Naming Rights and the Business of Ballpark Names
How ballpark naming-rights deals work, why corporate names changed so often after the 1990s, and what happens to a stadium's name when a sponsor merges, rebrands or goes bankrupt.
A ballpark in 1960 was named for a neighborhood, a family or a person, and that name usually lasted as long as the building. A ballpark in 2025 is more likely to be named for a bank, an insurer, a telecommunications company or a maker of air conditioners, and the name may change two or three times during the building's life. The reason is a business arrangement called a naming-rights deal, in which a company pays to attach its name to a stadium for a set number of years.
The practice is now so common that fans in many cities say the corporate name without thinking about it, and so unstable that it is a reliable source of trivia. A park opened as Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix and became Chase Field after two banks merged. A park opened as Enron Field in Houston and lost the name when the company collapsed. This article explains how the deals work, why names change, who gets the money and what the practice means for fans, broadcasters and anyone trying to look up a game in the record books.
Names before sponsors
For the first six decades of the major leagues, a ballpark's name came from one of four sources. Some honored the neighborhood: Fenway Park is named for the Fenway section of Boston. Some honored the owner or the owner's family: Wrigley Field carries the name of the family that owned the Cubs, and Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City is named for Ewing Kauffman, the founder of the Royals. Some honored a civic figure, as Shea Stadium in New York honored William Shea, the lawyer who led the effort to bring National League baseball back to the city. And some simply borrowed the team's name, which is why so many parks have been called some version of Stadium or Park with the club's nickname in front.
There were hybrids. When the Anheuser-Busch brewery bought the St. Louis Cardinals in the early 1950s, the park there became Busch Stadium, a name that honored the family and advertised the brewery at once. That was not yet a naming-rights deal in the modern sense, because the brewery owned the team and did not pay a separate fee, but it showed the commercial value of the idea. The first big corporate stadium deals in American pro sports came in the 1970s in other leagues, with the Buffalo Bills' Rich Stadium often cited as an early example, and the practice reached baseball in force in the 1990s, when a wave of new ballparks opened.
How a naming-rights deal works
At its simplest, a naming-rights agreement has two parties: the company that wants its name on the building and the owner of the building, who is either the team or, often, a city, county or stadium authority that leases it to the team. The company pays an annual fee for a fixed term of years, and in return it gets the right to have the park called by its name in the team's materials, on the signs and in broadcasts, along with a package of related benefits.
The package usually includes some or all of the following:
- the name on exterior and interior signage
- mentions in team advertising, on the scoreboard and in game broadcasts
- tickets, suites and hospitality for the sponsor's customers and employees
- the right to use the team's marks in its own marketing
- sometimes a say in naming gates, plazas and areas within the park
The length of a deal varies, but agreements often run for a decade or two, and some run longer. The fee depends on the size of the market, the age and prominence of the park and the competition among sponsors. The money goes to whoever owns the revenue stream. If the team owns the right, the fee funds the club. If a public body owns the park, the fee may be shared with the team or applied to the cost of the building, a question that is negotiated as part of the lease. Readers interested in how that fits into the larger picture can read how a ballpark is built and financed.
A name also has a value that is hard to price. The sponsor buys repeated mentions across a season of 81 home games, thousands of broadcast references and the association with the community's pastime. Companies that sign the deals tend to be ones for which local recognition matters: banks, insurers, telecommunications firms, brewers and food and beverage brands.
The 1990s boom
The modern pattern was set by the generation of ballparks built in the 1990s and 2000s. Coors Field in Denver opened in 1995 and carried the name of the brewer from the start. Comerica Park in Detroit and Enron Field in Houston opened in 2000. Miller Park in Milwaukee and PNC Park in Pittsburgh followed in 2001, and Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati opened in 2003. Each was built with its name already attached, and in some cases the deal helped finance the construction.
Not every new park followed the model. Oriole Park at Camden Yards, which opened in 1992, was named for its location and its tenant, and it helped start the retro-classic trend in ballpark design. By 2000 the pattern was clear: most new parks would be named for sponsors, and clubs with older parks began to sell the rights to them as well.
When a name changes
Corporate names are less stable than traditional ones for the obvious reason that corporations are less stable than neighborhoods. Names change for a handful of recurring reasons, and a table shows how common they are.
| Ballpark | Names over the years | Typical reason for the change |
|---|---|---|
| Chase Field (Arizona) | Bank One Ballpark, then Chase Field | The sponsoring bank merged into another |
| Houston | Enron Field, Astros Field, Minute Maid Park, then Daikin Park in the site's reference data | A sponsor's bankruptcy, then new sponsors |
| San Francisco | Pacific Bell Park, SBC Park, AT&T Park, Oracle Park | Telecom company mergers and a new sponsor |
| Seattle | Safeco Field, then T-Mobile Park | A new sponsor replaced the original |
| Atlanta | SunTrust Park, then Truist Park | A bank merger created a new company |
| Cleveland | Jacobs Field, then Progressive Field | The owner's name gave way to a sponsor |
| Milwaukee | Miller Park, then American Family Field | A new sponsor replaced the original |
| Texas (the older park) | The Ballpark in Arlington, Ameriquest Field in Arlington, Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, Globe Life Park in Arlington | A sponsor came and went; the team's own name returned |
| Anaheim | Anaheim Stadium, Edison International Field, Angel Stadium | The sponsored name was dropped |
The reasons fall into five groups. The first is the merger: when a bank or a telecommunications company is bought, the buyer usually wants its own name on the building, as happened in Arizona, Atlanta and San Francisco. The second is the bankruptcy or scandal: Enron's collapse in 2001 left Houston with a ballpark named for a company in disgrace, and the Astros arranged a new deal that put the name Minute Maid on the park from 2002. The third is the expiration: a deal ends and a new sponsor takes over, or the team decides not to renew. The fourth is the sale of the right by a team that has already used its own or an owner's name, as in Cleveland. The fifth is the return of a club-based name, which the Rangers' park demonstrates.
