Naming rights

Naming rights in United States may have been traced back to 1912 with the opening of Fenway Park in Boston. The stadium's owner had owned a realty company called "Fenway Realty" (itself named for a nearby parkland), so the promotional value of the naming has been considered.[8] Despite this, it is more widely believed to have begun in 1926 when William Wrigley, the chewing gum magnate and owner of the Chicago Cubs, named his team's stadium "Wrigley Field." In 1953, Anheuser-Busch head and St. Louis Cardinals owner August Busch, Jr. proposed renaming Sportsman's Park, occupied by the Cardinals, "Budweiser Stadium".[9] When this idea was rejected by Ford Frick, the Commissioner of Baseball at that time, Anheuser-Busch then proposed the title "Busch Stadium" after one of the company's founders. The name was readily approved, and Anheuser-Busch subsequently released a new product called "Busch Bavarian Beer" (now known as Busch Beer). The name would later be shifted to the Busch Memorial Stadium in 1966, shortened in the 1970s to "Busch Stadium" and remained the stadium's name until it closed in 2005. By that time, Major League Baseball's policy had changed – with Coors Field in Denver and Miller Park in Milwaukee going up in that span – and Anheuser-Busch (who retained the naming rights after selling the team) was able to use the same name for the Cardinals' new stadium which opened on April 4, 2006. Foxboro Stadium, the home of the New England Patriots between 1970 and 2001, was an early example of a team selling naming rights to a company that did not own it, naming the stadium Schaefer Stadium after the beer company from its erection until 1983.

The public reaction to this practice is mixed. Naming rights sold to new venues have largely been accepted, especially if the buyer is well-established and has strong local connections to the area, such as the cases of Rich Stadium (now New Era Field) in the Buffalo suburb of Orchard Park, Heinz Field in Pittsburgh, and Coors Field in Denver. Selling the naming rights to an already-existing venue has been notably less successful, as in the attempt to rename Candlestick Park in San Francisco to 3Com Park. The general public (and some media outlets) continued to call the facility what it had been known as for over three decades–i.e. Candlestick Park. After the agreement with 3Com expired, the rights were resold to Monster Cable, and the stadium was renamed Monster Park. San Francisco voters responded by passing an initiative (Proposition H)[10] in the November 2004 elections that essentially stipulated the name must revert to Candlestick Park once the contract with Monster expired in 2008. The initiative proved largely ceremonial, however, and it was overturned by the passage of Proposition C in 2009 in response to desperate economic times.[11] The naming rights to the park were never resold and the stadium closed in 2014.

Sports stadiums with naming rights deals are not limited to the United States. "Named" stadiums can be found in countries including Australia, Japan, China, Finland, Canada, Israel and Germany, where 8 of the 10 largest football stadiums have their naming rights sold to corporate sponsors. The practice is widening in the United Kingdom; for instance the current stadium of Bolton Wanderers is the University of Bolton Stadium (after 17 years as Reebok Stadium and 4 as Macron Stadium) and Arsenal Football Club's stadium (opened for the 2006/2007 season) is the Emirates Stadium, their previous ground being Arsenal Stadium. In cricket, the most famous example is The Oval, home of Surrey County Cricket Club. It has had several sponsors over the years, and is currently known as "The Kia Oval", having originally been known as the "Kennington Oval", the district of London in which it is.

Naming rights to public transit stations have been sold in Las Vegas and Philadelphia (NRG station, Jefferson Station, and Penn Medicine station).[13] Such sales have been contemplated in New York[14] and Boston, and ruled out in San Francisco.[15] A sponsorship for the MBTA's State Street station by Citizens Bank lasted from 1997 to 2000. In Tampa, naming rights for both streetcar stations and rolling stock are available.[16]

In December 2016, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority approved a naming rights policy for its facilities and routes, but later rescinded the policy two months later over potential lawsuits for skipping sponsors.[17][18]

An example outside of the United States would be Monumento Station in the Manila Light Rail Transit System in the Philippines, which was renamed Yamaha Monumento Station on February 14, 2018, after renovations. [19]

Naming rights in the realm of sports is common for both stadiums and sports competitions and series. In addition, some sports teams adopt a name of the sponsor as their team or club name (see List of sports clubs named after a sponsor).

In association football, leagues and cup competitions sometimes adopt the name of their sponsors. For example, England's Premier League was known as the Barclays Premier League until 2016, and its FA Cup is officially the Emirates FA Cup.[20] The Premier League announced in 2015 that it would not accept a title sponsorship beginning in the 2016–17 season.[21] Since 2020, the French Professional Football Ligue adopted the name of Ligue 1 Uber Eats.

In college football, all of the Division I bowl games have either modified or abandoned their traditional names in favor of title sponsors. While most include the traditional name in some form (e.g., Capital One Orange Bowl, The Rose Bowl Game presented by Northwestern Mutual), there have been bowl games that have totally eliminated their traditional name in favor of solely using a corporate sponsor's name in an effort to dissuade fans from using a generic name (for instance, the former Tangerine Bowl is now the Camping World Bowl, and the Gator Bowl was for a time known as the TaxSlayer Bowl), a move that generally is treated with consternation from fans. Team names and even whole leagues have occasionally been sold to corporate sponsors as well (examples include the New York Red Bulls in the former case, the NET10 Wireless Arena Football League for the latter), but this is generally rare in the United States and more common in other parts of the world.

During the 1980s, sanctioned auto races in NASCAR and IndyCar began to abandon their traditional names in favor of exclusive sponsor names. The trend expanded rapidly in NASCAR such that in 1991, all 29 races in the Winston Cup Series featured sponsor names (including the Daytona 500, which was given a presenting sponsor as the Daytona 500 by STP), with little or no reference to the original names. As of the 2010s, very few exceptions remain in NASCAR (such as the Daytona 500, which no longer uses the presenting sponsor), and typically races without sponsor names only lack them because a suitable sponsor could not be secured in enough time. IndyCar follows suit, with most races (except the very traditional Indianapolis 500) embracing title sponsorship. Sports media coverage (such as ESPN news reports) typically refer to races by the town in which the home race track is held, avoiding the use of sponsored names in news coverage.

Television and radio series, especially in the early days of each medium, frequently sold the naming rights to their programs to sponsors, most of whom bankrolled the program; examples include Texaco Star Theatre and The Philco Television Playhouse. This form of sponsorship fell out of favor in the late 1950s.