AlbertCory 4y ago

Funny. As a (sometime) SF Giants fan, their park is now on its fourth name, and it's only ~20 years old [1]. > The Giants' waterfront arena on 3rd and King Streets is on its fourth name change in 19 years. It was first named Pac Bell Park when it opened in 2000. In 2002, it was renamed to SBC Park before changing again to AT&T Park in 2006. Life goal when I'm a billionaire: erect a stadium for some sport, call it "<Your name here> Park." Enjoy listening to all the announcers say that. [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/oracle-park-is-the-new-name-of-the-sf-giants-stadium/ https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/oracle-park-is-the...

kbob 4y ago
But those are just tracking the merger and acquisition status of one company. My father-in-law worked at Bell Labs. He received AT&T stock as part of his compensation, from before the 1984 breakup. When we settled his estate, that AT&T stock had turned into over 30 different companies.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  You're right. We still had to keep changing what we called it, though.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    You could just say let's go see the Giants play. It's not a question of which stadium they are going to be playing. For American sports, I rarely refer to a stadium by sponsor name. In fact, I prefer to know the irreverant names for them. In Dallas, the cowboys play at Jerry World. When Barry Switzer was coaching, the stadium was referred to as Switzer-land. I also refer to stadiums by their Stadium Formerly Known As like I always used Candlestick instead of whatever corp name stamped on it.
    - AlbertCory 4y ago
      re Candlestick: at 3Com, we used to refer to that as Building 11 (that was when 3Com had a corporate sponsorship). Even if you don't use the name, you still have to hear the announcers say "The Angels are playing the White Sox at Guaranteed Rate." Yuck.

bruceb 4y ago

The Staples center has been mentioned a couple times in this thread. If one is going to pay to name a stadium, make sure its a new stadium. As buying the rights to a stadium that expired after many years means you are paying a lot of money to put your name on something that people just call by the old name anyway.

Spivak 4y ago
It just becomes a generational thing at that point which can actually work for you. There’s a concert venue that’s known by three different names depending on your age. So not everyone will continue to use the old name.

mathattack 4y ago

I remember when PacBell bought rights to the new Giants stadium for ~$2mm per year. Usually these are testaments to executive ego, similar to large HQ purchases. Sometimes it works out (Salesforce and Apple) but many times it doesn’t (Bear Stearns and Enron)

dreamcompiler 4y ago

After reading this article I'm more certain than ever that stadium naming rights are just very expensive NFTs.