After more than twenty years, Heinz Field, the home of the Pittsburgh Steelers, is becoming Acrisure Field. Now, my first instinct, upon hearing this news, was to make sport of this handoff, suggesting something along the lines of “swapping ketchup for a healing face-cream for teenagers,” but, imagine my surprise at learning that Acrisure doesn’t actually market a healing face-cream product to teenagers, but instead is a Grand Rapids, Michigan-based insurance and financial tech company, which in only eight years has grown its annual revenue from $38 million to $3.8 billion (man, that’s quite a decimal-shift!). So, Your Honor, I retract my planned snarky aside - I don’t need to poke that particular bear, which could clearly squash me like a bug.
Perhaps it’s fitting that the retirement of Heinz Field coincides with the departure of another long-time Steelers fixture: quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger, who retired at the end of the 2021 football season. Roethlisberger was at the controls during much of Heinz Field’s tenure, and, I’m sure became quite comfortable performing under the aegis of a ketchup bottle; at his age, it would have required a significant mindset pivot to suddenly face the prospect of leading the charge under the banner of a healing face-cream for teenagers, er, I mean insurance and financial tech products.
My fellow Pittsburghers will bemoan the loss of the Heinz name from the stadium; the Heinz company was founded in Pittsburgh in 1869, and has been an inescapable part of Pittsburgh ever since, providing us not only with the iconic ketchup (some say, “catsup,” but when I hear “catsup,” I envision our household cat from some years ago, Jeffrey, emerging from his daylong slumber in a fluffy cat bed by the sliding glass door to the patio, indicating that he was ready to go out into the night, to wander around the neighborhood, and terrorize all small creatures whom he encountered - some of whom he deposited on our doorstep, lifeless, for discovery the next morning), but also with the Heinz History Center (named after a popular Pennsylvania Senator who was killed at age 52 in a plane crash), and the quite popular “Picklesburgh,” a three-day food festival celebrating all things pickle, and anchored by an enormous inflatable pickle.
Naming rights has become big business, not only for sports stadiums (stadia?), but also for other buildings, events, and institutions - think universities, golf tournaments, and the American Cornhole Championships (sponsored by “Johnsonville Brats,” naturally). The driver, of course, is money; wherever there are deep pockets, there is an opportunity to sell naming rights.
Companies face difficult decisions every day regarding where to spend their promotional budget money, with options including broadcast, print, and digital media, naming rights, and enormous inflatable pickles (see above), to name but a few.
I’m struck by the proliferation of such naming rights deals in the last twenty years or so. Some of the most noteworthy (at least to me) include:
The Spectrum (Philadelphia, PA) - The new Spectrum, the home of Philadelphia’s NBA team, the Seventy-Sixers and its NHL team, the Flyers, was built in 1996, when I moved to Philadelphia. The first bank which slapped its name on the facility, CoreStates Bank, wasn’t very interesting, but the next one, First Union Bank, was amusing, because Philadelphia sports fans, renowned for throwing snow balls at Santa Claus at an Eagles game in 1968, easily turned “First Union Center” into “F-U Center!” The next bank, Wachovia Bank, also enabled name-calling, deploying the truncated term, “Wack” in a number of ribald epithets. The next bank to attach its name to the facility, Wells Fargo, would have provided lasting amusement to all, if only they had been named Wells Trust Fargo instead (“WTF Center,” right?).
Guaranteed Rate Field (Chicago, IL) - The home of the Chicago White Sox, this stadium was rebranded Guaranteed Rate Field in 2016, after living its life during its first thirteen years as U.S. Cellular Field. Anyone who has visited a major league baseball ballpark in recent years knows that guaranteed rates are not a thing at the ballpark. Ticket prices, hotdog prices, and beer prices have all climbed through the roof, escalating every year.
