“This venue is brought to you by…”: the diffusion of sports and entertainment facility name sponsorship in urban Europe

ABSTRACT

Drawing on a database of 193 football (soccer) grounds and 115 indoor arenas, as well as press releases and media reports associated with them, this study charts the diffusion of sporting and entertainment facility name sponsorship across metropolises, cities, towns, and smaller settlements in six European contexts. Our results show the emergence of naming rights deals in the 1990s, their peak in the mid-2000s, and the current situation with a steadier growth of name sponsorship. Thus far, the corporate re-branding of venues has remained less prevalent in Italy, Norway, and Scotland than in England and Wales, Finland, and above all Germany. In financing newly built venues, however, the corporatized landmark language in focus has become a practically invariable part of local growth, austerity and (re)branding policies. Despite voices of resistance in all regions studied here, pressure towards the corporate renaming of even hereditary, communally endorsed football stadiums is increasingly being felt by municipal and private-sector venue owners.

KEYWORDS:

• Naming rights
• event-led urban development
• football stadiums
• indoor arenas
• Europe

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Roosa Wingström, Kristiina Laurikainen, and Sanni Vuorinen for their help while preparing this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The deal was extended in 2012, for a further £150 million, in exchange for five more years of shirt sponsorship, and stadium naming rights until 2028 (Arsenal Football Club, 2012).

2. Hartwall Areena is now known as Hartwall Arena (with non-Finnish spelling), while LänsiAuto Areena later became Barona Areena (2009–15) and most recently Espoo Metro Areena.

3. In order to safeguard FIFA’s own lucrative sponsorship commitments from being violated by “ambush marketing” endeavors, ironically eight name sponsorship deals had to be temporarily rescinded during the 2006 World Cup.

4. The largest Scottish football ground with a sponsored name has a capacity of 8,023 (the Paisley 2021 Stadium), which is less than half of the average capacity of our Scottish football ground corpus (16,893).

5. There are 27 double, 14 triple and 3 quadruple name sponsorships per venue in our corpus.

6. These trends go far beyond the scope of our present corpus, with examples such as 梅赛德斯-奔驰文化中心 (the Mercedes-Benz Arena) in Shanghai, China, the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia, and the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana, not to mention the Allianz Park in London, England, Allianz Parque in São Paulo, Brazil, the Allianz Riviera in Nice, France, the Allianz Stadion in Vienna, Austria, and the Allianz Stadium in Moore Park, Australia.

7. This name sponsorship lasted for roughly one and half years and was replaced by Data Group Areena, based on a three-year contract.

8. In the U.S., meanwhile, spatial naming rights have, in most cases, been accepted with much less opposition (see Bezold, 2013; Leeds, Leeds, & Pistolet, 2007). Notable exceptions to this rule include considerable public opposition to the renaming of San Francisco’s now demolished Candlestick Park after corporate sponsors in 1995–2008, and protests against the corporate name of Invesco Field at Mile High in Denver in 2001–11.