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FC Dallas agree stadium naming rights deal with Toyota

PizzaHutParkFCDallas1 (FriscoStyle)

By DAN KARELL

After more than a year and a half without a sponsor name to their stadium, FC Dallas is set to open up a new revenue stream once again.

According to reports in Dallas, FC Dallas have agreed a long-term deal over the stadium rights of FC Dallas Stadium with Japanese automobile manufacturer, Toyota (UPDATE: FC Dallas confirmed the deal on Tuesday morning, with the stadium named “Toyota Stadium” and the complex called the “Toyota Soccer Center”). The stadium, located in Frisco, Texas, will be known as Toyota Stadium once the deal is officially announced, which the reports believe will be on Tuesday.

Toyota currently owns naming rights deals on a number of U.S. stadiums in multiple sports including soccer. The NBA’s Houston Rockets play in the Toyota Center, fellow MLS club Chicago Fire play in Toyota Park, and the NASL’s San Antonio Scorpions play at Toyota Field.

When FC Dallas Stadium opened in 2005, it was known then as Pizza Hut Park, but the pizza chain company decided not to renew their contract and the naming rights expired in January, 2012.

What do you think of this news? How do you see this affecting FC Dallas? Do you believe they’ll spend more now that they have another revenue stream?

Share your thoughts below.

Comments

  1. to The Imperative Voice:

    I would take your argument about “American-driven monetization” were it not for corporate sponsors on every club’s jerseys. I certainly recall on rather large insurance firm that was subject to a huge financial bailout adorned on the ManU jerseys. Good luck to Red Devils at King Power Stadium.

    Reply
    • The idea of shirt sponsors appears to be European but the idea of stadium sponsors is, IMO, American. 10 years ago we would have already had Enron, etc. but it was still Highbury. Now it’s Emirates. That is a sea change there, which has followed the trend from here.

      But my point was really that who cares if Euros criticize our stadium names because we invented the idea. I didn’t buy the implication that they’d done it first and had some sort of license to the idea that gave them the right to look down on us. Ditto betting houses and such as sponsors, even if we threw out “who had it first,” Pizza Hut is more morally defensible.

      I think you’re taking my argument as pro-Europe and it was intended to be more generally critical, dismantling both sides.

      Reply
  2. Glad they got a sponsor, more $$$ is a good thing. Don’t really get how Toyota trumps Pizza Hut though. They are both companies that paid FCD $$$.

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  3. Toyota, huh? Our Volkswagen Field/Stadium/Park at Buzzard’s Point in DC will kick their butt. Fahrvegnugen!!

    In actuality, I pray for the day United get a different jersey sponsor. Let VW have stadium naming rights, but I want some other symbol across my chest when I put on a DCU jersey.

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  4. Oh wow.. this alone will help US soccer.. “pizza hut park” was a blemish on our advancement… It was fodder for Euros and their stereotypes of americans.

    Reply
    • While most of the big stadia in Europe are ma,ed after multi-national companies, many of the lower division soccer stadiums in England and Europe some time have hard time to find naming sponsors and take what they can get.

      An good example I remember is several years ago when a local 2nd division team in Holland was looking for a sponsor for the newly built 13,000 seat stadium and were having no luck, until a local “hospitality” company stepped up and made an offer the Board of Directors approved and so a soccer stadium (and a local cycling team) were sponsored (at least for a time) by a real upscale and legal (over there) brothel.

      Pizza Hut doesn’t look so bad now huh.

      Reply
    • Why do you care about what some guy in Europe thinks ?
      Pretty sure that is what Alexi is referring to when he says there is an inferiority complex of US soccer fans.

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    • First off, Old Trafford and many stadia like it resist the idea of naming rights. You can argue the idea of naming rights is an American-driven monetization concept. Many Europeans would judge us for the money obsession more than the particular names themselves.

      Second, some of the English corporate sponsors are hardly inspiring either. Seen all the betting houses or payday lenders on shirts and stadia? Pizza Hut is pleasantly innocent in comparison.

      Third, I think the bigger problem underlined by Pizza Hut is temporariness, contract length, bankruptcy, etc. People come to identify the place as Pizza Hut and associate your team with it and bammo Pizza Hut quits you. People call the stadium Enron and that business goes bankrupt.

      So, I think any stadium built with tax funds should have some sort of non-corporate permanent identifier as well. Reliant Astrodome, Metlife Meadowlands, etc. I see it as a mistake to allow potentially flybynight or bankrupt sponsors the right to the whole name, and fans deserve something permanent and non-corporate.

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      • The betting website being allowed to have shirt sponsorship strikes me as foolish and shortsighted by the league. Encouraging gambling is not a good thing. I play poker, I just think the two industry’s are too close together for ethical reasons and gambling on soccer is not the same as poker. I don’t have then energy to go in detail as to why its not good. I’m not saying it “evil” just not for the best.

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