Corporate Name Game
Some MetroStars fans call it “insulting” or “offensive,” or compare it to a death in the family.
Austrian energy drink company Red Bull’s purchase of the Major League Soccer team and its decision to rename it Red Bull New York may be shocking to some fans, but it isn’t unprecedented -- nor is it likely to be followed any time soon by a rash of copycats, marketing experts say.
League and team officials hailed the $100 million deal as innovative, and marketing experts called it probably the boldest corporate incursion into high-profile sports in modern times.
“While not unprecedented, it takes us into a potentially new era,” said Paul Swangard, managing director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon. “It’s sort of the last bastion in American sports. We haven’t been willing to accept it. I’m not sure if that’s right or wrong, it’s just not been done.”
It hasn’t been done in the United States at this level within the past half century, or this blatantly.
But several Japanese baseball teams take their names from corporate owners, including the country’s most popular team, the Yomiuri Giants. Dutch soccer power PSV Eindhoven is owned by Philips electronics.
And this is not even the first such move by Red Bull, which already has a Formula One racing team that carries its name and last year purchased the SV Salzburg soccer club in its native Austria and renamed it Red Bull Salzburg.
In the United States, the Green Bay Packers took their name in 1919 from the Indian Packing Co. in exchange for $500 worth of uniforms and equipment. More recently, the Anaheim Mighty Ducks were given their name when the Disney Co. bought an expansion franchise and tagged it with the title of one of its movies.
And the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun takes its name from the Mohegan Sun casino.
All of that is little comfort to Eileen Greb, a MetroStars season ticket holder since the club began in 1996.
“It was like we lost something,” said Greb, who has sat with her brother, 16-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter in the front row at Giants Stadium for 10 years. “It was like they took the team away, even though they were just changing the name.”
“This is insulting,” wrote a fan calling himself Amerikaki on the Internet chat site Bigsoccer.com. “This is in-your-face corporate America flexing its muscle.”
Additional confusion reigned with word that the club will be called Red Bull New York, but the players will be known as the New York Red Bulls.
“I find this offensive,” wrote Mike Juran, who -- just like New Jersey officials -- was upset at the inclusion of New York in the name despite the team playing in East Rutherford, N.J. Its proposed new stadium, to be called Red Bull Park, will be in Harrison, near Newark.
“I know that for me it felt like a death in the family,” wrote Irishapple21. “A lot of us just feel very numb about the entire experience.”
Team president Alexi Lalas and MLS commissioner Don Garber say the visceral reaction to the name change is felt by a minority of fans.
“I haven’t seen any of it,” Garber said. “It’s certainly not a level of pushback that’s resonated up to my office.”
Lalas says fans he’s spoken to are open-minded and willing to accept the deal, especially one of this magnitude.
Red Bull is paying Anschutz Entertainment Group about an MLS-record $30 million for the team, $45 million for a half interest in the club’s new stadium and $25 million for stadium naming rights for 10 years when it opens in 2008, according to a league official who requested anonymity because details of the deal have not been made public.
And that doesn’t include an as-yet unannounced seven-figure sponsorship by Red Bull with the league.
“Branding is all fine and well, but when you have a company making this level of investment in a team, a league, in a sport, if the worst thing they want to do is rebrand something, it’s a small price to pay,” Lalas said.
Empire Supporters Club president Corey Vezina, who leads the team’s biggest fan club, said the initial negative reaction has subsided after club members met with Lalas and coach Mo Johnston.
“There are a lot of positives,” Vezina said. “We just don’t want to be a soda can supporters club.”
Neither Garber, Swangard nor Washington-area consultant David Cope see this as the start of a trend -- yet.
“Right now, it’s an anomaly,” said Cope, who has been the lead marketing executive for the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens and Redskins, baseball’s Baltimore Orioles and Nationals and the NHL’s Capitals. “It will be reviewed and scrutinized over the first few years to see how well it works for both the team and sponsor, and see if we might have a new model and if it works.”
The NBA nixed FedEx’s attempt in 2001 to buy the Vancouver Grizzlies, move them and call them the Memphis Express. The team did move from Vancouver to Memphis, but is still called the Grizzlies. Swangard says companies and teams have to be careful where they tread.
“I don’t think fans are necessarily against it, but they don’t want it to be too in-your-face,” he said. “If it becomes overly commercialized, people will turn away. We’ve already stepped out with buildings, but the connection the fans have isn’t with the building, it’s with the team. This gets closer to the core.”