Enron Field (Houston, TX) - I should point out that Enron Field no longer exists - its current name is Minute Maid Park (right, the orange juice producer, although, if I’m thinking orange juice, my geographic compass points to Florida), and is the home of baseball’s Houston Astros. Enron, of whom you may have heard, was an energy company based in Houston (at least the geography made sense), until a massive fraud scandal bankrupted the company, and dragged its audit firm, Arthur Andersen, down with them, back in 2001. Naturally, it didn’t make sense to fulfill the twenty-eight years remaining on the naming rights deal, because, you know, it was unlikely that Enron would have paid the tab, and Enron shareholders who got “stuck” would have been really angry every time they saw the name “Enron” on the scoreboard - hence the pivot to orange juice. This excerpt reminds me of another naming rights saga, this one tied to John du Pont, an heir to the vast du Pont family fortune, who had donated money to Villanova University for a new basketball facility, dubbed du Pont Pavilion, until du Pont was convicted of murdering a wrestler, Dave Schultz, in 1996 (man, 1996 was a really active year in Philadelphia, wasn’t it?), and the university determined that it was bad optics to feature the name of a convicted murderer on the facility. That venue today is known as The Finneran Pavilion. I hope that Villanova performed its due diligence on Mr. (or, Ms.) Finneran, before affixing the name to the building - scraping names off buildings is no small task. I believe there’s a cautionary tale in here somewhere, but I’m not smart enough to know what it is; who among us can predict how a company or individual from whom we have accepted a large pile of money for naming rights might go off the rails?
But, the marketing of naming rights is not limited only to sports stadiums (stadiorum?). No, I visited a few years ago with a friend from high school, who occupies a development leadership role for a local university, and as we were riding in an elevator during a brief campus tour, I noticed a brass plaque affixed to the wall of the elevator, right by the buttons. The plaque reflected, “The Robert and Gertrude Binghamton Memorial Elevator,” or at least that’s how I remember it (I should point out that I imputed the Binghamton name here, for two reasons: firstly, I cannot recall the actual name, and secondly, Binghamton sounds like the name of a wealthy university donor. Further, Rule of Three’s Academic Research team has indicated that there is an actual university, in upstate New York, named Binghamton University - the promotional tagline atop its website reads: “The best public university in the Northeast: Binghamton University is a world-class institution that offers students a broad, interdisciplinary education with an international perspective and one of the most vibrant research programs in the nation.” So you see, my selection was quite highbrow, from an academic perspective). “Development,” by the way, means fundraising, much as “Customer Relationship Management” means sales, and “Waste Management” means garbage collection. I turned to my friend, and asked, incredulously, “You sold an elevator?”
He grinned, sheepishly, and responded, “You have to be creative in the development game.”
So, that exchange prompted me to consider other, non-traditional naming rights opportunities. Bathroom stalls in public restrooms represent a tremendous opportunity for Rule of Three, I believe. Our Marketing team has proposed the following inscription to be etched on the plaque, to be placed on the bathroom stall door: “Rule of Three: Proud sponsors of #1 and #2.”
But, rather then determining how to spend Rule of Three’s meager marketing budget, we are focused on marketing naming rights for this award-winning weekly column. Our Development team has identified several high-probability targets, including: Fifth Third Bank (although we have to act quickly, because I’m pretty sure they’re already in discussions with “Five Guys Burgers and Fries” - after all, “five” comes first in their name, before “three”); The 3M Company (we admit that we know very little about Minnesota, mining, or manufacturing - that’s the three “M’s” - you knew that, right? but we’re quick learners); and Pep Boys (you know, Manny, Moe and Jack).
But, don’t be surprised if you’re greeted sometime in the future with an email bearing a link to the “Original House of Pancakes Rule of Three Award-Winning Weekly Column,” because we are pursuing fallback naming rights options as well. As my friend pointed out, “You have to be creative in the development game.”
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If you delayed delivery of the Award-Winning Weekly Column several hours a good candidate would be …. https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/ …… The Saturday Evening Post Award-Winning Weekly Column - Rule of Three, or TSEPAWWCROT. That might be a challenge to get on a tee shirt of coffee mug and might be confused with a retired basketball coach. Just my initial thought
I’d be interested in naming rights for your semi-colons. I.e. John and Mary Fedderke ;
Kinda flows don’t you think?