Nader Praises "Civic Courage" of Denver Post for Ignoring Corporate
Stadium Hustle
Gary Ruskin
gary@essential.org
Wed, 08 Aug 2001 01:55:47 -0700
Commercial Alert August 8, 2001
Following is Ralph Nader's statement about the Denver Post's decision to
call Denver's new stadium by a nickname and not a corporate name.
NEWS RELEASE
For Immediate Release: For More Information Contact:
Wednesday, August 8, 2001 Gary Ruskin (503) 235-8012
Nader Praises "Civic Courage" of Denver Post for Ignoring Corporate
Stadium Hustle
Ralph Nader applauded the Denver Post today for "an act of civic
courage" in refusing to permit a corporation to rename -- and thereby
redefine -- a fixture of the city's civic life. The statement followed
the Post's announcement today that it will refer to the new Denver
Broncos stadium by its nickname of "Mile High" stadium and not "Invesco
Field" or "Invesco Field at Mile High."
"It is commendable that the Denver Post has taken this stand against
commercialism," Nader said. "The renaming of American traditions and
institutions by corporations who shell out dollars must be confronted
and opposed by the civic culture."
"This is truly an important act," Nader said. "It is in the best
tradition of American newspapers – to name things what they are rather
than what corporations want them to be. Finally, an American newspaper
is taking a stand and saying that corporations cannot buy every last
inch of our culture, our local memories, and our civic spaces, and have
us accept it."
The Denver Post reported today that ""The community at large thinks of
this [Denver's new stadium] as 'Mile High,' 'new Mile High' or 'the new
stadium'," Post Editor Glenn Guzzo said. "Outside of official circles
seldom do you hear Invesco Field, except in negative terms...In this
case, the community's terminology is familiar, positive and clear. We
think our decision will be accepted widely," Guzzo said."
"Other newspapers, radio and TV stations should follow the lead in their
community that the Denver Post has just pioneered," Nader said. "The
Denver Post: where tradition took a stand."
"The power to name is the power to define," Nader said.
Ralph Nader founded Commercial Alert to keep the commercial culture
within its proper sphere, and to prevent it from exploiting children and
subverting the higher values of family, community, environmental
integrity and democracy.
Commercial Alert's website is at <www.commercialalert.org>.
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WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP:
(1) Please contact the sports editors of your local newspapers. Ask
them to follow the Denver Post's lead and to refer to stadiums by their
nicknames and not their corporate names.
(2) Please email Denver Post editor Glenn Guzzo to congratulate him for
his civic courage. His email address is <gguzzo@denverpost.com>.
BACKGROUND:
Following is today's Denver Post article.
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1002,66%257E93441,00.html
We'll call it Mile High
Out with the new stadium name, in with the old at The Post
By Cindy Brovsky
Wednesday, August 08, 2001 - The Denver Post has dropped the Invesco
Field moniker for the new Broncos stadium and will refer to it as Mile
High stadium.
"The community at large thinks of this as 'Mile High,' 'new Mile High'
or 'the new stadium'," Post Editor Glenn Guzzo said. "Outside of
official circles seldom do you hear Invesco Field, except in negative
terms.
"In this case, the community's terminology is familiar, positive and
clear. We think our decision will be accepted widely,"Guzzo said.
Despite public outcry, the Metropolitan Football Stadium District sold
the naming rights to Invesco Funds Group in January. The Denver-based
mutual funds company will pay $60 million over 20 years to call the
stadium Invesco Field at Mile High.
That money will be used to reduce the taxpayers' debt on the $400.8
million stadium, which opens Saturday with an Eagles concert.
Invesco officials did not return phone calls to The Post.
"We would expect and hope as journalists The Post would be accurate and
use the full and proper name," Invesco told 9News. "It doesn't seem to
be a balanced or fair way to portray the facility."
Denver Mayor Wellington Webb was astonished by The Post's new policy.
"The name Mile High Stadium has a deep tradition for the city and
Broncos fans," Webb said. "I believe the name always should be Mile High
Stadium and so do the citizens of Denver."
Businessman John Hickenlooper, who led the fight to keep the Mile High
Stadium name, was pleasantly surprised by the news.
"I'm delighted the community is coming together on this," Hickenlooper
said. "I knew it was wrong to sell the name, and it always will be the
new Mile High stadium."
