What's This Stadium Named?
In Detroit, the Tigers used to play baseball in Tiger Stadium, but not anymore. Now they play it in Comerica Park.
There was a change in location when the team moved to a new stadium in 2000, and with it came a name change. It's called Comerica park because Comerica bank agreed to pay $66 million over 30 years for the right to name the stadium. Just about every major sports stadium in the country now is named after some company that paid an outrageous sum of money for the right to put their name on it.
Companies love doing this sort of thing because, dollar for dollar, having the name "Comerica" on the name of the stadium where the Tigers are playing gets you tons of exposure. Every time a story about a game runs, your name is very likely to come up in print. A young child goes to his first baseball game in Comerica park, creating a positive branding association in his mind. Or when someone gets mugged in Detroit and the evening news mentions it happened "just outside Comerica Park". (That would be the downside of this whole branding escapade.)
I'm not the first person to bemoan the fact that the new stadium got a new name that was determined by a company that paid lots of money for it. I'm not even going to say that it's wrong, but it is a little disappointing. The old Tiger Stadium was, in its earlier days, called "Navin Field" and "Briggs Field", after two of the Tigers owners. The field has to be named something, but it's too bad that instead paying homage to its past, it auctioned off the right to name the stadium to the highest bidder.
The most ridiculous of these pay-to-name arrangements that I've ever heard is probably the Jobber.com Arena in Glendale, AZ.
What gets me is they didn't even set any standards about who the "highest bidder" could be. They could have restricted the candidates to only non-profit organizations that were working, at the time, to benefit the local communities in Detroit. It could have been the Red Cross Stadium. It's interesting to wonder if the Red Cross would even want to take part in that whole branding debacle, and if not, I'd be very interested in learning why.
Or, consider the other side of it: if you're Comerica bank, you purchase the right to name the new Tiger stadium, and there's no rule that says you need to stick the name "Comerica" on it. What if they had opted, in the face of every other stadium being named after some company or brand, to simply call it "Tiger Stadium"? Sooner or later, people might ask why every other sports arena in the country is named after some organization out to brand itself, save for "Tiger Stadium" in Detroit. And the answer would be: "Comerica bought the rights to name the park, but they just decided to leave it as 'Tiger Stadium'." You wouldn't get your name on the news every time the sportscaster in Detroit starts talking about the Tigers, but you would start conversations among people by playing into their natural curiosity. They question the exception or the out of the ordinary, and when they get their answer, it resonates with them.
Does this work? I'm not sure. Did it work for purple?
Maybe I'm just cranky, but I have a lot of faith in the potential to reach people by being the exception in a sea of annoyances.
There was a change in location when the team moved to a new stadium in 2000, and with it came a name change. It's called Comerica park because Comerica bank agreed to pay $66 million over 30 years for the right to name the stadium. Just about every major sports stadium in the country now is named after some company that paid an outrageous sum of money for the right to put their name on it.
Companies love doing this sort of thing because, dollar for dollar, having the name "Comerica" on the name of the stadium where the Tigers are playing gets you tons of exposure. Every time a story about a game runs, your name is very likely to come up in print. A young child goes to his first baseball game in Comerica park, creating a positive branding association in his mind. Or when someone gets mugged in Detroit and the evening news mentions it happened "just outside Comerica Park". (That would be the downside of this whole branding escapade.)
I'm not the first person to bemoan the fact that the new stadium got a new name that was determined by a company that paid lots of money for it. I'm not even going to say that it's wrong, but it is a little disappointing. The old Tiger Stadium was, in its earlier days, called "Navin Field" and "Briggs Field", after two of the Tigers owners. The field has to be named something, but it's too bad that instead paying homage to its past, it auctioned off the right to name the stadium to the highest bidder.
The most ridiculous of these pay-to-name arrangements that I've ever heard is probably the Jobber.com Arena in Glendale, AZ.
What gets me is they didn't even set any standards about who the "highest bidder" could be. They could have restricted the candidates to only non-profit organizations that were working, at the time, to benefit the local communities in Detroit. It could have been the Red Cross Stadium. It's interesting to wonder if the Red Cross would even want to take part in that whole branding debacle, and if not, I'd be very interested in learning why.
Or, consider the other side of it: if you're Comerica bank, you purchase the right to name the new Tiger stadium, and there's no rule that says you need to stick the name "Comerica" on it. What if they had opted, in the face of every other stadium being named after some company or brand, to simply call it "Tiger Stadium"? Sooner or later, people might ask why every other sports arena in the country is named after some organization out to brand itself, save for "Tiger Stadium" in Detroit. And the answer would be: "Comerica bought the rights to name the park, but they just decided to leave it as 'Tiger Stadium'." You wouldn't get your name on the news every time the sportscaster in Detroit starts talking about the Tigers, but you would start conversations among people by playing into their natural curiosity. They question the exception or the out of the ordinary, and when they get their answer, it resonates with them.
Does this work? I'm not sure. Did it work for purple?
Maybe I'm just cranky, but I have a lot of faith in the potential to reach people by being the exception in a sea of annoyances.