True north gone: Sudbury event centre naming rights to be sold off

The Sudbury Wolves are unlikely to ever call the True North Strong Centre home.

That's been the name for the Kingsway arena plan adopted by Sudbury city council earlier this year.

But Wolves marketing vice presidentAndrew Dale says the naming rights for the new rink willbe sold off before it opens.

"We alwaysconceptualizedthe True North Strong moniker as part of a rallying cry to engage the community. So, it was always envisioned that that moniker would change to naming rights, some sort of a sponsorship," says Dale, addingthat sponsors might also be found for parts of the new Sudbury event centre such as sections and concourses.

David Shelsted, the city's project director for the event centre, says they estimate that the naming rights might be worth as much as $100,000 per year, although some recent Ontario Hockey League rinks recently fetched only half that.

"There's always the potential. At different times, the market cycles are there," he says, noting that efforts to sell the naming rights to the existing Sudbury Arena received zero bids a few years ago.

It's become common for the names of stadiums and arenas to be sold off to the highest bidder.

But one northern Ontario city is bucking the trend-- and putting community ahead of corporate sponsorship.

It opened in Sault Ste. Marie in2006 as the Steelback Centre, named for a now defunct brewery, which paid$1.35 million over ten years.

Two years later, the Sault's largest employer, steelmaker Essar, bought the rights for $1.5 million over 10 years.

But the company is now called Algoma and is in bankruptcy protection and looking to renew the name next year when the deal expires.

Sault Ste. Marie citycouncil voted last week to request that the next corporate sponsor put its brand on the front of "memorial gardens" which was historically the name of the city's downtown rink.

Mayor Christian Provenzano says this way if corporate logos come and go over the decades, locals won't have to change what they call the arena.

"If other things come and go in the meantime to help support the building, but I think the larger point is it is and should be the memorial gardens," he says.

Laurentian University sports marketing professor Ann Pegoraro says a revolving door of names that has fans searching for what the building is called, might actually make the moniker less valuable.

"If it's a very confused marketplace then I think companies have to do some good searching to see if the price is right for them," she says.

Pegoraro says companies interested in naming rights are either trying to stand out in a competitive marketplace, such as banking, or, in the case of Essar, want to show-off their community-mindedness.

North Bay Mayor Al McDonald says his city hasn't had much luck selling naming rights to the Memorial Gardens, although Coca-Cola did buy the rights to individual fields in the Steve Omischl Sports Complex, with soccer pitches named after Minute Maid and baseball diamonds called Nestea Field.

"Cities are scrambling for resources just to plow their roads and fix their streets, so municipalities are forced to look at anyway possible just to raise money," he says.

Some cities are now even selling naming rights to public libraries to help pay the bills.