The Washington Post is reporting that the Commanders’ stadium advertiser is terminating its naming rights deal two years early, effective immediately. The advertiser had held the stadium’s naming rights since 2000 and was instrumental in convincing the franchise to change its name in 2020.
Quoting from the article:
Two people with knowledge of the decision said [the advertiser] exercised an opt-out provision before the end of 2023 that stemmed from the sale of the team, which closed in July. It caught the Commanders by surprise amid renewed fan interest and after an influx of new sponsorship deals.
The team issued a statement saying that it’s already in the process of identifying a new naming rights partner, although it’s unclear if a new deal will be brokered in time for the start of the 2024 NFL season. It’s also unclear what the stadium’s official name will be in the interim. It was originally called Jack Kent Cooke Stadium when it opened in 1997.
The news comes just a day after the Commanders announced a big slate of upgrades to the facility. Meanwhile, the team is also exploring the possibility of building a new stadium in Maryland or Virginia, or even returning to DC.
The move means there are now five NFL teams whose stadium names are not advertised: the Bears (Soldier Field), Browns (Cleveland Browns Stadium), Commies, Packers (Lambeau Field), and Kansas City (Arrowhead Stadium).
(My thanks to Bryan Martin Firvida for bringing the WaPo article to my attention.)
If you’re counting Arrowhead as not having its naming rights sold, you should count Mile High. I personally wouldn’t count either. While the name of the stadium itself hasn’t technically been sold, the “field” has been so every time the location of the game is described, a corporate sponsor still gets mentioned.
GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium and Empower Field at Mile High
Agreed. I was surprised to see Arrowhead on the list.
If you’re counting Arrowhead as not having its naming rights sold, you should count Mile High.
Disagree. KC’s *field name* is advertised, but its stadium name is not.
Denver’s entire facility name is advertised. In other words, the official name of the building includes the advertisement. (That’s also how both facilities are listed here: link)
If you feel differently, that’s fine, but I’ll continue to list/categorize these facilities in the way that makes sense to me.
KC’s facility is officially named GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium. You will not see it referred to as Arrowhead Stadium on anything official (as this would no doubt be a violation of the naming rights agreement). They’ve definitely sold the naming rights.
Completely agree. See for yourself if you don’t.
link
Paul, I generally trust you more than anyone else in sports media to see through corporate BS, but I think you’re being overly credulous on this one. Yes, the Chiefs have tried to claim that their deal with GEHA is not a full naming rights renaming of Arrowhead in an “official” sense as far as they define it, but at what point does the look-like-a-duck-quack-like-a-duck principle come into play? On overhead shots of KC’s stadium, for instance, the words “GEHA FIELD” are bolted on in massive letters, to the side of the stadium itself, not the playing surface. Nothing to do with “Arrowhead” is even visible. link
I’ve never looked into it, but I have always assumed that Arrowhead Stadium had to do with Arrowhead Water (similar to Arrowhead Pond before it became the Honda Center) like how Busch Gardens had to do with beer. I guess I was wrong.
The devil is in the details, but I agree with Paul here. It is still referred to as Arrowhead, even if they sold the name of the field itself. Whereas the Broncos stadium is no longer referred to as Mile High Stadium, rather ______________ Field at Mile High, and when shorten in any official broadcast, is referred to as _________ Field, leaving out Mile High. It is possible Arrowhead might end up the same as Mile High at some point, but it hasn’t gotten there yet.
The Broncos stadium is very much still referred to as Mile High. I actually don’t think it’s ever referred to as anything else except in official teamspeak press releases or something. And who reads those? It’s had a whole succession of bland and anonymous corporate sponsor names but I can’t think of any time I’ve ever heard anybody use one around Denver.
Pretty sure Empower Field is the name of the stadium, whereas GEHA Field is the name of the “field” within Arrowhead stadium.
Exactly.
This is just marketing-speak. Do you think KC would be able to sell the rights to the stadium separately from the field?
It’s terrible when the name of a field covers the entire stadium. The name of the field should be just the field.
I think the stadium’s website would disagree. The STADIUM is clearly named GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium, even if they tried to be clever.
Every reference to the facility on the website is to “GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium”, and none on the main page are a reference to the playing surface. For example, fields don’t have concourses, but GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium does!
link
The press release by the Chiefs and GEHA itself said, “The Kansas City Chiefs and GEHA (pronounced G.E.H.A.) today announced that GEHA will be the exclusive naming rights partner for Arrowhead Stadium. Beginning with the 2021 NFL season, the *home of the Chiefs* will be GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium.” In a world of marketing doublespeak, I think trying to say Arrowhead doesn’t have a corporate name is among the worst. Retaining the old name but slapping a corporate advertiser on at the front doesn’t mean the corporate advertiser doesn’t exist.
link
Curious if the agreement also extended to the stadium address “FedEx Way” and how that would be potentially impacted by the termination. Not sure if that was included in the WashPo article since it is paywalled and I was unable to see the rest of the article.
I would suspect. I’m in Jacksonville and the stadium’s street address has changed through the years with various stadium sponsorships (Alltel, TIAA Bank, EverBank).
Well there’s more to the story. One of the minority owners of the team when Snyder purchased it was the owner of FedEx. Their relationship deteriorated over the years, resulting in Snyder buying him and other minority owners out at below market value, before he eventually sold it to Harris and made a killing.
I wouldn’t necessarily call this unexpected. It’s been well known that FedEx had an opt out if the team changed hands. The Post had a pretty extensive story about this today.
Why isn’t “Fed-Ex” mentioned anywhere in the article??
