Toyota is a japanese company right? what does that have to do with the Chinese Yao Ming? answer: Nothing
Maybe Clutch should set up a Stadium naming rights tip jar and if we can get just one half of the population of China to chip in one single dollar we can name the stadium the ClutchCity.net Center for the next 100 years.
I always knew the folks at ESPN where unreliable screwups but they have really ****ed up this time. Just read, you will find the mistake Toyota, Rockets agree to naming rights' deal -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Associated Press HOUSTON -- The Houston Rockets, with Yao Ming already in the lineup, added more international flavor Thursday by signing a long term naming rights deal to call their new $200 million downtown arena Toyota Center. Terms of the deal were not announced. "It made sense to the Rockets to find a partner that would benefit from the international exposure that the Rockets are receiving,'' Rockets president and chief executive officer George Postolos said. "Toyota seems to be the perfect fit because of it's international presence.'' The new arena, scheduled for completion in September, will be host to the Rockets, the WNBA's Houston Comets and the Minnesota Wild's minor-league hockey affiliate, the Houston Aerosol. AEROSOL ?!?! Deborah Whal Meyer, corporate marketing manager for Toyota Motor Sales, Inc., said Toyota also looked at the international benefits of a partnership with the Rockets, who made Yao Ming the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft last season. "As a leader in the worldwide market, Toyota will also be able to enhance its brand awareness in Asia through the international exposure offered by the Houston Rockets," Meyer said. Yao, an immediate draw in his rookie season, gave the Rockets wider exposure. "Adding Yao to the Rockets has given us a terrific global presence," Postolos said. "We had 30 games broadcast in China last year and had an extremely large audience. There's every indication that trend will continue. "You can't overstate the global significance to the extent Yao has helped us to become a global franchise." The downtown arena will replace the Compaq Center, the NBA's second-oldest arena, which didn't have the luxury boxes and other moneymaking amenities needed to allow the franchise to remain financially competitive. The Compaq Center was built in 1976. The new arena boasts 18,500 new seats, some of which already have been installed in the second deck. The building increases seating capacity by 2,250 and capacity in the lower bowl by 2,800.
Thanks very much Jeff. I heard the deal was for about $120 million range so that makes up for about half of the lease payments. Les is going to make so much money off of this new stadium.
LMAO My wife is already cracking the whip. I have alot to look forward to. Any day now hes going to make his appearance.
My best to you and Mrs C... May your first child be a masculine child... Seriously...good luck bud..I hope everything works out perfectly.
According DaDakota, this is not a given. He will be a big one though. He should be 8-9+. With me being 6'1'' and my wife 5'8'', we might have a basketball player on our hands (hopefully not Matt Maloney).
What? Does DaDa think he will end up in a tutu? Dang!...8-9lbs? no wonder she's been so miserable... hehe...Matt Maloney.....at least he will be well paid for not doing anything....lol
And if your really lucky, your family could have there own little Mugsy Bouges, Spudd Webb, or Scotty Brooks!
July 25, 2003, 12:06AM New home of Rockets named Toyota Center By JONATHAN FEIGEN Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle TOYOTA'S DEAL • Signage at five entrances, including a large neon sign at the primary entrance at Polk and LaBranch. • The name Toyota Center on the roof along with the Toyota logo. • Signage at four different locations at the parking garage adjacent to the arena, also to be named for Toyota. The garage was referred to as the Tundra Garage on Thursday, but negotiations on the name for the garage and its logos are not complete. • A double-sized, 15-seat suite in the arena, the Tundra Zone, in which area dealerships will offer tickets to Rockets games in the suite. A Tundra pickup will be parked in the suite. • A 3,900-square foot showroom in the northeast corner of the arena. There are no immediate plans to sell cars at the site, but it has not been ruled out. • A graphic of the Toyota logo that will measure 41 feet high and 35 feet wide will be shown on the wall just inside the main entrance and will be visible from outside the arena through the glass front. • The right for Toyota to name a courtside lounge adjacent to the suites on the floor level behind the lowest level of seats. • Toyota's name or logo on video screens at each end of the building, all around the center-hung scoreboard, over the Rockets' entrance to the court, in two places on the court itself, and in front of the courtside press table. • And "a dominant presence" among the 59 commercials in each local radio and television broadcast. Never again will anyone wonder what the Rockets call their new home. Every conceivable reminder -- including many that Rockets officials were proud to say no one had ever conceived -- will be in the new downtown arena to clearly boast of their deal with Toyota. The team agreed Thursday to name the arena, to open Sept. 1, Toyota Center. But the name, logo and even a new car showroom complete with smiling salesmen and a luxury suite with a pickup parked with a view of the court will soon fill almost every corner of the $235 million, 18,500-seat arena. To become the arena's "dominant presence," as