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See y’all on game day 
**LA LAKERS THREAD** Sitting on 17! 2023-2024 offseason begins
- Thread in 'Sports & Training' Thread starter Started by licensed to ball,
- Start date
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So a team who has TEN NEW PLAYERS ( MOST OF WHICH HAVE BEEN HURT AT SOME POINT)
Isn't performing as well as a team that has had a system in place for close to a decade, or a team that literally made the Finals last year....... How surprising
.
Serious question, prior to starting the season where did ya'll have the Lakers finishing? did ya'll think that a team who made so much out of being old was going to be gunning for the #1 seed??
Isn't performing as well as a team that has had a system in place for close to a decade, or a team that literally made the Finals last year....... How surprising
.Serious question, prior to starting the season where did ya'll have the Lakers finishing? did ya'll think that a team who made so much out of being old was going to be gunning for the #1 seed??
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Third after the Jazz and Suns personally.So a team who has TEN NEW PLAYERS ( MOST OF WHICH HAVE BEEN HURT AT SOME POINT)
Isn't performing as well as a team that has had a system in place for close to a decade, or a tram thyat literally made the Finals last year....... How surprising
Serious question, prior to starting the season where did ya'll have the Lakers finishing? did ya'll think that a team who made so much out of being old was going to be gunning for the #1 seed??
MVP
Supporter
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I had them winning mid 50 games and a top seed or close to it. Definitely been an underwhelming start. Also didn't expect Bron to have missed half the games so far.
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We're one W out of 4th. We'll be alright.
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Those that keep quoting standings and stats, please watch the games. See how are losing. See the lack of changes. The lack of adjustments. We are the same team in game 2 as we are in game 24. Even the starting lineup was practically the same 5 days ago lol
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the way scouts are talking about bronnie, bron gonna have to longer to play with bryce instead
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If we keep sucking were gonna start hearing "were one game out of the play in game"
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I’m still optimistic, but not as constructed…
teams needs a roster shake up.
fortunatley we have pieces to trade.
AB, nunn, baze, DJ, ariza, THT all can go for something decent in return.
would be a trip if we still traded for buddy.
teams needs a roster shake up.
fortunatley we have pieces to trade.
AB, nunn, baze, DJ, ariza, THT all can go for something decent in return.
would be a trip if we still traded for buddy.
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Laker optimists when the lakers trade everyone at the deadline, change coach and team improves:
“See. Told you idiots team was great. Just have to be patient”
Lol at “we have pieces to trade”
“See. Told you idiots team was great. Just have to be patient”
Lol at “we have pieces to trade”
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Record or 4th in the W don't mean ****. We could be sitting 1st in the West right now and I would still say this team aint winning. 2020 we also had new/previously run-down players but that team came out with a purpose, had chemistry and defense was clicking. This year the players are new AND they don't play defense nor do they have the capability to get better. Our big defensive guards & wings are now turnstiles and inexperienced. Javale turned into DJ. Vogel has reverted to Orlando Vogel. This mf wants Trevor Ariza in 2022 to unlock this team. Players are openly questioning his schemes and praising other coaches. The only players we can rely on are constantly breaking down health-wise. We win when Carmelo ****ing Anthony carries us. Westbrook...bruh
Im still Lakers all day...but it's a ****ty day today and i aint staying out in this weather
Im still Lakers all day...but it's a ****ty day today and i aint staying out in this weather
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tryna trade value menu items for a 10 piece combo
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AB, Ariza and DJ would be out of the league if we didn’t pick them up
They are not tradeable assets
They are not tradeable assets
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Why Crypto.com made a $700 million bet to rename Staples Center — and doesn’t even expect you to use the name
When news broke last month that the Staples Center would get a new name — Crypto.com Arena, beginning Christmas Day — it didn’t take long for people to declare on social media they’d never call it that.
It doesn’t matter all that much, one company executive said.
“He or she will call it whatever they want, and we’ll be OK with that,” said Steven Kalifowitz, chief marketing officer for Crypto.com. “It’s part of a broader strategy of getting people to know who we are.”
That brand recognition strategy, as Kalifowitz explained in a call from Hong Kong, is to become both widely known and deeply trusted, in the Los Angeles community and beyond — after all, the home of the Lakers is one of the world’s busiest and best-known venues.
And as a player in the emerging cryptocurrency space, the company’s thinking is that sports marketing investments like naming rights are one proven tactic to carve out brand awareness and gain market share as rivals jockey for the same things.
