October 17 – The decision by the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics to allow competition venues to carry corporate naming rights is potentially blazing a trail for FIFA to do the same and open major new commercial revenue streams.
FIFA has already renamed stadia in the USA, Mexico and Canada to their city names for the 2026 finals, getting iconic venues like the MetLife Stadium in New York, the SoFi Stadium in Hollywood Park, LA and the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami to drop their sponsor attributions.
For the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles – a ‘no-new-build’ Olympics – the first to adopt this model are the Comcast Squash Center at Universal Studios and the Honda Center, which will host volleyball. There are up to 19 venues available for naming rights sponsorship in 2028 with existing LA28 and Olympic partners having been given priority access to the programme.
Pollsters YouGov have conducted a survey of U.S. sports fans that shows a third of fans (34%) said they feel positive about the change, compared to only 18% who view it negatively.
Younger Millennials were the most receptive demographic, with more than half expressing approval.
With 76% of fans planning to watch at least one event in 2028, YouGov said that it was notable that “support for naming rights correlates strongly with a fan’s level of sports interest. Nearly 44% of respondents who rank sports among their top interests favored the decision, while enthusiasm waned among more casual followers.”
YouGov argues the findings show highly engaged fans are more inclined to see the commercialisation of Olympic venues as a necessary step to ensure the Games’ financial sustainability. The researchers say it is a “reframing the business model of the Olympics”.
They do make the point though that among U.S. sports fans, this historic shift may be tolerated better than among fans in other global markets where stadium naming rights are not so prevalent.
Football fans may be more resistant to corporate renaming of their iconic stadia, but with the Azteca Stadium renamed the Banorte Stadium, surely the taboos have been been broken?
For the LA20 games ‘significant’ host venues will be excluded from the sale of naming rights due to their iconic status locally. These include the Rose Bowl Stadium, LA Coliseum, Dodger Stadium.
Apart from the Azteca/Banorte, few of the stadia to be used in 2026 – spectacular as they are – hold an iconic or historically important status in football.
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