If fans didn't think money had a vice grip on American sports already, the latest development in the legacy of an iconic NFL venue will make it undeniably evident.
Lambeau Field, home of the Green Bay Packers for the last seven decades, could fall victim to the lucrative value of a stadium naming rights process. The brick and mortar cathedral to football seemed untouchable from the modern economic necessities transforming the NFL game. The Packers are still the league's only remaining publicly owned franchise, but that's become more of a trivia answer than a viable business plan these days.
"As the league's only nonprofit, the Packers cannot engage in true equity financing (fan-owned 'public shares' are valued more as souvenirs) and has no billionaire owner who can reach into his or her own pockets to fund the team," team president and CEO Ed Policy told Sports Business Journal on Thursday of his mulling a naming rights sale.
"Finance and economics really don't play into our football decision-making right now, and it's my job to ensure that it never does," Policy added. "Given the pace that the expenses have accelerated over the past few years, if we find ourselves falling behind, it's going to be really hard to catch up. So, we have to keep ourselves in a position where we're not falling behind."
Letting a corporate entity slap its name on the most historic building in NFL history could be a very lucrative business decision in the long term, but the team must weigh whether it can withstand the short-term PR implications.
Packers risk stomping tradition and history for cash and profitability
Lambeau Field is currently one of only two NFL stadiums without a commercial sponsor attached, keeping with its historic legacy of honoring a legend of the game in Curly Lambeau. But that era could be waning for good: The Bears are soon to move out of Soldier Field when a new stadium in Illinois or Indiana is eventually approved and built. If Lambeau Field is called something like "Lambeau Field at Miller Lite Stadium" by that point, the era of iconic NFL nomenclature will be officially over.
The Packers would join the likes of the Kansas City Chiefs (GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium) and Denver Broncos (Empower Field at Mile High) who managed to keep their historic names while pairing them with corporate sponsors. Though the Chiefs will eventually depart Arrowhead for a new home in Kansas.
At least Packers fans won't have to watch their football home be enveloped by the tackiness of a permanent advertisement. Minnesota Vikings fans lost their beloved Metrodome to U.S. Bank Stadium (well, it did collapse under snow) and Buffalo Bills fans will lose Wilson Stadium at Orchard Park this fall when Highmark Stadium opens.
It'll be a shame to see Green Bay succumb to the necessity of a commercial venture attached to its building, but fans at least will keep the legacy of Lambeau Field alive with their natural brevity and colloquialisms. Nobody's going to articulate the mouthful of the stadium's entire name. It'll always be "Lambeau" just as Broncos fans call it "Mile High" and New York Giants and Jets fans refer to the monstrosity that is MetLife Stadium as "The Meadowlands."
You can try to sell us your products or services by slapping a company's name on our gridiron churches but we'll just continue to pray to the football gods in the old tongue. Vivat Lambeau!