The City of Winston-Salem spends $30,000 on a study to consider selling naming rights to Joel Coliseum, a venue that loses $700,000 a year, then cites community concerns for not entering into a deal. The city wasn’t aware of these concerns before it commissioned the study? Yeah, right.
Here’s the cover: It’s not the naming rights to Joel they’re thinking about selling; it’s the rights to the Winston-Salem Entertainment Sports Complex, which includes Bowman Gray Stadium, the Dixie Classic Fairgrounds and Ernie Shore Field. But the article focuses on Joel because it’s the only venue with any real appeal to a coropoate sponsor. Personally, I don’t see a company spending good money to have its name attached to Bowman Gray and the fairgrounds, and city’s selling Ernie Shore to WFU anyway, right?
The city’s citing the heroics of the real Lawrence Joel, a Congressional Medal of Honor winner for his actions in Vietnam, as a reason for not selling naming rights. That’s a bit disingenuous, because I think they’re going to cut the deal anyway. It’s just the reality of the sports world today, and $700,000 is just too much lose year after year.
