Negotiations | Naming Rights

I. INTRODUCTION

Naming rights deals involving high profile sports venues are big league marketing plays involving complex negotiations culminating in detailed, lengthy contracts and multimillion-­dollar investments. When a venue owner trying to sell naming rights for a ballpark, stadium, or arena approaches a client, the responsibility of the client????s counsel includes discussing marketing strategy with the client and learning as much as possible about the client????s target customer demographics and how the client makes marketing decisions. If the client markets goods and services to consumers, it may benefit from the name recognition and exposure that a stadium naming deal can provide. If the client is accustomed to investing only in direct mail, newspaper, and radio advertising that includes some means of measuring response rates, it may not be interested in naming rights;; however, that alone is not a compelling reason to reject a naming rights proposal.