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Ewww: Camden Yards Might Get Seriously Gross Corporate Name

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Today’s Ticker included the following item:

Orioles owner John Angelos had reportedly made a deal to sell the naming rights to Camden Yards. The deal was supposed to be announced yesterday, but it turns out that the advertiser was blindsided by Angelos’s recent sale of the team, and the status of the naming rights deal is now unclear.

That item linked to a small Sports Business Journal article, which in turn was based on a paywalled Wall Street Journal article. I don’t have a Journal subscription, so I wasn’t able to glean the full details, including who the naming advertiser was supposed to be. But I see now that the Journal article’s author, Jared Diamond, revealed the advertiser’s identity in a tweet:

T. Rowe Price Park at Camden Yards — really has a ring to it, no?

Based on follow-up coverage from other media outlets, it’s still not clear what will happen to the naming rights deal. Here’s hoping it doesn’t come to fruition.

In case you’re wondering, nine of the 30 MLB teams do not currently whore out their stadium names to corporate advertisers. Here are those teams and their ballparks:

  • Angels: Angel Stadium
  • A’s: Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum*
  • Cubs: Wrigley Field**
  • Dodgers: Dodger Stadium
  • Nationals: Nationals Park
  • Orioles: Oriole Park at Camden Yards
  • Red Sox: Fenway Park
  • Royals: Kauffman Stadium
  • Yankees: Yankee Stadium

*Although the Coliseum has had many advertised names over the years, it does not currently have one.
**Wrigley Field is a vanity name (like Kauffman Stadium), not an advertised name. The Cubs receive no compensation from the gum company, and they could sell the naming rights if they wanted to, but they’ve so far chosen not to.

Update: Here’s a free link to the WSJ story.

 
  
 
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Comments (39)

    That’s exactly where I’m at with it. I think if Camden Yards is in the name, it will be called Camden Yards. it’s to ingrained in the area, the fan base, and amongst baseball fans.

    While I don’t like corporate names, it seems like the O’s were at least priming us for it. Especially if the full name of the location is Oriole Park at Camden Yards, it doesn’t take an MBA to see the implication there.

    If this is offsetting revenue the Orioles are losing because MLB is giving the Nationals back media rights, I’m thrilled. A crooked “deal” that’s been under-reported by local and national media for decades.

    You mean a crooked deal in favor of the Orioles is finally getting fixed? The Nats got fleeced on that.

    Because they invaded Baltimore’s market. So the O’s got majority ownership of the RSN. That was the deal. What changed? Are the Nats leaving? We’ll gladly buy out your stake.

    LOL “invaded”…. Stop it. The Bay Area has two teams, Chicago has two teams, New York has two teams… Put a good product on the field and people will watch. Don’t cry because people from another city 45 minutes away finally got a team back.

    Angelos hamstrung the bigger market team down the road for nearly 20 years. Maybe he bears some blame here.

    Yeah, some of these naming rights deals don’t exactly roll off the tongue, do they? (To say the least.) This would rank right up there with “Guaranteed Rate” Field in Chicago at the high end of the yuck factor.

    As a Cardinals fan, I don’t really think of Busch Stadium as being a corporate name, even though there’s surely a deal with Anheuser Busch in place, so it technically is…it’s at least the family name of the former owners.

    Back when season retrospective video-tapes (as in VHS) were first becoming a bit thing, I still remember Gussie Busch having a couple of cameo interview bits in the 1985 Cardinals “Heck Of A Year” video…he must have been in his late 80s at the time. That alone always makes me think of him and his family, rather than the beer, when I hear “Busch Stadium”. [shrug]

    I was told by a Busch Stadium tour guide that MLB would not let the Busch family name their new stadium after Budweiser, so they named it Busch after the family name, then introduced Busch beer soon thereafter. Not sure how accurate that is, but quite the story if so!

