Sporting arenas keep changing their names like people change their socks

”The Olympic Stadium is far too precious to be renamed”

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By Markku Lahti
     
      Sports arenas are being christened with company and product names that may change even in the middle of the season.
      Two of Helsinki’s most prominent sporting venues, the Olympic Stadium (Olympiastadion) and the Ice Hall (Jäähalli), have nevertheless steered clear of the name-game and the temptation of making easy money.
     
"The world is full of stadiums but there is only a handful of Olympic Stadiums”, says the venue's marketing manager Pekka Hurme.
      “As far as I know, none of the world’s Summer Olympics stadiums uses a commercial name.”
      According to Hurme, the thought of changing Finland’s prime sporting arena's name has been denounced as “indelicate and disrespectful”.
      He considers the present name so priceless that it cannot be sold.
     
The venue was not always called the Olympic Stadium, however.
      From the late 1930s until the 1952 Summer Olympics its name was simply the Helsinki Stadium.
      “The idea of naming the Olympic Stadium after a person has never been suggested”, Hurme continues.
      “Not even after Erik von Frenckell, thanks to whose lobbying efforts Helsinki was chosen to host the 1952 Summer Games.”
     
According to the Helsinki Ice Hall managing director Harry Bogomoloff, the name of the sporting arena erected in 1966 is in fact up for sale.
      “We have simply not received a satisfactory offer”, says Bogomoloff. “The name is not for sale for a trifling sum. I will not mention any figures, but the contract should last at least for a decade.”
      Bogomoloff explains that changing the venue’s name would come with costs. The keepers of the venue would face support measures related to the new name, construction work, and painting.
      “We have had a couple of contacts, but they have remained on the 'let’s see, shall we' level. The name changes if it changes.”
     
Certainly there are other venues as well, the traditional names of which are still being respected.
      Such arenas-without-a-sponsor's-name include the venerable and tradition-rich Eläintarha athletics stadium, as well as the Uimastadion and Yrjönkadun Uimahalli swimming venues.
      The first of these two pools was the scene for the swimming and diving events at the 1952 Olympics.
      In Töölö’s Kisahalli, the former Messuhalli, one can engage in a variety of exercise forms, while the Helsinki side ToPo plays its Finnish basketball league home games at the other end of the building.
      FC Honka plays its football games in Tapiola’s Urheilupuisto and Honka of Espoo uses Tapiola’s Urheiluhalli arena as its Finnish basketball league home venue.
     
So far all of these have managed to resist the lure of sponsorship - or perhaps the offers just haven't been good enough...
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 2.9.2010


Links:
  Helsinki Ice Hall
  Helsinki Olympic Stadium

MARKKU LAHTI / Helsingin Sanomat
markku.lahti@hs.fi