The WGOM

Laugh all you want, come 2010 we might all be watching games at The LOL

April 1st, 2008 by CarterHayes

Welcome new readers. I hope you take a minute and look around at what we have to offer here. -- SBG

Lately the baseball world has been abuzz with excitement. Opening Day is always like that (even the third time around), but it's not every year that a new baseball-only ballpark opens in Washington D.C. (I think Keith Olbermann said something on his show the other night about it being 97 years). We're still a few years off from the Twins opening the new ballpark downtown, but the return of "spring" baseball in Minnesota certainly brought the future open-air park to the fore of many fans' minds. While we know that the stadium is coming, we don't know what it will be called. However, I think I have an inkling as to what that name might be.

Very early Tuesday morning I was avoiding coursework and shoveling out from the 400+ new posts in my Google Reader. As I skimmed through my baseball feeds I came across this post on Twins Ballpark 2010 which, in part, re-opened speculation about the naming rights for the new ballpark. That post got me poking around on the web, checking out the domain availability of my favorite potential names for the new place. Lo and behold, I came across the following nugget: the top-level domains www.landolakespark.com and www.landolakesfield.com have been purchased by the Minnesota Twins. According to my WHOIS searches (see graphics below), club itself is the Registrant and the technical contact given for the domain is John Avenson, the Twins' Vice President of Technology.

Furthermore, this article in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal from a while back reported (direct from Twins VP of Business Relations Laura Day's mouth) that the Twins were "conducting high-level discussions with a multitude of Minnesota legacy companies," which probably doesn't come as a shock to many. However, the Biz-Journal further reported that Day "believes she is already in talks with the company that will be the team's naming-rights partner, though she won't disclose any company names." According to the article, the Twins appear to be going with one major corporate sponsor, which will buy the ballpark's naming rights, and a minimum of four other partners who will purchase sponsorship of other areas within the ballpark.

Now, before we write off Land O' Lakes as being too small an entity to purchase the naming rights to a pro sports venue, the Repository of Knowledge says Land O Lakes exceeded $6 billion in annual sales in 2003 (latest data given) and is one of the largest butter and cheese producers in the country. I've seen their butter out in California ("happy cows" be damned) and friends in Denver and New York City buy it as well. So presumably it's a pretty well-recognized national brand, even if it's not one of the very biggest companies based in Minnesota.

From there it's pretty easy to draw conclusions, although of course, this is all just speculation at this point. Couple Laura Day's statements with the Twins' purchase of these domains and Land O Lakes' national presence, and it makes a pretty compelling argument. Personally, "Land O Lakes Park" or "Land O Lakes Field" has a sweeter ring to it than just about any of the other ballparks out there with a corporate logo plastered over the main gate. Of course, the purchase of the domain name doesn't mean that any deal is final. But if the new stadium is called the LOL, remember, you heard it here first.

UPDATE:

Philly Twins Fan, a reader of the WGOM, emailed us today with the following information, which I think makes the case for Land O' Lakes as a corporate naming rights sponsor all the more compelling. He's graciously allowed me to reprint his findings: Here's the bulk of his email:

I read your note on Land O' Lakes Park and found it interesting. I wondered about the relative size of Land O' Lakes compared to other naming rights buyers. So I copied a list of naming rights holders into a spreadsheet and, for all MLB clubs, plus other Twin City venues, found the most recent annual revenues for each of them and compared them to LOL revenues, which for the most recent year I could find was 7.274 Billion.

I have attached the spreadsheet for your info. The conclusion is that LOL is not small in the realm on naming rights holders. Smaller holders include Petco ($1.167B), McAfee ($1.308B), Comerica Park ($3.703B), US Cellular ($3.946B), Great American Ballpark ($4.503B), PNC Park ($6.166B), and Safeco Field( ($6.265). Of course, LOL would be third out of three in the Twin Cities, with Target and Xcel being larger in terms of annual revenue.

As an aside some holders gained their rights by acquiring the original holder, eg BankOne was bought by Chase, which later merged into JP Morgan. In these cases, the revenue figure is for the entire merged company. Also, some of the holders are subsidiaries or divisions of larger companies - eg Minute Maid is a division of Coca-Cola and Citizens Bank is owned by Royal Bank of Scotland.. In both cases, the revenue figure represents the larger parent company. Also, this is a quick and dirty research project, so all amount may not be most recent available.

Just thought you might be interested.

Thanks so much to Philly Twins Fan for his fact-checking work and great contribution to the discussion!

This entry was posted by CarterHayes on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 2:05 pm and is filed under CarterHayes, Guest Writers. It is one of 8 entries by the author. We are no longer accepting Letters to the Editor on this post.