Naming rights

• 1. Introduction

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  Naming rights became a civic battleground on the 2nd of November 2004, when San Francisco voters passed Proposition H. The initiative required the city's major football stadium to revert to its original name once the current sponsor's contract expired. The stadium had been known as Candlestick Park for over three decades. Corporate sponsors had twice tried to replace that name, and twice the public largely declined to use the new label. By that year, the practice of selling a venue's name to a corporate sponsor had reached 61 percent of major American professional sports venues. It had spread from stadiums to transit stations, broadcast programs, Antarctic coastlines, and even species of primates. How did selling a name become a standard financial instrument? And what happens when the public refuses to accept it?

• 2. American Roots

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  William Wrigley, the chewing gum magnate and owner of the Chicago Cubs, named his team's stadium Wrigley Field in 1926. That decision is widely regarded as the deliberate start of commercial stadium naming in the United States. The history may go back to 1912, when Fenway Park opened in Boston. Its owner ran a realty company called Fenway Realty, named for the adjacent parkland, and the promotional intent was likely present from the start. Wrigley's case remains the more widely cited origin.

  August Busch Jr. tested the limits in 1953. As head of Anheuser-Busch and owner of the St. Louis Cardinals, he proposed renaming their ballpark Budweiser Stadium. Ford Frick, Commissioner of Baseball at the time, refused. Busch returned with Busch Stadium, a name drawn from the company's founding family rather than its product. Frick allowed it. The original venue gave way to Busch Memorial Stadium in 1966. The name was shortened again in the 1970s. A new Cardinals ballpark opened in 2006 carrying the same name, applied by Anheuser-Busch even after the company had sold the team.

  Schaefer Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts opened in 1971 with a name the New England Patriots had sold to the Schaefer beer company. The company held no ownership stake in the franchise. That arrangement lasted until 1983.

  The decisive commercial shift came in 1985 with the opening of ARCO Arena in Sacramento. The oil company held no equity in the Kings. It was described as a "unique arrangement" at the time. Co-owner Gregg Lukenbill believed it could set a precedent for other franchises. In college sports, the Carrier Corporation had taken a comparable step five years earlier, contributing $2.75 million toward Syracuse University's new dome in 1980 and receiving the Carrier Dome name in return.

• 3. The Commercial Wave

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  The late 1990s were when naming rights shifted from an occasional deal to an industry norm. In 1994, only 7 percent of major American professional sports venues carried a corporate sponsor's name. By 2025-22 of the 30 MLB stadiums had sold their naming rights. So had 27 of 30 NFL stadiums and 29 of 30 NBA arenas.

  A three-to-twenty-year term is the standard range for a multi-purpose arena or performing arts venue. Professional sports facilities tend toward the upper end of that range. What sponsors acquire is not only building signage. Every broadcast, every news report, and every casual conversation that names the venue delivers the brand without additional cost.

  Germany's football market illustrates how broadly the practice has extended. Eight of the ten largest football stadiums in the country have sold their naming rights. In England, Arsenal Football Club opened the Emirates Stadium at the start of the 2006-2007 season, with a sponsor name in place from the first game. Their previous ground was known as Arsenal Stadium. Bolton Wanderers have passed through four named phases: Reebok Stadium, Macron Stadium, the University of Bolton stadium, and currently the Toughsheet Community Stadium. The Reebok name alone lasted 17 years.

  Surrey County Cricket Club's home in south London, traditionally the Kennington Oval after the local district, now operates as the Kia Oval. The venue has carried a succession of sponsor names over the years, with each arrangement replacing the previous one when the contract expires.

• 4. Resistance and Refusal

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  Rich Stadium in Orchard Park transitioned to Highmark Stadium with limited public resistance. Pittsburgh's Heinz Field became Acrisure Stadium by a similar path. Both transitions found acceptance in part because the buyers were well established in those local markets. Renaming a place that carries decades of public memory is a harder proposition.

  Willis Tower in Chicago is officially known by that name, but many residents continue to call it the Sears Tower. The property was sold in 1994 and kept the Sears name until 2003. The gap between a legal designation and a habitual one can persist for years after the transaction is settled.

  Proposition C, passed by San Francisco voters in 2009, overturned the earlier initiative that had required the stadium to revert to its original name. The reversal was attributed to difficult economic times. The naming rights were never resold, and the stadium closed and was demolished in 2014.

  Regina's Evraz Place was an indoor event complex in Saskatchewan that bore the name of the Evraz steel company. According to the venue's own account, the complex sometimes received shipments and correspondence intended for the steel company. Senders mistakenly believed its North American division was based there. The complex was later rebranded as the REAL District, an acronym for the Regina Exhibition Association Limited.

  Semarang Tawang station in Central Java, Indonesia is protected under the country's 2010 Cultural Heritage Act No. 11. On the 11th of April 2023, its formal name changed to Semarang Tawang Bank Jateng station, following an agreement between KAI and Yogyakarta-based advertising company Berlian Promosindo. The change reached into signage, mobile ticketing applications, and platform announcements. Historian Johanes Christiono criticized the decision, pointing to the absence of any national or local regulation governing the renaming of protected heritage sites.

