When L.A.'s pleasantly alliterative Staples Center was renamed the goth-tinged Crypto.com Arena in late 2021, some fans considered it an upgrade. After all, the $700 million deal meant LeBron's house would no longer be sponsored by the purveyor of Post-its--but by one of the hottest startups in the rapidly growing crypto economy. Crypto.com has signed deals with sports teams (Paris Saint-Germain) and leagues (Serie A, F1) across the globe--a strategy designed to quickly spread brand recognition.
And yet longtime stadium-name watchers remain cautiously pessimistic. After all, pricey, vanity-plate naming deals often speak to a company's more-money-than-brains mindset, which in turn can foreshadow a financial nosedive. Or worse. Behold the venues that gave sponsorship a bad name.
Enron Gets Called for a Balk
There was a time when Enron was known as one of America's most innovative and entrepreneurial companies, led by its gangbuster energy-trading business, and for having "the smartest guys in the room." Then, almost overnight, the company became known for its innovative (as in illegal) accounting, imploding stock price (26¢ a share), and record-breaking bankruptcy (some $65 billion in assets). And, oh, yeah, CEO Jeffrey Skilling's having to do a dozen years in the slammer.
There was also the matter of that patch of grass where the Houston Astros play: In 1999, the company signed a 30-year, $100 million deal to rename the stadium Enron Field. But, three years later, when Enron became synonymous with lying, cheating, and stealing--not to mention the loss of 4,500 jobs, many of them local--the name carried a stink. (This, of course, was still 15 years before the Astros themselves were caught lying, cheating, and stealing signs from opposing teams' catchers.) So the Astros took a crowbar to the Enron sign and, soon after, Coca-Cola coughed up north of $100 million to re-rename the stadium after one of its bubble-free brands: Minute Maid Park, now known locally as the Juice Box.