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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Wednesday, March 28, 2001


Sadly, it's the $ign of times

By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Staff Writer

You can hardly go to a sporting event or watch one on television these days without finding a corporate name or logo slapped on something.

Stadiums have them, arenas are rarely without them. Golf tournaments and bowl games are wrapped in them. There's Qualcomm this and BankOne that.

About the only sanctuaries left are the team names and the players themselves.

But for how much longer is anybody's guess.

For recent events suggest commercialization is closing in on these final frontiers. Consider, for example, that had the Vancouver Grizzlies chosen to move to Louisville, one plan reportedly was for them to tie up with the parent company of KFC of fried chicken fame.

The idea was for them to take the name Colonels and KFC would help underwrite their $200 million new arena which would — get this — be called "The Bucket."

Just the kind of finger lickin' temptation Grizzlies center Bryant "Big Country" Reeves needs. And the kind of inspiration newspaper headline writers and SportsCenter pundits would love.

That Grizzlies owner Michael Heisley has instead announced plans to move the franchise to Memphis, Tenn., for next season merely presents another sponsorship-naming opportunity. There, reports have it, FedEx Corporation is interested in anteing up to have the team take the name Memphis Express.

If that happens, you wonder what's next in the NBA: Charlotte Cheerios, Seattle SuperCuts, Washington Wheaties?

Once upon a time it seemed inconceivable that a pro team in this country could end up commercialized to the degree of everybody's favorite comic example, the Nippon Ham Fighters of Japanese baseball.

But as franchises such as the Grizzlies run up multimillion-dollar deficits, the inclination to say "no" recedes proportionately. As salaries continue to escalate, television contracts level off and ticket prices soar out of reach to a larger portion of the population, teams become more willing to listen. Especially those, such as the Grizzlies, who want to make a go of it in a small-market city.

Not that advertisers are overlooking the players as potential signage opportunities. A New York marketing firm has been contacting NBA players about the possibility of selling tattoo space for advertising.

Honest.

The president of Fifty Rubies Marketing told the New York Times he'd been negotiating with several players, over the objections of the NBA.

But you have to like the response of Portland's Rasheed Wallace, who questioned whether selling signage on his body parts would ruin the integrity of existing tattoos.

When Wallace passes for the voice of reason, that's when you know this whole sponsorship deal is threatening to go too far.

Ferd Lewis has reported on sports in Hawai'i since 1973.