  General Motors Place in Vancouver was referred to as Canada Hockey Place during the 2010 Winter Olympics. Major events such as the Olympic and Paralympic Games treat sponsored venue names as a form of ambush marketing and assign temporary generic labels for the duration of competition. The Olympics apply a clean venue policy that restricts most corporate logos from appearing inside venues, even those of official sponsors, though the Paralympics allow official sponsor logos inside. The policy changed beginning with the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Sponsored names may appear on the exteriors of venues, though not on the field of play. The LA28 organizing committee will charge sponsors for that visibility.

• 5. Beyond the Stadium

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  $650,000 was the reported price, in the early 2000s, for the right to name a species of monkey. Sports competitions, transit networks, and broadcast programs had each developed their own naming rights markets by then. Arrangements range from decade-long league sponsorships to contracts covering individual stations.

  England's Premier League bore the Barclays name as title sponsor until 2016. In 2015, the league announced it would stop accepting title sponsors beginning in the 2016-17 season. The cited reason was a preference for branding more in line with American professional leagues. The FA Cup continues to operate under the Emirates name. France's top professional football division adopted the name Ligue 1 McDonald's beginning in 2020.

  The Gator Bowl carried the TaxSlayer Bowl name for four editions, a move that fans generally did not welcome. Most college football bowl games pair their traditional name with a sponsor's. The Rose Bowl Game presented by Prudential and the Allstate Sugar Bowl follow that pattern. The Sunshine Football Classic, played in Miami, debuted in 1990 as the Blockbuster Bowl. Following a relocation to Orlando, it briefly added Tangerine Bowl to its name, in reference to the Citrus Bowl's original branding. Since then the game has carried only sponsor names, including Carquest, MicronPC, Mazda, Champs Sports, Russell Athletic, Camping World, Cheez-It, and Pop-Tarts.

  NASCAR began moving away from traditional race names in the 1980s. By 2019, nearly every race in the Winston Cup Series carried a sponsor name. The Daytona 500 accepted a presenting sponsor and ran as the Daytona 500 by STP before dropping that arrangement. IndyCar followed a similar path. The Indianapolis 500 resisted the trend until 2016, when it accepted a presenting sponsor for the first time. Sports broadcasters often refer to race locations rather than sponsor names in news coverage.

  Citizens Bank held the naming rights to Boston's MBTA State Street station from 1997 to 2000. That arrangement is among the earlier examples of commercial transit naming in the United States. Las Vegas and Philadelphia have also entered this market; NRG station, Jefferson Station, and Penn Medicine Station are among the Philadelphia examples. In December 2016, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority approved a naming rights policy for its facilities and routes. The policy was rescinded two months later over concerns about potential lawsuits from sponsors who had been passed over. Madrid Metro renamed Line 2 and the Sol station for mobile phone operator Vodafone from 2013 to 2016. Monumento Station on the Manila Light Rail Transit System became Yamaha Monumento Station in 2018 following renovations.

  The Fleischmann's Yeast Hour, Texaco Star Theatre, and The Philco Television Playhouse all carried sponsor names in the early decades of broadcast media. Sponsors in that era typically funded the entire production. The practice fell from favor in the late 1950s. Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, which aired from 1963 to 1988, is a notable later example. The Hallmark Hall of Fame has been on air since 1951 and remains among the last surviving instances of sponsor-named programming.

• 6. Record-Breaking Deals

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  The largest naming rights payment on record was agreed on the 17th of November 2021. Anschutz Entertainment Group and Singapore-based Crypto.com signed a 20-year contract worth 700 million dollars. The agreement renamed the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The Staples office supply chain had held the naming rights since the arena opened in 1999. The venue is home to the NHL's Los Angeles Kings and the NBA's Los Angeles Lakers. The new name, Crypto.com Arena, took effect on the 25th of December 2021.

  Before that agreement, the record had belonged to Toronto's Scotiabank Arena, formerly the Air Canada Centre. That deal was worth CA$800 million, equivalent to roughly US$517 million, over 20 years beginning in 2018.

  The former New Meadowlands Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey was home to both the New York Giants and the New York Jets. When it opened, projections put the potential naming rights deal at 25 to 30 million dollars annually. The actual MetLife agreement came in at 17 million dollars per year, short of what the stadium's profile had suggested it might command.

• 7. Donated and Unofficial

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  Friends Arena in Stockholm was previously Swedbank Arena, a name drawn from its corporate sponsor. In 2012, Swedbank donated the naming rights to the Friends Foundation, an organization the company itself sponsored to combat school bullying. The arena's name now reflects the foundation rather than a commercial arrangement.

  Kentucky Farm Bureau, a farmer lobbying and insurance organization, acquired naming rights to the University of Kentucky's new baseball park in 2018. The Farm Bureau donated those rights to the Kentucky Department of Agriculture. The department named the venue Kentucky Proud Park, after the agency's brand for agricultural products made in Kentucky.

  The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Loudoun County, Virginia received its name through a major gift rather than a commercial transaction. The Smithsonian Institution's directors bestowed the name on a satellite facility of the National Air and Space Museum. The donor had contributed more than $60 million cumulatively to the museum's properties.

  Walgreen Coast, a section of Antarctica's coastline, carries a name derived from the Walgreens pharmacy chain's sponsorship of the Byrd Antarctic Expedition. The chain funded the expedition and received geographic recognition in return.

  The International Star Registry has sold unofficial naming rights to individual stars since 1979. Each sale results in an entry in a private catalog. Professional astronomers do not recognize these transactions as carrying scientific or official validity. The registry has operated continuously on those terms, offering buyers a name that no official scientific body will record.