What the site's own data shows
Stadium names are also a headache for statistics. The historical record, which supplies the career numbers on this site, stores a park name for each team and season, and the names are not always consistent. The fact sheet used for the Cincinnati Reds shows the club's park listed as Great American Ball Park for 2003 to 2022 and as Great American Ballpark from 2023 on, a spelling variation for the same building. The Pittsburgh Pirates' record is simpler, with PNC Park from 2001 and no change since. The Reds' data also shows the other case, in which two parks overlap in one season: in 1970 the entry reads Crosley Field/Riverfront Stadium because the club moved mid-year.
The site's reference data for current clubs gives another look at how names change. It lists the Houston Astros' home as Daikin Park, the Chicago White Sox's as Rate Field and the Los Angeles Dodgers' as UNIQLO Field at Dodger Stadium, names that differ from the ones most longtime fans learned. The names in this article reflect that data and the 2025 season, and readers should check a club's official site for the current one, since the next change is never far away.
Names that have stayed
A few parks have kept names that no sponsor has attached to. As of the 2025 season, Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, Kauffman Stadium and Yankee Stadium are among the ballparks whose names point to a neighborhood, a family, an owner or the club itself rather than to a sponsor. The reasons are partly sentimental and partly commercial: a name with a century of history is a brand of its own, and a club can sell sponsorship of the scoreboard, the concourse and the gates without renaming the building.
For a new ballpark with no history, a sponsor's name is simply the name; for one with a century of tradition, selling it would be a break, which is one reason older parks tend to keep their names.
What fans, broadcasters and writers do
Fans have a standard response to a new name, which is to keep using the old one or to invent a nickname. Cleveland fans called Jacobs Field "the Jake," and in many cities fans simply keep using the old name or a nickname after a change.
Broadcasters, by contrast, have a contractual reason to say the sponsor's name, and a sponsorship package often includes mentions during the broadcast. The announcer's job is to treat the name as a fact of the place, a topic explored in baseball announcers and the radio voice. Journalists and historians follow a convention: refer to a park by the name it had at the time of the event. A game in 1999 at Seattle's park is a game at Safeco Field, even though the building is now called T-Mobile Park. Anyone searching the record for an old game should therefore try all the names the park has used.
The practical cost of a new name
Changing a name is not free. Signs have to be replaced, from the huge lettering on the facade to the small markers in the concourse. Tickets, uniforms, caps, broadcast graphics, the website, the stadium's wayfinding and the retail merchandise all carry the park's name, and each has to be updated. Clubs and sponsors usually plan the switch for the winter, so it is complete by opening day, and the cost is part of what the sponsor and the owner negotiate.
Contracts try to anticipate the risks. Because a company's fortunes can change over a long agreement, a deal can include terms about what happens if the sponsor is acquired, changes its brand or runs into serious trouble, and about whether the team may end the agreement or choose a replacement. The details of any particular contract are private, so the general point is the only one this article can make: the longer the term, the more such clauses matter, and the Enron case in Houston is the sort of event they are written to cover.
There is also a quieter risk for the sponsor. A name that fans resent can attach itself to the company, and a name tied to a stadium that gets an unpopular reputation, perhaps because of bad teams or poor sightlines, can do the same. Sponsors therefore have reasons of their own to care about the park's reputation and the club's stability, not only about the size of the crowd.
How to look up a game under an old name
A practical consequence for readers is that the same park can appear under several names in books, box scores and databases. A researcher tracing a game at the Phoenix ballpark in its first years should search for Bank One Ballpark as well as Chase Field. Someone looking for a Giants game of the early 2000s may find it listed under Pacific Bell Park or SBC Park. Because club, season and park are stored together, the safest method is to search by team and date and then read the park name that the source gives.
The site's ballpark pages show a park's name and reference data, and the convention to follow in writing about history is the one newspapers have always used: name the park as it was called at the time.
Beyond the major leagues
Naming rights are not limited to the majors. Minor league clubs sell them, often to local banks, hospitals, car dealerships and utilities, and the practice is a major revenue source for a business that sells inexpensive tickets. Minor league ballparks and the fan experience describes the setting. Spring training complexes in Arizona and Florida also carry sponsor names, as covered in the guide to spring training ballparks. In both cases the same logic applies: the name is a product, and its price depends on the audience.
The practice also touches the playing surface and the building's design. A sponsor-named park such as Tropicana Field, for example, is the home of a club with an artificial surface and a fixed roof, a subject covered in grass versus artificial turf in baseball, but the name itself has nothing to do with the field. A name says who paid, not what the park is like.
Common questions
Who gets the money from a naming-rights deal? It depends on who owns the park and what the lease says. Sometimes the team keeps it, sometimes a public owner shares it or applies it to the cost of the building.
How long do naming-rights deals last? Often a decade or two, though there is no standard term and some are longer.
Why did Enron Field change its name? The company went bankrupt in 2001. The club later arranged a new deal, and the park became Minute Maid Park in 2002.
Does a name change affect the statistics? No. Records are tied to the team and the season, so a park's earlier names do not alter any career total. They only matter when searching for the location of a game.
Which parks still have traditional names? As of the 2025 season, Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, Kauffman Stadium and Yankee Stadium are among them.
Where to go next
To see how a few of these parks work on the field, read the Chase Field ballpark guide and look up the ballpark pages for Chase Field, PNC Park and Great American Ball Park. The topic page on ballparks and fans collects the rest.