Conventional wisdom says you can’t compare apples to oranges. Why not? People do it all the time. If you like apples and oranges equally, you may prefer one over the other out of freshness, price, a giddy whim, whatever.
And so we move on to the latest, not necessarily last, instalment of the Sorry, Wrong Number Telus Park saga.
The apple: The $40 million, $35 million, or make up your own figure, paid over 20 years in $1.75 million instalments plus an annual step-up fee, that Telus would/might have paid for the right to rename BC Place as Telus Park.
The orange: According to the Vancouver Sun’s Cam Cole, Canucks goalie Roberto Luongo is paid $5.33 million a year for repelling rubber at nearby Rogers Arena. A more pertinent orange: Darren Entwistle reaped $9.94 million in 2010 as Telus president and CEO.
Apples and oranges, yes, but put them on the fruit section weigh scales and it says here that the right to put the Telus logo in your face for 20 years would have been a steal for a company with 2009-10 revenue of $9.77 billion. Not to mention other exclusive rights, including prohibiting competitors’ advertising under the dome.
Strange, then, that a quibble over the size of the illuminated signs outside of the stadium seems to have soured Telus on the deal as much as anything during negotiations, which went on longer than the First World War peace talks. (And they involved the French!)
Or was the sticking point that BC Place is an iconic name that has worked its way into British Columbian hearts, as Premier Christy Clark initially claimed?
Full disclosure: In 1982, while on parole from the newspaper business for 37 months and a consultant to the Bill Bennett government, I wrote pearl-shaped words hyping the BC Place project (minister responsible, one Bill Vander Zalm). Can’t say I feel a sentimental interest in the name, though.
Still, I think Christy Clark did the right thing, even if, as T.S. Eliot would say, for the wrong reason. I just dislike selling sports facility naming rights to any corporation for three reasons: it’s crass, vulgar, tasteless.
The Canucks’ hockey rink began life in 1995 as General Motors Place – and GM wasn’t amused when the sports writing mavericks insolently dubbed it The Garage. In 2005, GM pulled out and now it’s Rogers Arena. No history, no continuity.
The supposedly hustle-bucks Americans take pride in their heritage. Can you imagine Yankee Stadium as a rose by any other name?
Boston’s Fenway Park is the Vatican of baseball. The Fens, an urban wilderness, gave their name to the neighbourhood and thus the park, home of the Boston Red Sox (now that’s iconic). Chicago’s Wrigley Field gets a pass because its name is city history, going back to 1926, and you can’t be annoyed by chewing gum. Madison Square Gardens, claimant to “the most famous arena in the world” and daring to be known by its initials alone, will always be just that.
Believe in curses? I do. The once-proud Montreal Canadiens won their last Stanley Cup in 1999 in the sacred Forum, days before construction began on what became the Molson and now the Bell Centre. I suspect the ghost of Toe Blake – whose birthplace, Victoria Mines, actually is now a ghost town – crouches in the rafters and manipulates bad bounces.
Same with the Toronto Maple Leafs. Purists (i.e. bores who know much more about hockey than I do) will claim that the Leafs’ last cup was long before they left Maple Leaf Gardens. They can’t deny that the team has been sputtering ever since on the tarmac of Air Canada Centre. I rest my case. •
