November 16, 2006--"Take Me Out to Citibank. Buy Me Some Peanuts and Cracker Jacks . . . "
Everything’s for sale so it should come as no surprise that at the groundbreaking ceremony the other day for the new stadium that is being built for the New York Mets, it was announced that for $400 million, to be paid out by Citibank over twenty years, it will be called “Citi Stadium.”
This naming trend started in 1966 when the brewer Anheuser-Busch bought the Saint Louis Cardinals and named their ballpark Busch Stadium. Though this appeared to represent a departure from traditional stadium-naming practice, it was in truth not that much of a stretch since many other parks were named for their owners (the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Ebbets Field and the Cubs’ Wrigley Field are just two examples); and Anheuser-Busch, after all, was the owner of the Red Birds. [Other stadiums are named for their location (the Red Sox’s Fenway Park, the Orioles’ Camden Yards), team name (the legendary Yankee Stadium or Dodger Stadium), or after their former use (the NY Giants’ Polo Grounds)].
But Citi Stadium is a whole ‘nother matter. More and more teams and the municipal owners of their playing fields are selling the naming rights to the highest bidders. Thus we have Coors Stadium (for the Rockies): QualComm Stadium which used to be Jack Murphy Stadium (incredibly named after a sportswriter!) before it was PETCO Field (for the Padres); and of course, for the Houston Astros, there is the swishy Minute Maid Field which used to be, yes, ENRON Field. We of course know what happened there.
But there is yet another twist to all of this pay-to-play—does naming a field for a corporation help the bottom line, which is certainly what this must be all about? And from a team’s perspective, in addition to the cash, does having a corporate-named field help win ball games? The latter question is easy to answer—absolutely not. According to the NY Times, there have been 25 seasons played in those fields named for banks and the home teams averaged 75 wins and 87 loses (article linked below). This will not get you to the post-season.
In regard to the effect on the companies’ bottom line, we also find that it doesn’t work. Again, looking at the bank-named ballparks, after the naming was purchased, in all cases the banks’ stocks underperformed the wider averages.
Comerica, the bank for which the Tigers’ field is named, saw its stock decline 10 percent since 2000 while the Bank Stock Index is up 41 percent. PNC, which doled out cash to have the Pirates’ field named after it almost kept pace with the Stock Index, but its performance was still below average. And the Royal Bank of Scotland, where baseball isn’t even played, purchased the rights for one of its subsidiaries, Citizen’s Bank, to name the Phillies’ stadium, and promptly saw its stock lag well behind the average in Britain. In fact, since 2003, it has been the poorest-performing bank stock in all of the British Isles!
So as you might imagine, as a lifelong Yankee fan, with the Yankees also recently breaking ground for a new stadium, and with A Rod earning more than $25 million a year, I am more than a little worried about a company coming up with a bundle to name Yankee Stadium something like, say, Preparation H Field.
Which would be appropriate, I guess, if they fail to provide comfortable seats.
This naming trend started in 1966 when the brewer Anheuser-Busch bought the Saint Louis Cardinals and named their ballpark Busch Stadium. Though this appeared to represent a departure from traditional stadium-naming practice, it was in truth not that much of a stretch since many other parks were named for their owners (the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Ebbets Field and the Cubs’ Wrigley Field are just two examples); and Anheuser-Busch, after all, was the owner of the Red Birds. [Other stadiums are named for their location (the Red Sox’s Fenway Park, the Orioles’ Camden Yards), team name (the legendary Yankee Stadium or Dodger Stadium), or after their former use (the NY Giants’ Polo Grounds)].
But Citi Stadium is a whole ‘nother matter. More and more teams and the municipal owners of their playing fields are selling the naming rights to the highest bidders. Thus we have Coors Stadium (for the Rockies): QualComm Stadium which used to be Jack Murphy Stadium (incredibly named after a sportswriter!) before it was PETCO Field (for the Padres); and of course, for the Houston Astros, there is the swishy Minute Maid Field which used to be, yes, ENRON Field. We of course know what happened there.
But there is yet another twist to all of this pay-to-play—does naming a field for a corporation help the bottom line, which is certainly what this must be all about? And from a team’s perspective, in addition to the cash, does having a corporate-named field help win ball games? The latter question is easy to answer—absolutely not. According to the NY Times, there have been 25 seasons played in those fields named for banks and the home teams averaged 75 wins and 87 loses (article linked below). This will not get you to the post-season.
In regard to the effect on the companies’ bottom line, we also find that it doesn’t work. Again, looking at the bank-named ballparks, after the naming was purchased, in all cases the banks’ stocks underperformed the wider averages.
Comerica, the bank for which the Tigers’ field is named, saw its stock decline 10 percent since 2000 while the Bank Stock Index is up 41 percent. PNC, which doled out cash to have the Pirates’ field named after it almost kept pace with the Stock Index, but its performance was still below average. And the Royal Bank of Scotland, where baseball isn’t even played, purchased the rights for one of its subsidiaries, Citizen’s Bank, to name the Phillies’ stadium, and promptly saw its stock lag well behind the average in Britain. In fact, since 2003, it has been the poorest-performing bank stock in all of the British Isles!
So as you might imagine, as a lifelong Yankee fan, with the Yankees also recently breaking ground for a new stadium, and with A Rod earning more than $25 million a year, I am more than a little worried about a company coming up with a bundle to name Yankee Stadium something like, say, Preparation H Field.
Which would be appropriate, I guess, if they fail to provide comfortable seats.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
10:19 AM
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