The Detroit Tigers will be playing in a ballpark named “Fifth Third Park” next year.
They have no shame. It’s bad enough that there is a bank with the ridiculous name of “Fifth Third Bank” (In 1908, Third National Bank and Fifth National Bank merged and nobody had the wit to come up with a better name. I wouldn’t entrust my money to a bank run by such dimwits), but a ballpark? What’s a fifth of a third out? A third strike? Houston briefly had its park named after Enron, and San Diego’s ball park is named after supplier of dog and cat merchandise, but at least “Petco Park” is alliterative.
I was sure that I had already written a rueful post about baseball teams that sell out their fans, history, traditions, cities and dignity for filthy lucre and name their home fields after any company who will pay to turn a stadium into its billboard. In 2010 I wrote a post about the adultery website Ashley Madison tried to by the naming rights to the NFL Giant’s stadium, and sure enough, decade ago I covered this revolting topic thoroughly. In honor of Fifth Third Park, I’m posting it again below, with a couple of additions and edits.
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The Washington Nationals announced this week that it has partnered with Major League Baseball Advanced Media and the consulting firm Korn Ferry to sell naming rights to Nationals Park, as the team’s home field has been known since it opened in 2008.
After all, the team explains, plastering a corporation’s name on the ballpark could add between ten and twenty million dollars a year to the team’s revenue, and imagine how much better the team will be with another starting pitcher or slugging outfielder. Why wouldn’t a team sell its home’s name, and a large chunk of its identity, to a bank, a website, or a pet supplies company?
[Update: I am happy to announce that the Nationals did not ultimately give in to greed and name its stadium MSNow Park. It is still Nationals Park.]
I admit it: being a life-time fan of the Boston Red Sox, who play in one of the the ten major league parks ( the others: Angel Stadium of Anaheim, Dodger Stadium, Fenway Park, Kauffman Stadium, Marlins Park, Nationals Park, Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Turner Field, Wrigley Field, and Yankee Stadium ) belonging to teams that have not accepted filthy lucre to mar their stadium entrances with the names of companies Bernie Sanders would hate, I find the idea revolting. A baseball team represents its community; its lore becomes part of the culture and shared memories passed down through generations.. That has value, and symbolic significance. How much is it worth? It’s priceless, or should be.
Baseball teams make a lot of money, and the game’s credibility and public image still depend on fans believing that it is more than just another business. Stadiums like Globe Life Park in Arlington, Minute Maid Park, Petco Park and U.S. Cellular Field remind me of the Bad News Bears wearing uniforms with “Chico’s Bail Bonds” on their backs. How crass. How commercial. How ugly.
I know, I know: “How American.” Somehow I harbored fantasies that the team in the nation’s capital would stand up for the game’s traditions and roots, with a stadium named for a community figure who made the team’s existence possible (like the Mets’ previous stadium, named after local lawyer Bill Shea, who brought the National League back to the Big Apple) or a team owner who rebuilt the franchise (Jacobs Field, originally named after the owner who rescued a dying franchise, is now named Progressive Field after Flo and Jaimie, I guess…), or even something dignified, related to a local landmarks, or even the team itself, like Yankee Stadium
That’s unrealistic, I am told, because everybody is taking a bundle to make their teams’ parks into giant billboards, and values like gratitude, respect for tradition and history, and dignity won’t stand up to a big enough check if it’s offered. “Priceless” can still be bought out for the right price.
The fans don’t seem to care. Maybe I’m the only one who does. Maybe it’s good for kids to learn that corporations have to turn everything into marketing and promotion, and that baseball teams will never let dignity, tradition and decorum stand in the way of a fast buck.
If the Houston Astros being saddled with the name “Enron Field” for a full season after the criminal corporation went belly-up didn’t kill this trend, nothing will.
Values will always be sold out, and besides, everybody does it.
Is the “Continue reading” path to the rest of the article a triumph over the “Pg 1/2” one? Or is it a carry over that came with the re-issue of that earlier post?
I wonder if paying big bucks to get a corporation’s name on the stadium ever generates an increase in business that makes it a worthwhile investment.
Well see Jack, fifth/third is really just a clever dog whistle for 3/5ths. So it’s racist and needs to be taken down.
Damnit. I was carefully scrolling to see if anyone had taken the obvious low hanging fruit and here you are. Anyway, my comment was simply going to be:
“Well, at least it’s not Three Fifths Park.”
In my city, the local non-profit Catholic hospital conglomerate has their name on the city’s largest convention center.
I never connected Wrigley Field with the chewing gum until some commentator on the radio, possibly even Paul Harvey, mentioned the history. It’s worse when the name gets shifted to a different corporation every five years or so. This commercial perfectly captures the gist of the practice.
It’s worse when the name gets shifted to a different corporation every five years or so.
An example is the stadium of the Seattle Seahawks. It used to be called Qwest Stadium. Qwest go taken over by Century Link, so it became Century Link Stadium (colloquially also named “The Clink”). Century Link changed its name to Lumen Technologies, so now it is Lumen Stadium.
I never connected Wrigley Field with the chewing gum until some commentator on the radio, possibly even Paul Harvey, mentioned the history.