It doesn’t come cheap: Crypto.com, a Singapore-based crypto exchange and mobile wallet provider that claims three million users, is paying $700 million over 20 years to rebrand the home of the NBA’s Lakers and Clippers, WNBA’s Sparks and NHL’s Kings.
Of course, the company would love everyone to use the name — particularly at that price, which is the most money ever spent by a company to slap its name on a building. “Crypto.com Arena” will get used not just in signage but in traditional and digital media reports about games, concerts and events at the building.
The reality is, rebranding an arena or ballpark is a risky endeavor — particularly for a sector of the entertainment business that’s not well understood by the general public. It can take years before fans naturally adopt the new name. Crypto.com apparently is unbothered by that.
“I’m happy for them to say, ‘The company that took over Staples Center,’” Kalifowitz said. “Over time, it’s really about growth of the business.”
And the people who refuse to use the new name?
“People resist change. I realize that,” Kalifowitz said, adding that he’s still slightly taken aback to see “Citi Field” instead of “Shea Stadium” exit signs when he’s home in New York. “People will change when they’re ready.”
The Staples Center hosts more than 240 games and events annually, including the Grammy Awards.
“Diverse audiences really matter,” Kalifowitz said. “We get to speak to so many people.”
The building’s four million annual visitors will get a bit more diverse in a few years: The Clippers are moving to their own new arena in 2024 — with finance software company Intuit paying $500 million over 23 years for the naming rights. The soon-to-be Crypto.com Arena will have to fill what had been Clippers home game dates with other things — not too hard of a task in the nation’s second-largest market and capital of its entertainment industry.
Office supply giant Staples bought the naming rights for $116 million over 20 years starting when the Anschutz Entertainment Group-owned building opened in 1999. The company reportedly agreed to pay more in 2009 for permanent rights to the arena name, and then in 2019 AEG bought back the rights.
While the Staples Center name has been linked to the arena for almost 23 years, it’s not perceived as sacrosanct as, say, a Fenway Park or Wrigley Field or Madison Square Garden — some of the very old venues with a traditional name deeply linked in the public consciousness.
“The Staples Center is not that old; the naming rights partner, I don’t know if they’re still in business,” Kalifowitz said. “There is an attachment to the name but not company.”
(Staples remains in business, with more than 1,000 stores.)
Kalifowitz said a mutual friend familiar with both AEG and Crypto.com connected the companies, both of which were seeking to do a naming rights deal. AEG, which didn’t make anyone available to comment, is one of the world’s largest venue owners and operators, and it inked a recent deal with the Lakers that keeps the team at the arena through the 2041 season.
The Lakers are an international brand, and the venue hosts events that get attention far beyond Los Angeles, which was appealing, Kalifowitz said. Enough so to obligate $700 million to associate itself with the building.
“Certainly, a major attractive element of the Staples Center is the global awareness of the facility,” Kalifowitz said.
Details about the Christmas Day name-change event haven’t been disclosed. The Lakers host the Brooklyn Nets that night in primetime on the league’s traditionally most-watched TV date until the NBA Finals.
Sports naming rights really took off in the second half of the 20th century, and deals have continued to get done in both good and bad economic times. Even during pandemics.
In August, Sports Business Journal reported that $1.2 billion worth of new or extended naming rights deals were completed from Jan. 1, 2020, through July 27, 2021, at 79 U.S. and Canadian ballparks and arenas. That includes 22 pro sports facilities (accounting for more than $1 billion worth of the deals) with the remainder being minor league, college and youth sports venues.
The risk that the venue name will be a flop is ever-present. And so is the threat that something tragic or embarrassing will occur with the company that bought the name. Or the naming rights partner goes bankrupt, is bought, changes focus, etc. When the Crypto.com Arena deal was announced, both the public and media were quick to mention failures or awkward changes such as Enron Field, 3com Park, CMGI Field, Sports Authority Field, Jobing.com Arena, PSINet Stadium and other former corporate names on sports buildings.
Unlike an insurance company or beer brand, the American public is still coming to grips with the cryptocurrency sector’s Kool-Aid Man-bursts-through-the-wall arrival in the wider culture. Millions are learning about terms and concepts such as crypto, Bitcoin, digital wallets, blockchain, gas fees and non-fungible tokens.
