Mon
Jun 5 2006
04:37 pm
Titans Work out Naming Rights Deal with Louisiana Pacific
By: Andy Axel

UPDATE: The new name for the stadium is LP Field.

After a four year lapse, the Coliseum in Nashville will finally once again enjoy corporate sponsorship, this time from everyone's favorite chipboard manufacturer, Louisiana-Pacific Corporation.

The Nashville-based building materials company and the NFL team have been in “serious discussions” about the stadium deal, company and team officials said last week.

Details of the deal weren’t available Monday afternoon.

The prior naming rights to The Coliseum were worth at least $2 million a year, and those naming rights have been suspended since 2002. (That means an $8M loss to Nashville Metro, the proprietor of this fine establishment, who funded the construction to the tune of nearly $300M.)

Former naming rights:

$30 million over 15-years by Adelphia Communications Corp., based in Coudersport, Pa., and is owned by Buffalo Sabres owner John Rigas.

After Davidson County taxpayers suffered a tripling of property tax bills in 1999, this potentially comes as welcome relief. I'll be interested to see details.

Maybe the Titans can then focus on resolving their Steve McNair issues. (let 'im go to Baltimore... ed.)

Topics:
R. Neal's picture

Mmmm, building materials!

Submitted by R. Neal on Mon, 2006/06/05 - 6:34pm.

Mmmm, building materials! Tres chic. How come the naming rights were suspended since 2002?

Andy Axel's picture

Because of the Rigas family

Submitted by Andy Axel on Mon, 2006/06/05 - 8:41pm.

Because Adelphia lost the naming rights after the Rigas family took Adelphia (fka Hyperion) down in a blazing orgy of fraud, deceit, wrongdoing, and bad manicures.

OK, everything except the last one. Actually, Pop Rigas was one of the first corporate offenders to do the perp walk/frog march circa 2001. Before Skilling, Lay, Ebbers, Scrushy, et. al.

Anyway, the city took the name down after Adelphia went bankrupt, and no one else wanted to pony up the cash to take over. The city is also still looking for someone to assume the naming rights to the Gaylord Entertainment Center, home of the Nashville Predators, but Gaylord maintains the name gratis until someone assumes title. So the city (i.e. the Nashville property-tax paying public) gives commercial license to Gaylord at a loss. I think it's something like $2M / year that just goes in the debit column there.

The city had actually approached BellSouth about taking over the name to the coliseum, and they passed. The thinking was that every time that the NFL showed a Nashville city skyline, the BellSouth building at 3rd & Commerce would hove into frame like a billboard. And so it was.

____________________________

Wasabi peas are people! They're people!

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

TN Progressive

TN Politics

Knox TN Today

Local TV News

News Sentinel

    State News

    Wire Reports

    Lost Medicaid Funding

    To date, the failure to expand Medicaid/TennCare has cost the State of Tennessee ? in lost federal funding. (Source)

    Search and Archives