NPR's Scott Simon ponders stadium naming rights: how relatively inexpensive it is for companies to link their brands to major league ballparks and football fields.
Fans and spectators walk to the entrance of Chicago's Comiskey Park on April 9, 1990, for the opening day of the final Major League Baseball season there.
Ballpark names aren't what they used to be. And I mean that — to use an overworked word of our times — literally.it was AT&T Park. U.S. Cellular Field in Chicago, which some of us might think of as,"the new Comiskey Park", is now Guaranteed Rate Field. Does anyone ever say,"Gosh, they got great dogs at Guaranteed Rate Field!" T-Mobile Park in Seattle is the new name for Safeco Field.
The Houston Astros play in Minute Maid Park. It was Enron Field when the park opened in 2000, but in 2001, the oil company went bankrupt in a sensational accounting scandal. The Astros had to sue to get the Enron name off of their ballpark, but won their division. They had a better year than Enron.Fans like me might be pointlessly sentimental when it comes to stadium names, but they used to be personal, not corporate.
It costs JPMorgan Chase and Co. $3.3 million a year to put their bank name on the Phoenix ballpark. It costs Petco $2.7 million a year to put their pet supply company name on San Diego's ballpark, and the Guaranteed Rate Mortgage Company pays just over $2 million a year to have their name on the stadium where the White Sox play.. But the average salary of a major league ballplayer today is higher than any of those rates, at nearly $5 million a year.
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Opinion: Corporate ballpark names just don't have that special ringNPR's Scott Simon ponders stadium naming rights: how relatively inexpensive it is for companies to link their brands to major league ballparks and football fields.
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