It’s complicated, mysterious and not without controversy — the blockchain technology that powers the sector consumes environmentally bad quantities of energy, and cryptocurrencies are wildly volatile in value, more akin to a stock share price than a government currency. It could be a fad bubble or pyramid scheme. And the selling point that crypto is decentralized and unregulated compared to fiat currencies — the U.S. dollar — is troubling to many.
Those conditions remain a reality for the industry and are why Kalifowitz says Crypto.com is using naming rights to convince potential customers that it’s trustworthy and stable.
“A big part of the strategy is, ‘How do we communicate the fact the industry is not going anywhere and we’re not going anywhere,’” Kalifowitz said. “The best expression of that is something like this, putting your name on a building.”
How true that is will unfold over the next 20 years, or sooner.
Rob Yowell, president of Gemini Sports Group in Arizona, who has been involved in naming rights deals in his more than 20-year career in the business, believes crypto is here to stay in the sports marketing space and in general.
One of his clients, a crypto investment advisory firm called XBTO, landed a deal in September to put its logo on Inter Miami’s jerseys.
“(Crypto) is going to be one of the big spending categories in the very near future,” Yowell said. “It’s the new finance and it’s exploded and here it is.”
Yowell expects to see an increase in major naming rights deals not only in crypto, but also in the gambling sector, and eventually in CBD and cannabis (once legal issues are sorted out). He acknowledged that some of the crypto players will get bought up, merge or fail.
“There is risk in any deal. We’ve seen banks disappear. We’ve seen traditional businesses struggle,” Yowell said.
Buying a building name can work from a business growth perspective even if the general public doesn’t care for the name, said Jim Pokrywczynski, an expert in sports marketing as an associate professor of strategic communications at Marquette University.
“Chicago and U.S. Cellular Field is the best recent example of an objective of penetrating a market,” Pokrywczynski said. “They were a ‘Who?’ when they bought the rights to the White Sox baseball stadium. They converted that market into one quite fruitful for them.”
The $700 million that Crypto.com is paying is certainly a headline-grabbing figure, averaging $35 million annually. Pokrywczynski contrasted that annual cost to NBC charging $6 million for 30 seconds of commercial airtime in the upcoming Super Bowl LVI at L.A.’s Sofi Stadium in February.
“It only gets you seven Super Bowl ads in a five-hour period,” Pokrywczynski said.
It’s one thing for an established brand to invest that much for TV spots to reach 100 million viewers. It’s riskier for new companies, even cash-flush cryptocurrency firms.
“That’s certainly a risk with companies that don’t have an established business model, if you will,” Pokrywczynski said.
There is a long-term risk for AEG and the arena, too, if Crypto.com goes bust. That would mean another name would likely be sought out, and buildings that get several names lose value.
“Then it becomes a laughingstock in the community and then it becomes harder and harder to secure a partner,” said Kyle Canter, COO at Cleveland-based The Superlative Group Inc., which handles buy- and sell-side naming rights negotiations.
Superlative represented Miami-Dade County in the 19-year, $135 million naming rights agreement it signed earlier this year for the Miami Heat’s arena, which had been American Airlines Arena since 1999. It sold the rights to FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange that’s perhaps the biggest sports marketing rival to Crypto.com.
Canter noted that venues like the Miami Dolphins’ home stadium seem to change names every few years. It opened as Joe Robbie Stadium in 1987 and has gone through nine names since, from the team founder’s name, to Pro Player and Land Shark and, since 2016, Hard Rock Stadium thanks to an 18-year, $250 million deal with the restaurant chain.
The NHL’s Florida Panthers play at FLA Live Arena. Its former names include National Car Rental Center, Office Depot Center, BankAtlantic Center, and BB&T Center.
Diluting a venue name’s value isn’t good for business, but the deals will remain lucrative for both buyer and seller.
“When you think about stadiums in certain markets, people around the country and around the world identify companies by the name,” Canter said.
Crypto.com’s Kalifowitz said his company’s L.A. naming rights deal is almost a steal, even if people won’t regularly use the name for years.
“I think it’s an extremely efficient deal in terms of costs,” he said.
That’s because the deal price is locked in over a full generation against inflation, he said. It’s akin to a player landing a gargantuan contract today but whose average annual value in a decade is no longer remarkable. Plus, a building doesn’t lose its ability to get on base.
“This (arena) offers value that few stadiums can offer,” Kalifowitz said.
