Name games

The Red Sox say they don't want to sell the name of the new park to the highest corporate bidder. But they don't mind sticking the tab to you.

by Jason Gay

This week, an Australian Rules football player by the name of Gerry Hocking did something that appears to be unprecedented in the history of sports-business relations. Hocking, the captain of a team called the Geelong Cats, legally changed his name to Whiskas, the name of a prominent cat food.

For the switch, which will last for one week, Whiskas will pay Hocking and his financially strapped club about $66,000 US. "He's doing it because we obviously need the money," an approving Cats coach Gary Ayres told reporters. "Maybe the people who perhaps think it's a bit too way out there are shitty because they didn't think of it."

Maybe. But it's safe to say that most people would call Hocking's name change an appalling example of corporate sponsorship run amok. Whether it's event titles like the Poulan Weed-Eater Bowl or the megabuck sneaker contracts awarded to college-basketball coaches, the relationship between organized athletics and big business has never been cozier -- or more controversial.

So that's why many people around here were pleased last month when Boston Red Sox officials announced they had no intention of selling "naming rights" to their proposed successor to Fenway Park. Although Sox brass left themselves some wiggle room, sports traditionalists -- who are legion in this town -- cheered. (Before we go any further, let's note that the Phoenix is located on the proposed site for the new Fenway; Phoenix owner Stephen Mindich supports a new park, but wants it built somewhere else.)

But wait a sec. If the Red Sox want a new ballpark, they'll need money, and lots of it -- an estimated $550 million plus. And naming-rights fees aren't exactly small change. Framingham-based Staples Inc. just plunked down $100 million to call the new home of basketball's Los Angeles Lakers and Clippers the Staples Center. The Red Sox -- a far more storied and fan-supported franchise -- could probably command even more.

"Boston is a big market," says Russell Wallach, the vice-president of naming-rights partnership for ProServ, a sports-marketing giant. "And the Red Sox have a tremendous history and I would imagine that there would be many companies that would be interested in being involved in a new ballpark."

Don't get me wrong. Places like San Francisco's 3Com Park (formerly Candlestick) and the Baltimore Ravens' newly titled PSINet Stadium give me the ickies, too. If the Red Sox were spending their own money and wanted to take a purist stance on names, I'd be all for it.

But that's not happening. Early indications are that the Red Sox plan to finance the stadium privately and turn to state taxpayers for an additional $150 million to $200 million in infra-structure, relocation, and land-taking costs. No one's come up with a method to reduce that public subsidy. That's why House Speaker Thomas Finneran told reporters late last month: "I like tradition, and I'm as nostalgic as anybody else for the name Fenway and the meaning of it, but 3Com doesn't bother me terribly."

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Besides, it's mainly a certain class of American sports fans, and particularly sports writers, who hate corporate sponsorship. Overseas, it's no big whoop for corporate sponsors to put their ads on team jerseys; players on England's Manchester United soccer club, winner of this year's European Cup, have an enormous SHARP emblazoned across their shirts. And you never hear folks down south complaining that NASCAR auto racing has gotten too commercial, do you?

But here's a news flash, Mr. Red-Sox-Purist-I-have-Dom-DiMaggio's-
autograph-and-a-foul-pop-up-from-Tony-C.: the new Fenway Park is not for you. Teams covet these new parks not for their neo-traditionalist feel (though that helps sell the projects to tweedy writers), but for their ability to suck every possible corporate entertainment dollar from the city in the form of luxury boxes and "premium seating," which is simply a euphemism for the good seats.

No, the target of the new Fenway isn't Mr. Purist. It's Mr. I-just-got-promoted-
to-junior-executive-and-I've-got-to-impress-these-clients-and-where-
do-I-park-my-Range-Rover-and-I-hope-my-face-gets-on-the-JumboTron-before-
I-have-to-leave-in-the-seventh-inning-so-I-can-watch-ER.

The reason for it all, we're told, is revenue: in terms of its gate receipts, the Red Sox lag behind teams such as the Cleveland Indians, the Texas Rangers, and the Baltimore Orioles, all of which play in state-of-the-art ballparks (though, as the cellar-dwelling Orioles can attest, great revenues don't necessarily translate into on-field success). With player salaries expected to increase ad infinitum, revenue needs will only escalate.

Now, it's fair to say that the Red Sox are one of the more public private enterprises; if the Sox have a good year, most of us enjoy it more than if, say, Reebok has a good year (although Reebok never let a ground ball through its legs in Game Six, or caused my father to heave a lamp across the living room). But does that absolve them, in their hour of need, from tapping every potential private revenue source before asking for the public's dime? Watch how Finneran reacts when he gets the bill. Actually, see how you react next April 15.

Anyway, the whole point of building the new park is that it isn't Fenway Park. "Fenway is the old Fenway, not the new Fenway, and [the Sox] may have been a little too quick to make the decision [on naming]," says Jeff Knapple, president of Envision, a Los Angeles-based consulting company that helped broker the Staples Center deal.

Baseball fans, by nature, will hoo-haw forever about the integrity of the game and what commercialization is doing to it, but if you're one of those purists, rest assured that the game will endure. The integrity of baseball has always been about what happens between the baselines -- after nearly killing itself with a lengthy player strike in 1994, baseball blossomed again last season, when the elegant Yankees won 125 games and the World Series while sluggers Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa shattered Roger Maris's home-run record. So bring on the gaudy corporate name. And save the people a couple of bucks.

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So what to name it? Jeff Knapple says that ideally, a naming-rights sponsor is local, so that fans are already familiar with the name. Here in Boston, some institutions immediately come to mind. Dunkin' Donuts Park. Legal Sea Field.

Or, if people are so interested in retaining the name Fenway, how about contacting the good folks in the slaughterhouse at Maine's Joseph Kirshner Co. and getting them to name the stadium Fenway Franks Park? Safeway Park isn't so far off. Neither, for that matter, is Subway Park. Amway Park?

Another thought is also to name the surrounding neighborhood after whatever corporation buys naming rights, in order to preserve the current congruity. Then again, the folks at the Fenway Action Coalition probably wouldn't be too keen on calling themselves the Circuit City Action Coalition.

As for me, I'd like it if a certain Cambridge-based software giant founded by a soft-spoken Buddhist came in and snapped up the naming rights to the new Fenway.

That's right: Lotus Field. It's original, alluring, and even a bit seductive. And you can bet that new ballpark will have excellent feng shui.

Jason Gay can be reached at jgay[a]phx.com.