Poll: Does your paper/station use bowl sponsor's names on first reference?

OTOH, you are selling your product to people who want to read about the sponsor's bowl game, ergo, you're making money off that sponsor's game. And yet newspapers demand and expect to be allowed to cover said event for free, for days on end. Without the sponsors the games go away (which may not be a bad thing, granted) and as the games go away, so do the readers.

That's why I think it's shortsighted to go with the "buy an ad" route in this argument. The sponsors, the games, the newspapers: You're all in it together.

Besides, no one calls it "233 South Wacker Drive;" everyone knows it as The Sears Tower -- not to mention 1060 W. Addison Street, known the world over not as "the stadium at" but instead "Wrigley Field." Sponsorships are here to stay, there's no reason to fight them.

 

At my smallish paper, we referred to local teams as the Townname Jimmy's Tools Ironmen and the Townname Great Decorating Supplies Warriors.

First reference only, of course, but it 1) Killed the rhythm of leads and 2) Sounded absurd.

 

Re: Wrigley Field. How much money could Tribune Co. rake in if the boss called across the street to Wrigley Co. and said, "Want to keep your name on our ball park?"

 

Wanna open a similar can of worms? We had vehement discussions as stadiums started changing names (Candlestick, Jack Murphy, Comiskey, etc.). Right or wrong, an overwhelming number of people on our desk wanted to continue to refer to them by their former names in print -- and fought and fought it.

 

I admire JD's take on it.

Having said that, our desk isn't changing every reference of, say, the PapaJohn's Bowl to something else it's not called anymore. Just too much thought has to go into that for something where the statement we're making isn't going to have a whole lot of effect.

If there's a sponsor tied to the bowl name, we'll just use the bowl name. But in our bowl capsules, we're using the bowl logo, so the connection is there anyway.

The stadium issue, we've given that more lip service than the bowl situation. And we've had writers try to commandeer the issue; i.e., refuse to refer to the stadium by its "new" name. But it's really something that has to be a newspaper-wide policy, down on paper, or the effect is one of confusion.

 

I believe since Wrigley Field was designated a historic landmark, the Cubs can't make any alterations to it without approval from the city.