Compared to what other companies are paying to get into the sports marketing space, he may not be wrong. For example, Japanese ecommerce company Rakuten paid the Golden State Warriors $100 million over five seasons for a small jersey patch and recently re-upped.
Still, people casually using the new name makes a better deal.
“The more word of mouth benefit achieved, the more valuable the partnership,” Canter said, “even if such metrics are nearly impossible to quantify.”
He understands the hesitation and criticism, he added.
“Any time you see a category that didn’t exist a year ago receive a couple billion dollars in sponsorship commit over a year, it’s natural to have that kind of a reaction,” Canter said. “The industry continues to move themselves out of being this dark business and moving into the mainstream. It just takes cash and they have it.”
Basia Wojcik, vice president of sports and development at The Marketing Arm, a Dallas-based sports marketing agency, agreed with that sentiment.
“I feel like they’re here to stay. They want to make some sort of big splash in the marketplace to say, ‘We’re here and credible,’” she said. “I don’t think it matters if you and I call it the Staples Center. They’re going to get that pick-up when there is an event.”
She’s a bit more skeptical of the price.
“Are there justified business results from spending $700 million dollars? That’s a ridiculous amount of money,” Wojcik said. “It’s a 20-year deal. Business changes in six months to a year, especially in that area, let alone 20 years.”
With the L.A. arena deal, Crypto.com has earmarked more than $1 billion this year to sports marketing:
A $175 million, 10-year branding partnership with Ultimate Fighting Championship;
A five-year, $100 million marketing effort with Formula 1;
A six-year jersey patch deal with the Philadelphia 76ers, whose terms haven’t been released but reportedly are at least $10 million a season;
A three-year, $34 million deal to become Paris Saint-Germain’s cryptocurrency partner.
San Francisco-based rival FTX.US, the American operation of Hong Kong-based FTX, is the other big spender on sports naming rights and marketing. Aside from the Miami Heat deal, the firm paid to put its name on the Cal Bears football stadium along with an MLB deal to become baseball’s official cryptocurrency exchange — a pact that put the FTX logo on umpire jerseys this season. FTX’s brand ambassador portfolio includes Tom Brady, Stephen Curry, Trevor Lawrence and Shohei Ohtani.
Jonathan Jensen, a sports marketing expert and professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, laid out the likely scenarios for the crypto-branded venues.
“I could see this going both ways. On the one hand, if a firm has the resources, there may not be a better tool for going from 0 to 60 in brand awareness than a naming rights partnership,” he said via email. “Particularly if it’s supported by media so the name will be featured during the broadcasts of premier events occurring within the facility, a brand that starts with little to no awareness on a national level can really jumpstart that process through naming rights.
“On the other hand, particularly in the case of a brand taking over for the original naming rights partner, such as what FTX is trying to do in replacing American Airlines in Miami, it can certainly be an uphill battle,” Jensen said. “And even if consumers are more readily able to recognize the brand due to the partnership, if they don’t know what FTX is or they are not a target consumer there may in the end not be a lot of positive ROI.”
Key to making such naming rights deals — or partnerships with most any category — is an integrated marketing campaign and not just a name bolted to the arena. That includes events, activations and making the product available in the venue for transactions and education.
“For a newcomer, you can’t just rely on naming rights to do all of the heavy lifting, even a partnership as large as this is not going to boil the ocean,” Jensen said. “In the example of FTX, they have already partnered with athletes, they have great creative in a Super Bowl ad, and they are branching out across sports like with MLB and college. They seem to realize that in today’s cluttered environment you have to have multiple touchpoints in order to break through.”
Today, only a handful of sports venues are without a corporate name, including eight in Major League Baseball, three in the NFL, and Madison Square Garden for the NBA and NHL.
The rest are labeled with the names of banks, energy providers, insurers, car brands, airlines, tech and telecom giants, food and beverage, gambling, and retail brands. They’d all love for fans to use the name, but each have their own business goals and ROI measurements.
“Way down the list is having you and me call it something,” Yowell said.
When news broke last month that the Staples Center would get a new name — Crypto.com Arena, beginning Christmas Day — it didn’t take long for people to declare on social media they’d never call it that.
It doesn’t matter all that much, one company executive said.
“He or she will call it whatever they want, and we’ll be OK with that,” said Steven Kalifowitz, chief marketing officer for Crypto.com. “It’s part of a broader strategy of getting people to know who we are.”
