T-Mobile Center taking over for Sprint Center in downtown KCMO
-
-
This is why naming rights are stupid.
Unless you’re the first, nobody is calling it right.
If I asked you where the Hy-bee arena was you’d have to google it. (It’s Kempers name).
-
My parents new the man who started US Cellular. The actually met him after he had sold the company and the new owners gave the White Sox 80 million to put the name on the stadium. Of course he had no say since it wasn’t his company anymore, but he told my dad it was just stupid.
The funniest naming deal is Wrigley Field. There is no deal. It’s always been called that, the Cubs receive not a dime. Think of all the free advertising Wrigley has gotten!
Of course naming rights are not stupid if you’re the owner.
-
@Kcmatt7 said in T-Mobile Center taking over for Sprint Center in downtown KCMO:
This is why naming rights are stupid.
Unless you’re the first, nobody is calling it right.
If I asked you where the Hy-bee arena was you’d have to google it. (It’s Kempers name).
Naming right help ease the burden on tax payers because a lot of that money is used to maintain and renovate facilities as needed instead of passing bonds for it.
I’d much rather see cities tell team owners that if they want a new stadium/arena to find a corporate partner to help fund it and give them naming rights than forcing tax payers to foot the bill.
I despise the Cowboys with a passion, but I respect Jerry Jones for not holding the city of Dallas hostage for a new stadium. He went and bought the land AT&T Stadium sits on and financed the stadium himself and it really is the best stadium in football and possibly the world.
Realistically, does Sprint Center actuall make money for KC? Factoring in maintenance and operating costs, it seems like Sprint Center should operate in the red for the city due to the lack of a professional team (NBA/NHL) calling the building home.
-
I don’t fault the city for taking money. I think it’s stupid to be the 2nd name. I’m looking at it from a marketing perspective not a city perspective.
The Sprint Center loses the city money no doubt. The entire idea behind it was to get a pro team and drive business there another 50X a year.
But the problem is the company that runs it would lose money if there was a pro sports team. Concerts are more profitable for them.
Entire deal was horribly executed.
-
@Kcmatt7 You do know the name change is because T-Mobile bought Sprint right?
-
@Texas-Hawk-10 said in T-Mobile Center taking over for Sprint Center in downtown KCMO:
@Kcmatt7 You do know the name change is because T-Mobile bought Sprint right?
I do. Yes.
-
My point is just that people will still just call it the sprint center because it was named that first.
I know about the merger.
I know why people accept millions of dollars for meaningless naming rights to complexes.
Just feel like I need to clear that up, apparently.
-
@Kcmatt7 said in T-Mobile Center taking over for Sprint Center in downtown KCMO:
My point is just that people will still just call it the sprint center because it was named that first.
I know about the merger.
I know why people accept millions of dollars for meaningless naming rights to complexes.
Just feel like I need to clear that up, apparently.
Because hearing the sponsor’s name 100 times a game is clearly meaningless for business.
Also, most people will adjust just fine within a few months to the new name. You wanna know how I know that? Because it’s happened here in Houston twice in past 20 years. Enron lost the naming right to the Astros stadium within the first year or two of the stadium opening and was replaced by Minute Maid. Didn’t take people long to adjust to that. We also had our NFL stadium go through a name change a pretty recently from Reliant Stadium to NRG Stadium and the vast majority of people here have no issues with the name change anymore and this was in the past 3 years.
-
@Kcmatt7 the color sucks too
-
@Texas-Hawk-10 said in T-Mobile Center taking over for Sprint Center in downtown KCMO:
@Kcmatt7 said in T-Mobile Center taking over for Sprint Center in downtown KCMO:
Realistically, does Sprint Center actuall make money for KC? Factoring in maintenance and operating costs, it seems like Sprint Center should operate in the red for the city due to the lack of a professional team (NBA/NHL) calling the building home.
I don’t know about currently, but for a long time, the Sprint Center did make money for KC. It was actually wildly profitable for AEG so the profit sharing agreement kicked in (I think anything above 15% kicked into a profit split). Sprint Center at one time was somewhere around one of the 10 busiest arenas in the world. Not having a pro sports team was a good thing. All the suite and club suite revenue went to the building operator versus if we had a pro team, they would have gotten all the money. Plus, without a pro team taking all the plum dates, KC gets all these concerts and other events that used to pass us by. I don’t know this, but I actually think the former President of AEG (Tim Leiweke) used KC as his model case for his current business where he’s literally building (primarily) concert arenas.
