All stadium signs point to a headache

The last thing Bill Bidwill wants to see after moving his Arizona Cardinals into their new home is a crew draping someone else’s logo over the huge Cardinals head perched outside Gate 2 of the NFL team’s new $457.5-million stadium.

Yet that apparently will occur next month as the stadium prepares for college football’s Fiesta Bowl on New Year’s Day and the Bowl Championship Series national championship game a week later.

The coverup in the desert underscores the complex nature of naming rights and corporate sponsorship deals that can pit stadium operators against team owners, corporate sponsors and other organizations that stage events in modern sports venues.

In October, the board that oversees the publicly owned stadium in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale voted to let the college game organizers drape the huge Cardinals head and other NFL marketing elements with the Fiesta Bowl logo and, a week later, the new national championship game logo.

The board argued that the redecorating will give the bowl games more of a college game-day atmosphere. Bidwill, who has invested more than $150 million in the stadium, is seeing Cardinals red because both new logos will display Fiesta Bowl sponsor Tostitos’ name.

“Our position is that the use agreements that have been in place since 2002 clearly define what our rights are,” said Cardinals spokesman Mark Dalton. “To go back at this point and redefine ... those agreements in a manner contrary to our team’s interests isn’t acceptable.”

The Cardinals declined to say if a lawsuit is likely, but some sports marketing industry observers question whether the franchise could win in the court of public opinion if it sued to keep the nonprofit Fiesta Bowl from hanging its signs.

“You would have thought it would have been all spelled out more clearly in the use agreement,” said Ray Artigue, a longtime marketing executive for the NBA’s Phoenix Suns who now directs the MBA Sports Business Program at Arizona State. “But, evidently there’s a bit of a gray area having to do with signage.”

The sale of naming rights for sports facilities, along with sponsorship deals remains a big business. A naming rights deal with FedEx generates a reported $7.6 million each year for the Washington Redskins -- a record the New York Jets and Giants hope to eclipse as they seek corporate sponsors for a proposed stadium that would serve as home for both NFL teams.

But as the dollar value of contracts increases, so does the length of use agreements to avoid problems such as those that have pitted the Cardinals and the Fiesta Bowl -- the two main tenants at the new Arizona stadium. The legal contracts between the Arizona Sports & Tourism Authority, which oversees the stadium, and its two tenants cover nearly 200 pages.

“People learn from their mistakes -- or, if they’re lucky, someone else’s mistakes,” said Jeff Knapple, president of Los Angeles-based WMG Marketing, which is negotiating corporate partnerships for the proposed Jets and Giants stadium. One issue lawyers are tackling is how often a facility’s name can change. The limits are designed to deal with grumbling among fans and stadium owners at such facilities as the San Francisco Giants ballpark, which opened in 2000 as Pacific Bell Park, then changed to SBC Park and, now, is AT&T; Park.

Perhaps the most infamous change occurred in 2002, when the Houston Astros reacquired their naming rights from bankrupt Enron Corp. in order to sell them to Minute Maid.

Contracts now state how many times a name can change, and who pays for the new signage, said Daniel M. Grigsby, a Los Angeles-based sports marketing attorney. Referring to signage with a liquid crystal display, he added: “It’s going to be a lot easier to change than a hunk of granite stuck in the ground with the big Enron E on it.”

The NFL’s Cardinals caused some grumbling last summer by selling naming rights to a private university in a 20-year, $154-million deal. Some fans find it confusing to have the team playing in the University of Phoenix Stadium. And some Glendale residents are miffed because the new stadium is now an advertisement for the city next door.

The Cardinals agreed not to strike a naming rights deal with a competitor of Tostitos, the naming rights sponsor for the Fiesta Bowl. The NFL team also agreed to let bowl game organizers cover up permanent signs should one of its corporate sponsors turn out to be a direct competitor with Tostitos.

The contract allows religious groups that use the stadium to cover up alcohol advertisements. Concert promoters can black out signs that might interfere with the ambience during a performance. And the public board that oversees the stadium also has the right to limit advertising during select events -- such as when the pope, a national political convention or the NCAA Final Four basketball tournament is in the house.

But the Cardinals don’t see anything in the agreement that would allow Fiesta Bowl organizers to cover over their colors. “The Cardinals have a significant investment in this facility, and we made it based on the agreements that were collectively negotiated,” Dalton said.

Sometimes, sponsors can be persuaded -- or ordered -- to cover up.

In 2003, AEG, which has an interest in promoting soccer in the U.S., won permission from Home Depot Center sponsors to cover up their advertising during the Women’s World Cup Soccer championship game. FIFA, the international organization that controls the World Cup, won’t play in venues where its sponsors can’t advertise.

Randy Bernstein, president of Premiere Partnerships, a Los Angeles-based sports marketing company, noted that FIFA also removed the America Online name from a Hamburg soccer stadium during the men’s World Cup tournament, a move he described as “very rare.”

Perhaps the best-known attempt at a corporate coverup in this country occurred in 2001, when the NHL, which has Coca-Cola Co. as a sponsor, brought its All-Star game to Denver’s Pepsi Center. The league avoided Pepsi in its promotional materials and on game tickets by referring to the arena as “the home of the Colorado Avalanche.”

greg.johnson@latimes.com