That brand recognition strategy, as Kalifowitz explained in a call from Hong Kong, is to become both widely known and deeply trusted, in the Los Angeles community and beyond — after all, the home of the Lakers is one of the world’s busiest and best-known venues.
And as a player in the emerging cryptocurrency space, the company’s thinking is that sports marketing investments like naming rights are one proven tactic to carve out brand awareness and gain market share as rivals jockey for the same things.
It doesn’t come cheap: Crypto.com, a Singapore-based crypto exchange and mobile wallet provider that claims three million users, is paying $700 million over 20 years to rebrand the home of the NBA’s Lakers and Clippers, WNBA’s Sparks and NHL’s Kings.
Of course, the company would love everyone to use the name — particularly at that price, which is the most money ever spent by a company to slap its name on a building. “Crypto.com Arena” will get used not just in signage but in traditional and digital media reports about games, concerts and events at the building.
The reality is, rebranding an arena or ballpark is a risky endeavor — particularly for a sector of the entertainment business that’s not well understood by the general public. It can take years before fans naturally adopt the new name. Crypto.com apparently is unbothered by that.
“I’m happy for them to say, ‘The company that took over Staples Center,’” Kalifowitz said. “Over time, it’s really about growth of the business.”
And the people who refuse to use the new name?
“People resist change. I realize that,” Kalifowitz said, adding that he’s still slightly taken aback to see “Citi Field” instead of “Shea Stadium” exit signs when he’s home in New York. “People will change when they’re ready.”
The Staples Center hosts more than 240 games and events annually, including the Grammy Awards.
“Diverse audiences really matter,” Kalifowitz said. “We get to speak to so many people.”
The building’s four million annual visitors will get a bit more diverse in a few years: The Clippers are moving to their own new arena in 2024 — with finance software company Intuit paying $500 million over 23 years for the naming rights. The soon-to-be Crypto.com Arena will have to fill what had been Clippers home game dates with other things — not too hard of a task in the nation’s second-largest market and capital of its entertainment industry.
Office supply giant Staples bought the naming rights for $116 million over 20 years starting when the Anschutz Entertainment Group-owned building opened in 1999. The company reportedly agreed to pay more in 2009 for permanent rights to the arena name, and then in 2019 AEG bought back the rights.
While the Staples Center name has been linked to the arena for almost 23 years, it’s not perceived as sacrosanct as, say, a Fenway Park or Wrigley Field or Madison Square Garden — some of the very old venues with a traditional name deeply linked in the public consciousness.
“The Staples Center is not that old; the naming rights partner, I don’t know if they’re still in business,” Kalifowitz said. “There is an attachment to the name but not company.”
(Staples remains in business, with more than 1,000 stores.)
Kalifowitz said a mutual friend familiar with both AEG and Crypto.com connected the companies, both of which were seeking to do a naming rights deal. AEG, which didn’t make anyone available to comment, is one of the world’s largest venue owners and operators, and it inked a recent deal with the Lakers that keeps the team at the arena through the 2041 season.
The Lakers are an international brand, and the venue hosts events that get attention far beyond Los Angeles, which was appealing, Kalifowitz said. Enough so to obligate $700 million to associate itself with the building.
“Certainly, a major attractive element of the Staples Center is the global awareness of the facility,” Kalifowitz said.
Details about the Christmas Day name-change event haven’t been disclosed. The Lakers host the Brooklyn Nets that night in primetime on the league’s traditionally most-watched TV date until the NBA Finals.
Sports naming rights really took off in the second half of the 20th century, and deals have continued to get done in both good and bad economic times. Even during pandemics.
In August, Sports Business Journal reported that $1.2 billion worth of new or extended naming rights deals were completed from Jan. 1, 2020, through July 27, 2021, at 79 U.S. and Canadian ballparks and arenas. That includes 22 pro sports facilities (accounting for more than $1 billion worth of the deals) with the remainder being minor league, college and youth sports venues.
The risk that the venue name will be a flop is ever-present. And so is the threat that something tragic or embarrassing will occur with the company that bought the name. Or the naming rights partner goes bankrupt, is bought, changes focus, etc. When the Crypto.com Arena deal was announced, both the public and media were quick to mention failures or awkward changes such as Enron Field, 3com Park, CMGI Field, Sports Authority Field, Jobing.com Arena, PSINet Stadium and other former corporate names on sports buildings.