Wrigley Field is named after the then owner of the Chicago Cubs, chewing gum manufacturer William Wrigley. The stadium is located in an area called Wrigleyville.
I always wondered where the name Fifth Third Bank came from. I think it’s the stupidest corporate name ever.
When Bank One Ballpark (nicknamed ‘The BOB”) was renamed when J.P. Morgan Chase bought Bank One, I was rooting for the park to be renamed “The Morgue.”
The grass they tried to grow for a decade or so beneath the BOB’s movable roof (before ultimately giving up) was marketed and sold to the public by the local grass farm as “Bob Sod.”
I heard of Fifth Third Bank probably thirty years ago when a partner did some work for them. The name’s a little out of the ordinary, but it’s evidently a bank of some consequence. Any worse than SoFi? I don’t think so.
For a while, the Phoenix Suns’ arena was called “Footprint Center.” Dumbest name ever. The naming rights had been purchased by a little environmentally conscious packaging startup. Ridiculous for both the Suns and the Footprint people.
I am about to invoke an ethics rationalization here, namely “It is not the worst thing”. Things that I consider worse are relocation of teams.
As first example I would like to mention the Los Angeles Dodgers. Before 1958 this team was known as the Brooklyn Dodgers, located in the borrow of Brooklyn, New York City. The owner Walter O’Malley wanted a build a new privately own stadium to replace Ebbets Field, which was old, too small, and lacking parking space. However he found city planner Robert Moses in his way who insisted that the stadium be built in Queens. Los Angeles, a growing city with no MLB team at the time, offered an attractive tract of land, and O’Malley seeing financial opportunity, accepted Los Angeles’s offer. And with the Brooklyn Dodgers, baseball history left Brooklyn. A history that includes a World Series championship, and many Hall of Famers including Jackie Robinson. The rivalry with the New York Yankees and the New York Giants, a team that later also would leave New York.
As second example I mention a football team the Houston Oilers, who left Houston in 1997, and became the Tennessee Titans. Owner Bud Adams demanded a public funded downtown stadium with revenue generating luxury suites (sky boxes) but city leaders and tax payers refused to pay for it. Adams wanted a modern stadium with luxury suites to replace the aging Astrodome. The city had recently funded major Astrodome renovations and faced economic strains, making public funding politically unpopular. Adams got a good offer by Tennessee and Nashville, and so the Houston Oilers became the Tennessee Titans. I think the second example is ethically worse than the first example, highlighting the greed of the owner at the expense of the taxpayer.
Let’s talk about greed. Why do the taxpayers have to foot the bill for all those new stadiums? Shouldn’t professional sports be able to support itself with revenues? If those teams have the money to pay those huge salaries (a 300M contract for 10 years is not uncommon) shouldn’t they also be able to pay for those stadiums?
Now the taxpayer is on the hook, why are those ticket prices so expensive? It used to be that somebody with a small wage could attend a baseball game on that wage every week. That is not the case anymore. That means that people who finance those stadiums with their taxes are not able to attend a game unless they have an upper middle class income.
Why do many teams need such expensive stadiums? I will give it to the Red Sox, they keep playing in that old stadium as there is some much history tied to it. But take for instance Seattle that had the Kingdome from 1976 until its implosion in 2000. That stadium was used both as a baseball stadium for the Mariners, as well as a football stadium for the Seahawks. Now both teams have their own stadium next to each other. The loans for the Kingdome were still being paid off by King county when it was demolished. The names of the new stadiums: Safeco Field and Lumen Field, after their corporate sponsors.
hi CVB,
my son whose email account is
‘paulbleedsblue’
would argue – it has been almost 70 years – get over it!
My point is that greed — or the all-importance of money — in professional sports is not a new thing. I am not from NYC, and I do not watch baseball.
ooooh – don’t tell Jack …..
I think it’s unethical to ever tell anyone to “get over it.” I can’t think of anything a person can say that is more demeaning and dehumanizing.
I truly meant no offence – aiming for glib.
You might be able to forgive name branding if corporate contributions replaced municipal funds. They usually don’t and the economic costs of taxpayer funded sports venues virtually never result in the promised economic benefits. As others have noted, those same taxpayers likely cannot afford to attend the games.
‘”The fans don’t seem to care. Maybe I’m the only one who does.”
You are not alone. I stopped watching professional sports when it ceased to be community based. I came to that realization when Irsay moved the Colts out of Baltimore and took all the memorabilia and history with him. Today, everything about sports is tied to how much money can be made. the talk is typically focused on player salaries, betting, TV revenues etc. Gone are the days when you might see one of your sports heroes at the A&P or gas station and they would gladly sign an autograph without demanding to be paid for it. Today they fly in to play and leave at the endo the season because they rarely live in the community. For all intents and purposes most of the players are nothing but mercenaries we hire to create the illusion of a proud community.
Here in Auckland, New Zealand, there is a school named Bairds Mainfreight Primary School. I presume that the School Board found a steady income and that there was no rules against that at the time. I have heard of no other schools getting named after companies so I presume the government stopped any such future sponsorship as soon as they heard about it.