Review by Jeff Giannasi in KIN 435
The newly rebranded Sporting Kansas City of Major League Soccer just named its new $200 million stadium LiveStrong Sporting Park. This is a marquee deal because LiveStrong aren’t paying a dime for the naming rights but rather the MLS franchise is giving the foundation a $7.5 million donation over the next six years. LiveStrong will also receive a percentage of the revenue that the stadium makes through out each season. Sporting Kansas City was searching for a corporate sponsor to buy the naming rights of the first soccer-specific stadium in the MLS but there were a lack of potential investors due to Kansas City’s small amount of large corporations and Fortune 500 companies. The sponsor ship with LiveStrong has become the centerpiece of the rebranded franchise and within 24 hours of the deal being announced, 400 season tickets were sold. Some other franchises believe that this type of “cause-marketing” will become a trend in sports while others don’t seem that these trends will catch on in different sports.
The marketing and sales of this sponsorship are groundbreaking to the sport marketing business. These two corporations made a partnership that pioneered the way that stadiums may market their naming rights. While most stadiums look toward large companies to pay for the naming rights, other franchises may try to partner with nonprofit foundations in order to establish a connection with the community at large. Sporting K.C. may have partnered with the best foundation because of LiveStrong’s previous involvement in sports that makes them a perfect fit into stadium naming rights especially in a rebranded franchise with a new state-of-art facility. While this new experimental partnership could work out for Livestrong and Sporting Kansas City, who knows how well it will work for other franchises who partner with nonprofit organizations and corporations.
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Review by Rob Cushen in KIN 435
The article that we chose to review for this assignment is about the MLS soccer team Sporting KC and the naming rights to their stadium. This team is groundbreaking for several different reasons, the first of which is their name change from the Kansas City Wizards to Sporting KC. They felt this would play an instrumental role in raising popularity of MLS soccer in the US by taking on a name that closely resembled team names of European leagues. Along with this name change comes a revolutionary new stadium for MLS soccer and the sport’s fans. This stadium is the first of its kind because it is exclusive to soccer and is not shared with any other major sports team. Sporting KC is home to one of JMU’s alumni CJ Sapong who was selected tenth overall in the 2011 draft which is the highest JMU soccer pick ever. Last but certainly not least, is the name and the naming rights of this modern landmark. The naming rights for the stadium were donated to the Lance Armstrong Foundation and therefore it is named Livestrong Park.
Usually for professional sports the naming rights for a stadium draws some astronomical price tag but due to the lack of interest in MLS soccer an alternate route was taken. The idea behind donating the naming rights was to support finding a cure for testicular cancer while simultaneously increasing the attendance of Sporting KC. Since Kansas City is pretty much in the middle of nowhere and soccer’s popularity is not quite on par with maybe football, basketball, baseball, or hockey there wasn’t much of an advantage for a company to purchase the naming rights.
One of the major questions we asked in our presentation is whether giving away naming rights will catch on in soccer as well as other professional sports. The general consensus is that it would not be considered the norm among all sports but there was a good chance it would become more common in soccer. Livestrong Park is a cutting edge facility by soccer standards and sort of sets the bar for what other teams need to aspire to become. Sporting KC at Livestrong Park makes the future of professional soccer in the United States look promising which gives a new hope to the MLS and soccer fans alike.
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