-
@hawkfan01 said in T-Mobile Center taking over for Sprint Center in downtown KCMO:
@Texas-Hawk-10 said in T-Mobile Center taking over for Sprint Center in downtown KCMO:
@Kcmatt7 said in T-Mobile Center taking over for Sprint Center in downtown KCMO:
Realistically, does Sprint Center actuall make money for KC? Factoring in maintenance and operating costs, it seems like Sprint Center should operate in the red for the city due to the lack of a professional team (NBA/NHL) calling the building home.
I don’t know about currently, but for a long time, the Sprint Center did make money for KC. It was actually wildly profitable for AEG so the profit sharing agreement kicked in (I think anything above 15% kicked into a profit split). Sprint Center at one time was somewhere around one of the 10 busiest arenas in the world. Not having a pro sports team was a good thing. All the suite and club suite revenue went to the building operator versus if we had a pro team, they would have gotten all the money. Plus, without a pro team taking all the plum dates, KC gets all these concerts and other events that used to pass us by. I don’t know this, but I actually think the former President of AEG (Tim Leiweke) used KC as his model case for his current business where he’s literally building (primarily) concert arenas.
Pro teams don’t take dates away from major concert tours. Most arena tours are booked far enough in advance to be able to promote the shows that it’s usually the NBA and NHL that have to schedule around those shows.
The way it usually works when a team plays in a city owned facility is the franchise has to pay the city to play their games in that venue with some kind of lease agreement. This is why franchises coming up at the end of a lease agreement will usually try to leverage a city for a new stadium or threaten to relocate. This is what happened here in Houston with the Oilers. Bud Adams (I don’t care that he’s a KU alum, f*** him) got the city to pay for a bunch of renovations to the Astrodome and then turned around a couple of years later and tried to get a new downtown football stadium built and only offered to pay 25% of the costs. The city voted it down and Adams reached an agreement to move to Nashville and people boycotted Oilers games their final year here.
-
I still call Guaranteed Rate Field, home of the White Sox, Comiskey Park, or Sox Park. Never called it US cellular, or GRF.
-
@Texas-Hawk-10 said in T-Mobile Center taking over for Sprint Center in downtown KCMO:
@hawkfan01 said in T-Mobile Center taking over for Sprint Center in downtown KCMO:
@Texas-Hawk-10 said in T-Mobile Center taking over for Sprint Center in downtown KCMO:
@Kcmatt7 said in T-Mobile Center taking over for Sprint Center in downtown KCMO:
Realistically, does Sprint Center actuall make money for KC? Factoring in maintenance and operating costs, it seems like Sprint Center should operate in the red for the city due to the lack of a professional team (NBA/NHL) calling the building home.
I don’t know about currently, but for a long time, the Sprint Center did make money for KC. It was actually wildly profitable for AEG so the profit sharing agreement kicked in (I think anything above 15% kicked into a profit split). Sprint Center at one time was somewhere around one of the 10 busiest arenas in the world. Not having a pro sports team was a good thing. All the suite and club suite revenue went to the building operator versus if we had a pro team, they would have gotten all the money. Plus, without a pro team taking all the plum dates, KC gets all these concerts and other events that used to pass us by. I don’t know this, but I actually think the former President of AEG (Tim Leiweke) used KC as his model case for his current business where he’s literally building (primarily) concert arenas.
Pro teams don’t take dates away from major concert tours. Most arena tours are booked far enough in advance to be able to promote the shows that it’s usually the NBA and NHL that have to schedule around those shows.
Yeah, I don’t know. That’s just what they said on why the Sprint Center was able to rank so much higher as an arena than KC’s market size. When you have the 4th busiest arena in the U.S. and KC is somewhere between 30-32 as size of market, there has to be some reason the arena is doing so well and I would think being wide open calendar wise would help.
[link text](https://www.sprintcenter.com/news/detail/sprint-center-maintains-ranking-as-americas-fourth-busiest-arena[link text](link url))
-
@hawkfan01 That information is 4 years old and appears like it is only considering concert and entertainment related activities, not sports. All but one of the other venues on the list are home to at least 1 NBA/NHL team which is at least 41 events per year, 82 events minimum if there’s both leagues in a venue.
-
Just going to fly by and say no matter what it’s called, it sucks big ones to watch KU there vs. AFH.
