The Busch Corollary – “How’s your wife and my kids?”

By Kurt Hunzeker (with some copy points provided by the movie Major League)

Since Spring Training is in full swing (figuratively and literally), quoting movies like Major League and Bull Durham will be the norm around here for the time being. And Clew Haywood’s unoriginal rip does illustrate one of sports business’s profound headaches…teams whoring their venues’ naming rights.

“I had no choice. She bet me fifty dollars that she had a better body than you and I had to defend your honor.”

With the price of fielding a team in any sport reaching breaking points for some teams, the idea of “sell anything we can” is not a terrible business decision. I was even tasked by an NHL team to walk through its arena and note all of the “dead space” the team could activate to generate more revenues via added corporate sales inventory.

Why some teams still do not employ LED technology throughout their venues is beyond me. The investment to install the equipment will be repaid almost immediately by selling this new (and expansive) inventory than was available before.

But the most gregarious mistake teams and corporate partners alike make is re-selling of a venue’s naming rights AFTER another corporate moniker was attached to it.

Plain and simple, the new name NEVER sticks. And that equals a tarnished investment.

“The post-game show is brought to you by...Christ, I can't find it. To hell with it.”

Because sports business’s New World Order centers on corporate sales, I will call this name changing phenomenon “The Busch Corollary.”

In 1953, August Anheuser “Gussie” Busch, Jr. convinced the brewery’s board of directors to purchase the MLB St. Louis Cardinals. The savvy beer baron sought to change the name of the Cardinals’ home, Sportsman’s Park, to Budweiser Stadium to help advertise the brewery’s signature brand. Baseball’s top executives nixed the idea of having an alcoholic beverage adorn a facility where young fans attended games, but they did allow Busch to rename Sportsman’s Park to Busch Stadium.

The following year, the brewery launched a new brand extension, Busch Beer, as an unsubtle jab at baseball’s no-beer name policy.

But Gussie Busch’s creative thinking did not account for one major problem…Cardinal fans were used to the Sportsman’s Park brand and continued to use it even after the venue switched names. The ballpark’s original given name was Sportsman’s Park, and by God, it was always going to be called that regardless of the owner’s last name or sneaky new beer brand.

Gussie corrected this oversight when construction began on a new Cardinal home in St. Louis’s revitalized downtown business district. Before the cornerstone was placed, the new multi-purpose facility was named Busch Stadium.

From the opening game in 1966 to the ballpark’s demolition in 2005, everyone in Cardinal Nation would head to “Busch” to see their beloved Redbirds.

Before “Busch Stadium II” was reduced to rubble, rumors swirled that Anheuser-Busch would pass on the naming rights for the Cardinals’ new brick ballpark under construction. St. Louis’s traditionalist residents could not fathom watching a game at Pitney Bowes Ballpark or Energizer Field (both locally-based companies).

Baseball in St. Louis meant Baseball at Busch. No one could tell them differently. And thus the birth of The Busch Corollary.

“Yo, bartender, Jobu needs a refill.”

Across America, sports teams and their naming rights holders have fallen prey to The Busch Corollary.

In Houston, the Astros are trying to erase their association with legally-challenged Enron with its new naming rights agreement with Minute Maid. The team even dubbed its new Minute Maid Park as “The Juice Box,” which actually hurts Minute Maid because the name Minute Maid is not attached to the nickname. This all also neglects to highlight the fact that residents still call the ballpark Enron Field because that was the name christened with the new facility, and it is just impossible to erase that from fans’ minds.

San Francisco’s now-named AT&T Park has gone through two name changes since its opening as Pacific Bell Park, aka Pac Bell Park. For those of you scoring at home, that’s three names in the span of seven years; the ballpark opened in 2000. Giants’ fans never called it SBC Park when the Baby Bell merged with its West Coast brethren, and everyone still calls it Pac Bell Park even though the universally-known AT&T re-emerged as the telecommunications giant’s brand in the mid-Naughts.

Oakland’s Coliseum has changed from just the Coliseum to Network Associates Coliseum to the current McAfee Coliseum, while the Athletics’ new home, Cisco Field begins construction later this spring. Fans now know that the “Coliseum” is home, but are looking forward to “Cisco’s” cozy new digs in Fremont.

I could spend pages detailing other examples of The Busch Corollary, and will be highlighting these in the coming weeks as an addendum to this article, or as a separate entry.

The ironic twist to The Busch Corollary is that St. Louis’s other professional sports teams have fallen victim to naming rights switch-a-roos due to selecting poor partners who either A) could not pay the hefty rights fee (the NHL Blues’ naming rights partner Savvis and its executives deciding to spend dollars in New York’s finest gentlemen’s club, Scores), or B) fell victim to a merger/acquisition (the NFL Rams losing longtime airline, TWA, as its primary corporate partner. This latter circumstance is out of the control of the team; the former reflects poorly on the team’s decision-making process.

“Let me get back to you, will ya, Charlie? I got a guy on the other line asking about some white walls.”

What will the future bring? Corporate nicknames on sporting venues are here to stay, and with it, The Busch Corollary will continue as well. Teams should try to protect themselves from Savvis and TWA-esque situations, but they also know that sometimes they cannot control the situation and must take things as they come.

It appears that the Atlanta Braves’ Turner Field will be renamed Liberty Field or something new as the team’s ownership changes hands (from Ted Turner’s old friends at Time Warner to Colorado-based Liberty Media). Chattanooga’s Bellsouth Park is now AT&T Field due to the companies’ recent merger. Orlando’s Amway Arena was re-christened during the season, which is a first for a professional facility, and something I pray never happens again.

The lesson learned is that The Busch Corollary’s real burden falls on the subsequent naming rights holder. The supreme value is being the first name associated with a sports venue (see Citi and New York Mets, Lucas Oil and Indianapolis Colts). For the amount of money required for this high-visibility inventory, companies should consider this a devalued investment since the original rights holder will continue to be top-of-mind in the marketplace long after the final piece of signage is permanently removed.