    Part of the local lore in St. Louis holds that when Gussie Busch planned to rename Sportsman’s Park to Budweiser Stadium, Ford Frick said “No.” So Busch changed his mind and posited Busch Stadium. Frick again objected on the basis that even though the name wasn’t a product it was pretty much basically the company name. Busch, being the clever fellow that he was, supposedly retorted, “Hey, it’s not named after the company. It’s named after my father. Take a look up the highway where the Cubs play.” Frick had to admit defeat.
    Mind you, a few months later, Busch Bavarian Beer was introduced.

    I think Busch 1 (Sportsmans) and Busch 2 were vanity names officially, but I think AB pays for naming rights at the current stadium

    I’ve always taken great pride in the O’s not having an advertised stadium name. As Ravens fans we’ve come to affectionately refer to M&T Bank Stadium as “The Bank”, but that’s just making the best of a situation we can’t realistically change. And at least it’s no longer PSI.net “Pissy Net” Stadium. If and when Oriole Park at Camden Yards loses that proud moniker, I’m one of countless fans who will exclusively refer to it by simply “Camden” or “OPACY”. I don’t have it in me to try to accept two corporate names.

    The worst part of it is when T. Rowe is eventual sold/swallowed by a larger company O’s fans will suffer through annual venue name changes. I’m still calling it Oriole Park. Camden Yards is the entire facility (football and baseball stadium).

    So M&T Bank Stadium is “affectionately” called “The Bank”.

    the horrors

    of calling “T. Rowe Price Price Park at Camden Yards” ANYTHING money management/growth/stock related. UGH

    Angel Stadium was known as Edison International Field of Anaheim for a few years, including when they won the World Series., so they should get the A’s asterisk as well.

    I don’t think they’d name it “T. Rowe Price Park at Camden Yards” because everyone would just keep calling it Camden Yards, Nobody calls it “Oriole Park” now, and few people call it the full official “Oriole Park at Camden Yards.”

    So if it does happen, it will probably be something like “T Rowe Price Stadium” or “T Rowe Price Field” with no “at Camden Yards” tagged on the end.

    I wasn’t aware of that Paul, as I didn’t get a chance to read the WSJ article.

    I question the value of a company investing tens of millions of dollars to slap their name on a park that few people will ever utilize.

    As one of the other commenters had mentioned, the Baltimore television announcers will certainly open each game saying “Welcome to T Rowe Price Park at Camden Yards”, but outside of that I think people will continue to call the venue simply “Camden Yards”.

    Before my post yesterday I randomly checked out a half dozen articles on ESPN.com, MLB.com and the Baltimore Sun, and all six articles referred to it as just “Camden Yards” without a single one mentioning the “Oriole Park” portion. I can’t believe that would change once they have a naming rights partner, (with the possible exception of the MLB.com website.)

    People will still call it Camden Yards, but *announcers* will say “welcome to T. Rowe Price Stadium at Camden Yards.”

    Exactly right, unfortunately. When this stuff comes up the plan always is for us to omit it in conversation (I try to as well). But the local announcers are told to emphasize the corporate name (over and over), the national broadcast, same. The press releases, the branding, the commercials…it becomes ingrained. Your friends now call it that. Your mom. We all cringe and wonder what happened to class, what happened to Veteran’s Stadium.

    I can’t believe T. Rowe Price had no clue the team was going to be sold. I mean, that was pretty widely reported previous to this, right? Are they aware of a thing called due diligence? Doesn’t matter, no one will call it that anyway except the TV/radio announcers. I’d almost rather it be called Old Bay Park… almost.

    I will never call it the new name…..

    ……but at least the new naming partner is a Baltimore company

    There are much too many ads everywhere. It’s over stimulation and people stop paying attention all together.

    I didn’t claim that they (or any other team) hadn’t tried. I simply said they don’t currently have an advertised ballpark name. That’s all.

    Obviously, *any* of these could change at any time.

    We here in NE Ohio still call it Jacobs Field. And many still refer to the basketball arena as Gund Arena or The Q, which is much more digestible than Quicken Loans Arena.

Comments are closed.