On Monday, the Atlanta Falcons announced that the team’s new stadium, which will open in 2017, has a name: Mercedes-Benz Stadium. The naming rights deal was unveiled with fanfare, hailed by Mercedes-Benz CEO Steve Cannon as the largest marketing deal in the history of the prestigious car company (exact terms were not released). While fans in 2015 probably won’t think twice about a football stadium in Atlanta named after a European car company, the fact is that this practice is still fairly new.
Only a few decades ago, stadium naming rights were a largely untapped market. Only in the last 30 years has it become widespread. And yet, the trend of corporations using landmark sporting venue names as primetime advertising may have subtly begun in Boston.
Before a Dubai-based airline was buying the name to a London-based soccer team‘s new stadium—or a Houston-based baseball team allowed themselves to be dubiously connected (in stadium name only) to one of the greatest business scandals in U.S. history—there was simply the case of a Boston realty company with an opportunistic owner.
And in 1912, the Boston Red Sox were still partly owned by the same man who owned Fenway Realty Company: John Irving Taylor. Though he was in the process of relinquishing his control of the team to James McAleer, Taylor preserved just enough influence so that he could wield the power to name the shiny new stadium that he’d initiated the construction of (as well as remain the ballpark’s actual owner).
Naturally, there was no official “naming rights” deal drawn up. That was a concept that wouldn’t formally appear for more than half a century. Still, Taylor managed a clever solution, which would leave an indelible legacy.
In naming the Red Sox’ new home Fenway Park, Taylor gave his Fenway Realty Company free name recognition. Still, when asked if he was shamelessly plugging his own company in the naming of a baseball team’s new stadium, the outgoing owner had a readymade response.
He declared it was named Fenway, “because [the park’s] in the Fenway, isn’t it?”
And technically that’s true. Of course, even the Red Sox themselves point out the obvious business tie-in, as have others during the park’s long history.
Ironically, modern Fenway stands as a beacon to the purists who maintain that naming rights for stadiums is a cynical practice. As it is in the minority of current professional stadiums without a corporate name, Fenway’s mysterious name origin blends in entirely. Atlanta, on the other hand, will not have the luxury of subtly masking its business interests, unless perhaps Mercedes plans on buying and renaming the whole downtown the “Mercedes” neighborhood.
Image via Kevin McCarthy
