Suds, Sports and Stadium Swindles

Beer and sports are inextricably intertwined. In the case of Miller Park and Coors Field, taxpayers that financed the stadiums should have received greater benefit from these names.
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

Beer and sports are inextricably intertwined. Many of us can't even imagine watching a game without a beer. This past weekend Sports Fans Coalition joined craft brewers and tens of thousands of beer fans in celebrating the sacred marriage of grains, hops, water and yeast at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver. Roger I. Abrams, an authority on sports law, calls beer "the mother's milk of sports, the engine that drives the enterprise."

The most concrete (literally) examples of the symbiotic relationship between beer and sports are Miller Field, Coors Field, and Busch Stadium.*

Of course, these stadiums are named after the massive breweries that have ruled the American beerscape for decades. But the very act of naming these stadiums after the breweries is itself a demonstration of their strength and ability to squeeze out competitors. And in the case of Miller Park and Coors Field, taxpayers that financed the stadiums should have received greater benefit from these names.

As for the New Busch Stadium, it's the third stadium in St. Louis to bear the brewer's family name. Here's how author Ethan Trex describes that history:

In 1953, the brewery wanted to buy the naming rights for Sportsman's Park, the home of the St. Louis Cardinals, and rename the park "Budweiser Stadium." National League President Ford C. Frick wasn't so hot on naming a stadium after booze, but he allowed Augustus Busch to stick his family's surname on the park. The Cardinals opened the 1954 season in Busch Stadium. Anheuser-Busch quickly rolled out "Busch Bavarian Beer" to take advantage of this advertising. This Busch Stadium closed in 1966, but the Cardinals' two subsequent homes have kept the name.

Busch and Busch Light beers continue to exist most likely only because of the stadium name (and their popularity with broke college students).

When Miller Park was in development, the Brewers ended up selling the naming rights to Miller Beer for $40 million. Nevermind that the taxpayers in Milwaukee and surrounding counties ponied up all the money for a stadium that owner and MLB Commissioner Bud Selig had originally proposed as a privately financed park. (Field of Schemes author Neil deMause called it "the ultimate stadium wheel-and-deal.")

But the history of Coors Field is even bitterer.

Denver taxpayers were reportedly swindled on the stadium revenues and its naming rights from the beginning. From the Denver Post:

Originally, taxpayers had been told the sale of naming rights would reap $8 million to $10 million for the district. The money was to be applied to the stadium's bonding debt, thereby reducing the burden on taxpayers, but the Rockies collected on the naming rights instead.

The Rockies also reportedly received all revenues from the park under the original lease; However, controversy involving one of the original owners gave the city time to reexamine the lease resulting in a just slightly less egregious plan.

When Coors Brewing invested in the Rockies franchise around this time, its deal included naming rights for a period that some consider to be indefinite. According to the Denver Post, for a "$30 million investment, Coors Brewing got an equity stake as a limited partner in the ballclub, the stadium naming rights and other advertising and marketing opportunities to promote the company's products in and around the ballpark."

CEO Pete Coors sure swung a sweetheart deal, even if he didn't have to work hard for it. From the Post:

From the earliest mention of a possible major-league franchise in Denver, Coors Brewing was interested in stadium-naming rights and other advertising benefits, but the company never was interested in an ownership stake, according to Peter Coors. Naming the stadium after Coors Brewing was less an effort to immortalize the Coors name "as much as it was an effort to promote the company and its brand name.

Even before the stadium was finished, Coors Brewing was selling Coors Field merchandise even though their ownership of that name was disputed.

So Coors Brewing -- as long as it remains an owner -- has effectively locked up key advertising space in and the naming rights for a stadium and that the people of Denver by and large paid for. Other companies -- including competing microbreweries -- will never be able to compete with Coors as long as the stadium exists. Taxpayers should demand that Coors either renegotiate the naming rights fairly with a portion of the revenues going to the city or sell its share in the team if it wants to keep its naming rights.

Sports Fans Coalition raises a cold one to all the hardworking, taxpaying, sports-loving beer drinkers out there.

*Another beer-related naming rights story occurred when Dolphin Stadium was renamed Land Shark Stadium for eight months in 2009 as sort of a quick-hit marketing gimmick, albeit a big one, to promote Land Shark Lager, brewed by Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville enterprise.

Brian Frederick is the Executive Director of Sports Fans Coalition. He holds a Ph.D. in Communication and lives in Washington, D.C. Email him at sportsfanscoalition@gmail.com

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot