The owners of the Vancouver Canucks and executives at Rogers Communications Inc. (TSX:RCI) have remained silent on how much the telecom is paying the Aquilini Investment Group for the right to put its corporate brand on the hockey arena that had been known as GM Place since 1995.
The venue will now be called Rogers Arena.
American Airlines spent US$195 million in 2001 to brand the American Airlines Centre in Dallas for 30 years, the most expensive such arrangement involving a NHL arena. It is also home to the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks.
Rogers signed a 10-year contract with the Aquilinis but it is highly unlikely it paid anywhere near that.
It might be closer to half of the US$42 million that American Airlines paid in 1999 to brand the American Airlines Arena in Florida, home of the NBA’s Miami Heat, for 20 years.
However, those facilties are in much larger markets and are more frequently used.
In Canada, Air Canada committed to pay $40 million over 20 years to name Toronto’s hockey and basketball arena, the Air Canada Centre.
General Motors Corp. had another five years remaining on the $18.5 million naming-rights deal it signed for GM Place in 1995. But, in an unexpected announcement, it agreed to relinquish those rights and move it’s branding inside the arena that could soon be nicknamed the call centre.