Unlike an insurance company or beer brand, the American public is still coming to grips with the cryptocurrency sector’s Kool-Aid Man-bursts-through-the-wall arrival in the wider culture. Millions are learning about terms and concepts such as crypto, Bitcoin, digital wallets, blockchain, gas fees and non-fungible tokens.
It’s complicated, mysterious and not without controversy — the blockchain technology that powers the sector consumes environmentally bad quantities of energy, and cryptocurrencies are wildly volatile in value, more akin to a stock share price than a government currency. It could be a fad bubble or pyramid scheme. And the selling point that crypto is decentralized and unregulated compared to fiat currencies — the U.S. dollar — is troubling to many.
Those conditions remain a reality for the industry and are why Kalifowitz says Crypto.com is using naming rights to convince potential customers that it’s trustworthy and stable.
“A big part of the strategy is, ‘How do we communicate the fact the industry is not going anywhere and we’re not going anywhere,’” Kalifowitz said. “The best expression of that is something like this, putting your name on a building.”
How true that is will unfold over the next 20 years, or sooner.
Rob Yowell, president of Gemini Sports Group in Arizona, who has been involved in naming rights deals in his more than 20-year career in the business, believes crypto is here to stay in the sports marketing space and in general.
One of his clients, a crypto investment advisory firm called XBTO, landed a deal in September to put its logo on Inter Miami’s jerseys.
“(Crypto) is going to be one of the big spending categories in the very near future,” Yowell said. “It’s the new finance and it’s exploded and here it is.”
Yowell expects to see an increase in major naming rights deals not only in crypto, but also in the gambling sector, and eventually in CBD and cannabis (once legal issues are sorted out). He acknowledged that some of the crypto players will get bought up, merge or fail.
“There is risk in any deal. We’ve seen banks disappear. We’ve seen traditional businesses struggle,” Yowell said.
Buying a building name can work from a business growth perspective even if the general public doesn’t care for the name, said Jim Pokrywczynski, an expert in sports marketing as an associate professor of strategic communications at Marquette University.
“Chicago and U.S. Cellular Field is the best recent example of an objective of penetrating a market,” Pokrywczynski said. “They were a ‘Who?’ when they bought the rights to the White Sox baseball stadium. They converted that market into one quite fruitful for them.”
The $700 million that Crypto.com is paying is certainly a headline-grabbing figure, averaging $35 million annually. Pokrywczynski contrasted that annual cost to NBC charging $6 million for 30 seconds of commercial airtime in the upcoming Super Bowl LVI at L.A.’s Sofi Stadium in February.
“It only gets you seven Super Bowl ads in a five-hour period,” Pokrywczynski said.
It’s one thing for an established brand to invest that much for TV spots to reach 100 million viewers. It’s riskier for new companies, even cash-flush cryptocurrency firms.
“That’s certainly a risk with companies that don’t have an established business model, if you will,” Pokrywczynski said.
There is a long-term risk for AEG and the arena, too, if Crypto.com goes bust. That would mean another name would likely be sought out, and buildings that get several names lose value.
“Then it becomes a laughingstock in the community and then it becomes harder and harder to secure a partner,” said Kyle Canter, COO at Cleveland-based The Superlative Group Inc., which handles buy- and sell-side naming rights negotiations.
Superlative represented Miami-Dade County in the 19-year, $135 million naming rights agreement it signed earlier this year for the Miami Heat’s arena, which had been American Airlines Arena since 1999. It sold the rights to FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange that’s perhaps the biggest sports marketing rival to Crypto.com.
Canter noted that venues like the Miami Dolphins’ home stadium seem to change names every few years. It opened as Joe Robbie Stadium in 1987 and has gone through nine names since, from the team founder’s name, to Pro Player and Land Shark and, since 2016, Hard Rock Stadium thanks to an 18-year, $250 million deal with the restaurant chain.
The NHL’s Florida Panthers play at FLA Live Arena. Its former names include National Car Rental Center, Office Depot Center, BankAtlantic Center, and BB&T Center.
Diluting a venue name’s value isn’t good for business, but the deals will remain lucrative for both buyer and seller.
“When you think about stadiums in certain markets, people around the country and around the world identify companies by the name,” Canter said.
Crypto.com’s Kalifowitz said his company’s L.A. naming rights deal is almost a steal, even if people won’t regularly use the name for years.
“I think it’s an extremely efficient deal in terms of costs,” he said.
