You know the drill: SAP has asked Joe Public to name Munich arena so go forth and be very silly German ERP giant SAP has finally latched on to the name-our-thing stunt commonly used to drum up interest in gritters, offering punters the chance to brand Munich's new sports arena. SAP has the naming rights to the stadium and has launched a PR campaign asking people to come up with a name in exchange for the chance of …
And there is a special place in hell for whoever came up with them!
Especially galling are the numerous sporting venues that are paid for by local councils – the City of Manchester Stadium springs to mind, but there others – who usually then see no cash for the names but are responsible for renaming transport stops, etc. The net effect is that people who already have more money than they know what to do with have more. Renaming sports grounds is the equivalent or renaming menu items in a GUI!
One of the bodies you can blame for this trend (not solely, but a big influence) is the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the governments who pander to them when hosting the games.
The IOC bans advertising in any venue or venue-related facilities unless the advertiser has paid much cash to the IOC for the privilege of advertising at an Olympic event. Many hosting countries (well all really) pass laws enabling this.
One of the ways advertisers got around this was by having the actual facilities that hosted the games to be named after their organisations. That way, when a broadcaster says "Telstra stadium", they are not advertising Telstra - which would breach laws if Telstra hadn't paid the IOC millions of dollars - they are stating the name of a facility, not of a company.
I'm pretty sure that the various <insert name here> World Cups follow the same paradigm regarding advertising, thus boosting the silly trend of naming places/facilities after companies.
We all know SAP have no imagination or creativity and that they'll end up calling it; "The SAP SE Arena" - of course it will have also been designed in the 70s, consist of various parts of other stadia acquired along the way, be extremely difficult to navigate and you won't be able to leave without paying for a health check.
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