Because my longstanding policy is not to name stadium or uni advertisers unless it’s absolutely necessary, because I’m opposed to uni ads and stadium naming rights deals.
Nothing new about this. I’ve handled things this way for many years.
While I find your policy somewhat annoying in practice, I fully support your reasoning. Why give them any more notice than they’ve already paid for?
If I were [stadium advertiser] I wouldn’t want my name associated with that piece of junk either.
No doubt the team has been horrid for decades, but I’m willing to reserve judgment on the new ownership. He gets a year or two to right the ship, and while I’m not entirely in love with the Dan Quinn and Kliff Kingsbury hirings, I’m optimistic that they’ll be better than Rivera/Del Rio/Bienemy.
Or maybe you were referring to the actual stadium and not the team. In which case, yes – it’s a terrible hunk of soulless concrete with no decent public access.
Just the stadium. Reserving the right to judge new ownership until they do something significant.
“Washington Football Stadium”
YES!
Or the more geographically correct “Landover Football Stadium”
I’m still calling it “Football Team Stadium at Geographic Location”.
They will sell it to another company before the season starts. FedEx was fed up with the team.
As a Lions fan, I often forget that the Detroit stadium name is a licensing deal. As the Ford family has owned the team my entire life, Ford Field feels more like it has a family name than a company name.
Excellent point Nick. Ford is has been apart of the Lions for so long you don’t think of it as a “Sponsor” One of the few examples were a corporate stadium name doesn’t feel like a like it.
Like how I always (mistakenly) assumed that the Great Western Forum was its name, where Great was the description of how great it was and Western to differentiate it from other Forums, e.g., Montreal Forum.
Much like Wrigley Field. Owner named the stadium for himself, doubles as an ad for the self-named company he also owns.
Now that they are demolishing RFK, it would be a pretty good spot for a new stadium for the Commies.
Under consideration – mayor of DC certainly wants it, residents not as much.
North Virginny is where they’ll wind up I guess.
Current focus us on giving the Caps/Wiz owner an arena in my city of Alexandria, right where Jack Kent Cooke wanted to build a stadium previously. It remains go be seen whether it will be successful.
I hope not.
If I recall correctly, Jack Kent Cooke put a lot of money into having the stadium built and originally named it Raljon Stadium (with Raljon, MD as its address) in honor of his sons. His sons returned the favor by renaming it Jack Kent Cooke Stadium after JKC passed away. Then the Reign of Terror began and He Who Shall Not Be Named wiped out all references to Raljon and Jack Kent Cooke.
So at least until some new deal is struck, I’m calling it Raljon Field at Jack Kent Cooke Stadium.
JKC had the mailing address changed to Raljon, Md. which did not go over well. Dan Snyder stopped using it immediately as well as removing Jack Kent Cooke Stadium name .
The company’s name is FEDEX. There, I said it.
Thanks.
The verb?
Yes, the original name was Jack Kent Cooke Stadium when it opened in 1997. When Dan Snyder bought the team in 1999, if I remember correctly, that name was jettisoned quickly & the name was actually Redskins Stadium for a short period. Then when Washington hosted the Giants during that ‘99 season, the name was officially changed to FedEx Field starting with that game day.
The advertiser used their weight to convince WFT to lose the racial slur, and considering the fallout between the previous owner and the executive at the advertiser who had an ownership stake, one would think that changing the name and owner would be steps in the right direction to keep the advertiser happy and on-board. We know the advertiser is built on absolutely positively overnight turnarounds, but maybe they could’ve given the new ownership a little more time to right a ship that’s been off-course for 30 years.
From my work experience, whenever the companies I’ve worked for parted ways with that advertiser, they’ve always pivoted to that advertiser’s main rival. Not likely here, but would be amused to see the Landover Football Stadium redressed/recolored in the competitors’ brown and gold!
I live about 90 miles east of Memphis, so I see their “power” being shown when we go there. “The Advertiser” has their name plastered all over that city and on just about every event, sporting venue, etc. Wonder if they aren’t going to make a bid on the Titans new stadium since it is closer to their HQ?
I still call it Bad Brains Stadium.
I like Minor Threat Field, but I’ll take Bad Brains Stadium.
Apparently, they’ve chosen a name:
link
“Commies Field” would have been nice.
Can somebody PLEASE have a uniform malfunction, so we can stop talking about stadium names?
So FedEx threatens Snyder that they’ll pull naming rights unless he gives in and renames the team. Then he renames the team TWICE, and they bail on the new owners before the agreement is up anyway.
As is their contractual prerogative.
If you bothered to read the WaPo article, then you know that they’re still maintaining their other promotional ties with the team, and team spoke warmly about them in their statement. Everyone seems happy here (except you).
The article is behind a paywall…..
I what I could of the article before the paywall popped up. I already give Jeff Bezos enough of my money, so I wasn’t going to pay to read after the first one or two paragraphs. From what I was could gather, it sounds like they probably always intended to do this, whether they were the ‘Skins, WFT, Commanders, or Whatever-Their-Name-Will-Be-In-Five-Years. They (FedEx) jumped on a bandwagon, plain and simple, got their virtue points, and did what they were going to do all along. Maybe that’s not a popular opinion here, but it’s still a valid one. Everything involving that team since 2020 has been a dumpster fire, regardless of what side of the ‘Skins issue you’re on.
Byline: in the NFLPA survey this stadium was graded with a F by the players. Sewage problems, plumbing problems, not enough showers, not enough warm water. Maybe FedEx knew about this and decided to pull out of the naming rights. No, just kidding.
Maybe they could move to Montreal…
Maybe call themselves the Expos…
and get a sweet Powder Blue Crimson Uniform Design…
With a cool stylized “M” on the helmet…