Said Jim Saccomano, director of public relations for the Broncos: "The
Denver Post refers to every stadium in the country by its full name. It
would be inappropriate for them to do otherwise for Invesco Field at
Mile High."
Ray Baker, chairman of the stadium district, questioned why The Post
would change a policy for one sports venue. The newspaper will not
change its policy concerning Coors Field and Pepsi Center.
Sports marketing expert Dean Bonham said the move was unprecedented. "I
am not aware of any major newspaper that has an official policy not to
call a facility what it wants to be called," he said.
But Bonham said Invesco still will get national exposure from other
media. Most local media also continue to call the stadium Invesco Field
at Mile High.
"Invesco could get more publicity from the exposure of The Post's
policy," Bonham said. "At the end of the day, the policy is not going to
hurt the company."
Denver Post sports writer Adam Schefter contributed to this report.
<-----article ends here---->
Following is an op-ed by Ralph Nader on the naming of Mile High stadium,
from the January 28 edition of the Rocky Mountain News.
Whose Stadium Is it Anyway? For Sake of Fans Everywhere, Fight For The
Mile High Name
by Ralph Nader
Sometime this week, the Metropolitan Football Stadium District Board of
Directors is expected to decide whether to retain the proud Mile High
name on Denver's new sports stadium, or to sell it to a corporation that
wants you to say its name every time you talk sports.
Invesco Funds Group Inc. is leading the charge of crass commercialism.
It wants to pay $120 million to name the stadium "Invesco Field at Mile
High. " If the deal goes through, the stadium will doubtless be called
Invesco Field.
Just 10 years ago, such corporate naming rights deals were almost
nonexistent. Now the tawdry spectacle of corporate-named stadiums is
draining the fun out of sports.
Our country is besotted with corporate-named arenas like Qualcomm
Stadium, MCI Arena, Enron Field, Pepsi Center, Fleet Center, Arco Arena
and Bank One Ballpark. Every one of these corporate names grates on
sports fans, who yearn for sports that are untainted by yammering
pitchmen and blatant hucksterism.
The sale of naming rights is part of a broader trend -- the ubiquitous
ad-plastering and marketeering that accompanies the hostile corporate
takeover of so much of our culture and our country.
We are drowning in a ocean of commercialism. We are buried under junk
mail, telemarketing, junk faxes and billboards. We are barraged with ads
in airport lounges, bus stops, doctors' offices, movie theaters,
hospitals, gas stations, elevators, convenience stores, on the Internet,
on fruit, beach sand, garbage cans, ATMs and countless other places.
Even worse, our public schools have become showrooms for the delivery of
ads to captive audiences of impressionable children. And our elections
have been commercialized and corrupted by huge sums of corporate "soft
money" campaign contributions.
It's time to reverse the trend. Corporations shouldn't be allowed to own
or control everything, including much of our culture. Nor should
corporate marketers be allowed to buy or lay claim to every moment of
our attention. Denver Mayor Wellington Webb said it best: "not
everything should be for sale. "
This is not just about a stadium name. This is about whether we might
have physical and mental space that is not cluttered by corporate logos
nor colonized by the materialistic, self-serving, money-is-everything
values of the market.
The Mile High name helps give Denver a sense of place. It builds
community. It is a tradition that binds many Coloradans to each other.
Take the name away, or shunt it aside with Invesco Field, and the
community will miss something. The bonds will loosen. The harm may not
be tangible, and you can't measure it in dollars, but the emptiness will
be there.
Sports profiteers are overconfident. Sports marketing expert Dean Bonham
predicted that "by 2002, virtually every major sports facility in the
country will have a naming-rights deal associated with it."
Let's prove him wrong. We don't have to watch ballgames against a
backdrop of ads from global corporate hucksters, too many of whom are
corporate felons, polluters, tax cheats and corporate welfare
recipients.
Taxpayers are paying for three-quarters of the new $364 million stadium
with a penny-per-10-dollar sales tax. The Metropolitan Football Stadium
District board ought to respect the taxpayers, and whether they wish to
attend a game at Mile High.
Public support for keeping the Mile High name is strong and growing. A
poll taken in December found that 48 percent of Denver residents want to
retain the name Mile High, while only 15 percent want to sell the naming
rights.
