21
Nov
06

How to Name a Sports Arena

By Joshua Steimle 14 Comments Categories: Marketing

The Delta Center is no more, long live the…Energy Solutions Arena?

Those who know me know that I’m not into mainstream sports. The worst date I’ve ever been on…well, second worst, was when my soon-to-be-wife took me to a BYU basketball game. I was miserable the entire time and couldn’t wait to leave. The only part I was impressed with was when they started throwing the cheerleaders 50 feet in the air. That was something. A bunch of guys throwing an orange ball through a metal ring with a net on it? Boring. I’m sorry, I’m just not wired in such a way as to find that interesting or entertaining. But my dislike of basketball notwithstanding, I can still find something morbidly fascinating about the recently renamed Delta Center and its new moniker, the Energy Solutions Arena.


Problems with the new name:

1. It doesn’t sound good. “Energy Solutions Arena” doesn’t quite roll off the tongue. Seems to me that arena names with fewer syllables are better. But I see the quandary, if your name is Energy Solutions and you want to sponsor an arena what are you going to do, change the name of your company just to make it sound better?

2. It doesn’t look good. Energy Solutions might not be able to do much about how their name sounds, but they could sure have done more about how it looks. Times Roman? Turquoise? Teal? Argh, why not just go with Comic Sans? An hour or two under a decent designer’s nose would have solved that problem.

But hey, in a world where people think that excessive use of the letter “z” and replacing the hard “c” sound with a “k” is so kool, what can you expect?

Poor branding aside, I wonder why Energy Solutions is doing this anyway. That is, they’re obviously doing it for attention, but when your company “operates two of the nation’s three commercial radioactive waste dumps” is more attention really what you want?

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  • http://gregorybowers.com gb

    Well, imagine had it been EnviroCare Center… if someone knew what envirocare was, it’d sound like a toxic waste drop off zone, and if not, some sort of hippie old-folks home.

  • http://voxpopdesign.com/bloomburst/ Matthew Reinbold

    Those in the know wince at the ‘Energy Solutions’ moniker but, as a whole, it kind of sounds cool and progressive.

    I have to whole heartedly agree, however, with the rest of your observations – it has too many syllables and the logo is complete crap. The Delta…um… delta… was iconic – red, white, and blue jutting into the sky. Those whispy teal curves on Energy Solutions? Somebody phoned that one in.

    Good thing the Jazz are 10-1 so far this season otherwise ‘The Dump’ nickname might really have a chance of taking off.

  • Silent Bob

    This has all the makings of a disaster. Energy Solutions (Read: Envirocare) is a company that could make mistakes and kill people with very unpopular toxic waste byproducts.

    Look at what happened after the Enron implosion. Enron field, home of the Houston Astro’s, was eventually re-named the “Minute Maid Field” .

    My prediction: ES ends up killing people and Larry cuts Sr. a deal and the former Delta Center/Energy Solutions Center becomes the “Huntsman Center”. Then Huntsman Corp kills a bunch of people in India so Larry cuts a deal with Paul Allen and the “center” now becomes the Provo Labs Academy Center. Well we all know where this is going…

    No matter what the new name it will still be called the Delta Center for years to come.

  • http://blog.thinkworx.com Thomas Bowcut

    The only thing more horrifying than this new name is your dislike for basketball. That aside, the new name doesn’t sound good. It sounds like a cheap marketing idea that failed to get feedback from the community. Fortunately the Jazz are playing so well this year that the new name will probably not keep people from attending the games.

  • http://www.mwi.com Joshua Steimle

    Yeah, I had a dream last night that I was confronted by a group of guys who wanted me to explain my feelings about mainstream sports and I ended up stammering something in order to avoid getting beat up. It was kind of like one of those moments on The Office where Michael Scott says something to the warehouse guys and they all crowd around him in a threatening manner until he caves in.

  • http://jeremyvotaw.com Jeremy Votaw

    I think it is funny how people want to critique success. From what I can tell, the people that write and comment on this blog are those that are entrepreneur minded and want success.

    Whenever you actually obtain this success – and want to do something good for the community, I hope the community will be nicer to you than you guys are being towards Energy Solutions.

    Delta had to let go of the arena. It did nothing for there bottom line. And at $1M/year+ for such advertising – there are only a couple companies that could afford it in Utah. And those companies are smarter than being a title sponsor.

    Chase Field (Formerly Bank One BallPark (Arizona Diamondbacks for those not into sports)) will always and forever be “The BOB”. Names stick – advertisers come and go.

    Maybe – instead of tearing down a fellow Utah company – you should be saying, “Isn’t it cool we can finally have a local company large enough (aside from Zions) that can sustain our Basketball Arena?”

  • http://www.mwi.com Joshua Steimle

    I think one of Utah’s problems is that people are too hesitant to be critical. The dominant religion teaches us to be merciful and forgiving of other’s faults, which makes us hesitant to say what is good or bad. The problem with this is that while some things improve over time due to direct stimulus and obvious causes (revenue, sales, etc.) others are harder to trace. That is, it is often hard to trace the negative impact of poor branding, and so those with the power to make decisions regarding that brand have no motivation to change it because they’re not aware of the problem. In this type of situation the only other way someone might become aware of the problem is if people who have experience with branding speak up and are critical.

    Of course there are some people who are critical just because they like to be, and there are others who are critical because they want things to improve, and sometimes it’s hard to tell the two types apart. But for those who want to improve it shouldn’t matter much. All criticism, regardless of the motivation, has the potential to be used for productive purposes.

    I think if more people here in Utah were critical of mediocrity instead of forgiving it we could more quickly improve the business climate and economy and achieve more of the excellence that is also a tenet of the dominant religion but which so often escapes us here.

  • http://www.chrisknudsen.biz Chris

    Josh:

    On your comment starting “I think one of Utah’s problems is that people are too hesitant to be critical.”

    AMEN!!!

  • http://voxpopdesign.com/bloomburst/ Matthew Reinbold

    Jeremy V.

    Do I understand you right? That Energy Solutions is above criticism because they very profitably dump other states nuclear waste in our backyard? That they are beyond discussion because they have obtained a dollar amount larger than most other companies in Utah? That the entrepreneurial spirit trumps good taste?

  • http://www.russpage.net Russell Page

    I was kind of suprised that Zions Bank didn’t go for it. They seem to be really aggressive and growing, and this would have been a good way to take them beyond the region.

  • http://www.eransworld.com/blogger.htm Eran

    It appears like Jeremy Votaw designed the Energy Solutions’ logo.

  • http://none Jeremy Stewart

    Ahhh. The Radium Stadium. I work for the State Board of Regents across the street from the E.S.A. I have to look at that ugly logo every day.

  • http://www.spacecity.co.uk/ Marcus Rimmer

    What is worse is that Energy Solutions is written as one word: Energy Solution – major palm on the forehead!

  • http://www.plentyoffishlogin.org Randall Schecher

    Energy Solutions definitely paid a lot of money to get their name plastered on that arena. So obviously the people in charge of building the place wanted to offset the construction costs…although at the cost of their arena’s branding. I wonder what will cost them more in the long run…