USSoccerPlayers' Steve Pastorino explains the importance of Real Salt Lake's stadium naming rights announcement. Combined with the results on the field, RSL might be entering its ascendancy as a model for Major League Soccer.
By Steve Pastorino
SALT LAKE CITY, UT (Sept 29, 2008) USSoccerPlayers -- This morning’s press conference at Rio Tinto Stadium in Sandy is cause for celebración from Salt Lake City to the Manhattan offices of its ownership group, Sports Capital Partners.
It’s delicious irony that the team that once received so much criticism for its Spanish-language name has attracted the global gigantes of mining and real estate for its sparkling new venue that opens next week.
Forty-eight hours ago, Javier Morales scored a monumental goal that may well propel RSL to its first playoff bid ever. His signing last summer, along with three other sudamericanos (only Fabián Espindola remains), was the critical turning point in the team’s on-field development.
Now, Rio Tinto’s decision to sign with RSL for at least a decade caps a four-year business development start-up. With a new stadium, a jersey sponsor and a stadium sponsor, Dave Checketts has hit a hat trick.
In a month dominated by an economic disaster that most of us are incapable of describing in laymen’s terms, RSL has found close to $20 million from an industry that is as tangible and rock-solid as the red cliffs of Utah.
Rio Tinto’s primary assets are merely coal, diamonds, copper (more of it than anyone on the planet) and land. Their most recent financial filing indicates $6.9 billion (with a “b”) in net earnings in 2008.
Founded in southern Spain in 1873, 60 years prior to the Spanish Civil War, Rio Tinto has operations on every continent – and ownership of the massive copper mine just west of its namesake stadium in Sandy. It’s one of those “so big you can see it from the space shuttle” places.
Scarred by one hundred years of mining operations, this land has one distinct advantage that most copper mines lack. People want to live here.
So less than 15 minutes from RSL’s new home lies an idealistic settlement called Daybreak, in the foothills below the mine. The misnomer of a community (day breaks on the East side of the valley, not the west) is nonetheless everything Brigham Young envisioned in 1847.
Not only is Daybreak a postcard-perfect neighborhood of manicured lawns, but it’s the first phase of a 30-year development project expected to be home to as many as 500,000 people some day. Guess who owns all the land?
Keeping in mind that Utah’s capital city boasts less than 200,000 residents, this Rio Tinto development (which in varying iterations may even contain a ski resort) will irrevocably alter the state’s political and economic landscape.
So it’s no surprise that this naming rights deal came about.
Rio Tinto was on the short list 18 months ago when RSL’s likable vice president of business, John Kimball, and his team began the sales process.
“Anything but a nuclear waste dump” was one of the mantras, in reference to Utah Jazz owner Larry Miller’s deal with the Energy Solutions to name Salt Lake’s downtown arena.
Checketts made it clear he wanted a name with global gravitas (sorry, Xango) and Utah connections. Major regional employer American Express was an early target.
But Utah’s largest financial players had already by-and-large named the state’s modern-day monuments. Zions Bank sponsors the Jazz practice venue. Franklin Covey adorns the AAA baseball stadium. And, frankly, there aren’t too many financial players in Utah.
So, the organization brought global sponsorship leaders, IMG, into play – tapping its billion-dollar network of clients that had the team dreaming of a Rolex Stadium.
But inside the team’s Trolley Corners offices, Kimball’s hard-working sponsorship team suspected the name had to come from Utah – or at least a regional player like Rocky Mountain Power.
When a bank of luxury suites and five founding partnerships (Budweiser, Pepsi, Fiji Water, Sony and America First Credit Union) sold quickly and exceeded budget, expectations grew for the stadium name.
The team pitched the opportunity to plant a stake in the ground in American sports – a venue that would be home not only to the country’s highest level of soccer, but concerts, football games and much more (even a USA Rugby match is on the books).
The mentions on television, the listings in the sports sections, the signage and the drive-by signage on busy I-15 were all touted. The sheer number of impressions would make this deal a marketing no-brainer.
While multiple proposals sat before time-crunched CFO’s in recent months, Rio Tinto bit. The deal was finalized and signed just this past weekend. But with the stroke of a pen and today’s unveiling, RSL ascends into the business elite of Major League Soccer.
The club no one thought could form a meaningful partnership with the galácticos, Real Madrid, has arrived.
The soccer club from the league’s smallest market, which delivered the largest home crowd in the United States during 2006 World Cup Qualifying has posted a clean sheet on the books.
After four years of counting every penny, copper has Real Salt Lake seeing oro. There’s no more appropriate greeting than “Felicidades!”
After a decade with the Chicago Fire and Real Salt Lake, Steve Pastorino now manages USA Team Handball. Steve welcomes your feedback at steve@usateamhandball.org.