That’s because the deal price is locked in over a full generation against inflation, he said. It’s akin to a player landing a gargantuan contract today but whose average annual value in a decade is no longer remarkable. Plus, a building doesn’t lose its ability to get on base.
“This (arena) offers value that few stadiums can offer,” Kalifowitz said.
Compared to what other companies are paying to get into the sports marketing space, he may not be wrong. For example, Japanese ecommerce company Rakuten paid the Golden State Warriors $100 million over five seasons for a small jersey patch and recently re-upped.
Still, people casually using the new name makes a better deal.
“The more word of mouth benefit achieved, the more valuable the partnership,” Canter said, “even if such metrics are nearly impossible to quantify.”
He understands the hesitation and criticism, he added.
“Any time you see a category that didn’t exist a year ago receive a couple billion dollars in sponsorship commit over a year, it’s natural to have that kind of a reaction,” Canter said. “The industry continues to move themselves out of being this dark business and moving into the mainstream. It just takes cash and they have it.”
Basia Wojcik, vice president of sports and development at The Marketing Arm, a Dallas-based sports marketing agency, agreed with that sentiment.
“I feel like they’re here to stay. They want to make some sort of big splash in the marketplace to say, ‘We’re here and credible,’” she said. “I don’t think it matters if you and I call it the Staples Center. They’re going to get that pick-up when there is an event.”
She’s a bit more skeptical of the price.
“Are there justified business results from spending $700 million dollars? That’s a ridiculous amount of money,” Wojcik said. “It’s a 20-year deal. Business changes in six months to a year, especially in that area, let alone 20 years.”
With the L.A. arena deal, Crypto.com has earmarked more than $1 billion this year to sports marketing:
A $175 million, 10-year branding partnership with Ultimate Fighting Championship;
A five-year, $100 million marketing effort with Formula 1;
A six-year jersey patch deal with the Philadelphia 76ers, whose terms haven’t been released but reportedly are at least $10 million a season;
A three-year, $34 million deal to become Paris Saint-Germain’s cryptocurrency partner.
San Francisco-based rival FTX.US, the American operation of Hong Kong-based FTX, is the other big spender on sports naming rights and marketing. Aside from the Miami Heat deal, the firm paid to put its name on the Cal Bears football stadium along with an MLB deal to become baseball’s official cryptocurrency exchange — a pact that put the FTX logo on umpire jerseys this season. FTX’s brand ambassador portfolio includes Tom Brady, Stephen Curry, Trevor Lawrence and Shohei Ohtani.
Jonathan Jensen, a sports marketing expert and professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, laid out the likely scenarios for the crypto-branded venues.
“I could see this going both ways. On the one hand, if a firm has the resources, there may not be a better tool for going from 0 to 60 in brand awareness than a naming rights partnership,” he said via email. “Particularly if it’s supported by media so the name will be featured during the broadcasts of premier events occurring within the facility, a brand that starts with little to no awareness on a national level can really jumpstart that process through naming rights.
“On the other hand, particularly in the case of a brand taking over for the original naming rights partner, such as what FTX is trying to do in replacing American Airlines in Miami, it can certainly be an uphill battle,” Jensen said. “And even if consumers are more readily able to recognize the brand due to the partnership, if they don’t know what FTX is or they are not a target consumer there may in the end not be a lot of positive ROI.”
Key to making such naming rights deals — or partnerships with most any category — is an integrated marketing campaign and not just a name bolted to the arena. That includes events, activations and making the product available in the venue for transactions and education.
“For a newcomer, you can’t just rely on naming rights to do all of the heavy lifting, even a partnership as large as this is not going to boil the ocean,” Jensen said. “In the example of FTX, they have already partnered with athletes, they have great creative in a Super Bowl ad, and they are branching out across sports like with MLB and college. They seem to realize that in today’s cluttered environment you have to have multiple touchpoints in order to break through.”
Today, only a handful of sports venues are without a corporate name, including eight in Major League Baseball, three in the NFL, and Madison Square Garden for the NBA and NHL.
The rest are labeled with the names of banks, energy providers, insurers, car brands, airlines, tech and telecom giants, food and beverage, gambling, and retail brands. They’d all love for fans to use the name, but each have their own business goals and ROI measurements.
“Way down the list is having you and me call it something,” Yowell said.
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“We’ve got great trade assets….like Nunn” lol
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