This is the place to make a stand. For more than 50 years of sports
memories. For the good times and the bad times in a stadium that
millions loved. For tradition. For community. For Denver's sports
heroes.
Sports fans and taxpayers, make your voices heard. Pledge to boycott any
company that puts its name on the stadium, like the Invesco Funds Group,
and tell the Metropolitan Football Stadium District to keep the name
Mile High.
<-----article ends here------>
On June 13, 2000, responding to the rise of sports stadiums with
corporate naming rights agreements, Commercial Alert sent letters to
sportswriters at the fifty largest U.S. and Canadian newspapers to
encourage them to call stadiums by nicknames instead of corporate names,
such as the FleetCenter, Enron Field, Staples Center, and FedEx Field.
The letter follows.
* * * * *
There comes a time when all of us must stand up and be counted,
sportswriters not excepted. They too must come to the proverbial plate
on occasion, with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth with two
outs and the team down by three.
Now is one of those times, and the question is the names of the
locations of the sports events which they cover.
Ball parks and stadiums are part of sports lore and legend. Can one
recount Willie Mays' back-to-the-plate catch off Vic Wertz in the 1954
World Series, without mention of the spacious center field of the old
Polo Grounds? Would Reggie Jackson's October heroics have loomed quite
as large in any stadium besides the House that Ruth Built? Could
Havlicek have stolen the ball anyplace besides the Garden?
Those stadium names -- Polo Grounds, Fenway, Forbes Field, Tiger
Stadium, and on and on -- are part of the poetry of sports. They cast
their spell on us throughout our lives. They serve to connect
professional sports in locality and place, and provide a thread of
connection between parents and kids, one generation and another.
How many fathers have taken their kids to Yankee Stadium or Fenway and
pointed out where they were sitting at some momentous game of yore? In
times of turmoil and change these threads become precious. Yet they are
being ripped from our lives, and the reason is that corporations are
seizing the names of our beloved parks and stadiums, and replacing these
with their own.
It was a sad, sad day when Boston's Garden became the Fleet Center, and
San Francisco's Candlestick became 3Com Park. Even the name Meadowlands
Arena provided a touch of grace to that maligned venue that the new name
-- Continental Airlines Arena -- does not. This change represents a
flattening of our culture, the emotional equivalent of a Soviet
marriage. It uproots sports from local culture and tradition, and wraps
them in the pecuniary legalism of commerce instead. It is yet another
instance of the chilling and Orwellian corporate takeover of our civic
and cultural life.
Sports writers are our last line of defense. You are the keepers of the
language of sports. You have the power to name, which is the power to
define. You wield this power each time you sit down to write; and I
urge you to wield it on behalf of our memories, our local cultures, and
the bonds between parents and kids.
I urge you to write as a keeper of the magic that draws us to sports,
rather than as -- I must say this -- a corporate shill.
There is no law that says that you have to call a sports venue what a
big corporation wants you to call it. Nicknames are another rich sports
tradition, from Bronco and the Babe to Magic and Dr. J. Today most of
you call the manager of the San Francisco Giants by a name (Dusty) other
than the one his mother gave him.
If you can do that, then why can't you call the stadium where he manages
by a name other than the one its corporate sponsor gave it?
There is no reason. There is no reason why 3Com cannot have an
affectionate local nickname in your columns and stories -- the New
Candlestick perhaps. There is no reason why the Fleet Center cannot
become the New Garden (pronounced without the "r" of course), and why
the United Center cannot become New Chicago Stadium, or perhaps
something better.
This would be a service to sports fans -- at the most simple level they
would know where you are talking about. How many of us can keep
straight the corporate names that have no grounding in place in our
minds. 3Com, Qualcomm -- who knows which is which?
But more important is the role you can play in reclaiming this one
vestige of sports tradition and memory from the marauders with deep
pockets and shallow hearts.
You can do this. No one can stop you. What good is freedom of speech
if you are not willing to exercise it?
The bases are loaded. It is the bottom of the ninth. Will you show the
courage you expect of the players of whom you write?
Sincerely,
Gary Ruskin
Director
<-----------letter ends here---------->
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--
Gary Ruskin | gary@essential.org
Commercial Alert | Congressional Accountability Project
http://www.commercialalert.org | http://www.congressproject.org
phone: 503.235.8012