Rockets President George Postolos described Toyota's place in the arena, the company will spend $100 million over 20 years, says a person with knowledge of the deal completed early Thursday. Postolos and Toyota officials would not comment about the terms of their agreement. The Rockets are tied to a 30-year lease, but naming rights deals often include the option for sponsors to extend the deal. Rockets and Toyota officials said the "intention" is for Toyota to remain the sponsor through the lease. "Our intent is to be here for a long time," said Toby Hynes, president of Gulf States Toyota. "If you want to extend that to say it would be our hope that this commitment continues for the length of the Rockets in this building, that would obviously be our desire and our intent." The deal will rank as the ninth-largest for the naming rights for a sports facility in the United States and the fourth-largest for an arena. The deal is comparable with the terms for naming rights agreements for the SBC Center in San Antonio (20 years, $101 million) and Staples Center in Los Angeles (20 years, $100 million). The Texans' $300 million, 30-year deal with Reliant is the richest for the naming rights of a sports facility but includes the entire complex. The Astros' deal with Minute Maid (28 years, $178 million) ranks fifth. The Rockets deal reached Thursday was smaller than naming rights agreements for the American Airlines Center in Dallas (30 years, $195 million) and Philips Arena in Atlanta (20 years, $181 million). But those arenas are also homes to NHL teams, potentially increasing the value of their naming rights. Toyota Center also will be home to the Aeros of the American Hockey League. Postolos said Thursday the Rockets organization will look into adding an NHL team after the league replaces the collective bargaining agreement that expires in September 2004. Toyota's first sports facility naming rights investment will be seen throughout Rockets games in the arena, on television and radio broadcasts and even on the arena's roof. In addition to an extensive presence in the Houston market, Toyota is opening by 2006 an $800 million plant in San Antonio to build Tundra pickups and a plant in China, where the Rockets and center Yao Ming are watched closely. "You will see the most unique presence of a brand and a company in a sports facility in the country today," said Dean Bonham, the Rockets' lead negotiator and the negotiator on 26 naming rights arena deals. Toyota's naming rights fee will cover all of its arena, parking garage and broadcast exposure. "On any stroll through the arena, you'll be passing through various displays or areas that are named after Toyota or Toyota brands," Postolos said. "It's one of the most comprehensive in sports. We're very proud of that. All the elements ... are included. They are going to have the dominant presence in the arena and a very extensive presence in our broadcasts and, really, in everything we do. Our marketing relationships will all be built around Toyota." Toyota also will have its name broadcast into China, potentially helping its entry into that market. "It made sense to us to find a partner that could benefit from the international exposure that the Rockets receive," Postolos said. "Toyota seems to us like the perfect fit because of their enormous global presence, and we know that this agreement with Toyota offers them tremendous national and international marketing opportunities. "Adding Yao to the Rockets has given us a terrific global presence and a large audience in Asia. Every indication is that trend is going to continue. More and more games will be on television in Asia. And those were without the platform of the NBA playoffs or Finals and those are certainly the aspirations we have for this team." The rights will be paid by Toyota Motor Sales, USA Inc., which is based in Torrance, Calif.; Gulf States Toyota, which is based in Houston; and the Houston Toyota Dealers Association. "For us this was really an investment in Houston and in Texas," said Deborah Wahl Meyer, marketing communications corporate manager for Toyota. "That was really where the core value of the deal came in. It's an added benefit ... that there is international reach and a lot of these games will be broadcast in China and that's a market that is developing for the automotive industry and for Toyota." Rockets Vice President Tim McDougall said the similarities between the Rockets' new logo and Toyota's three-ovals logo were entirely coincidental. The Rockets logo, he said, was among the ideas drawn last summer, months before any discussions of a potential deal with Toyota. But if the logos -- like married couples that begin to look like one another over the years -- already share some DNA, that was fine with both sides of the new partnership. "In Toyota we found a perfect fit," Postolos said. "They have such a strong presence in their local dealer group, their regional distributor (Dan Friedken, owner of Gulf States Toyota) has been based here for a long time and is part of a great Houston family and of course they have their manufacturing facility opening in San Antonio soon. "They also have a terrific presence within the United States, globally and in Asia. So they seemed like a brand that was uniquely suited to line up with the Houston Rockets."
Way to go Tim. Nice to know you are still lurking. Now will people read that or just glance over it and continue to think that this was the plan all the time.
IIt´s just as bad as every other arena named after a company. That is: disgustingly bad. Why not name whole towns instead, and maybe people to. It´s so sad the way thing are going. I´ll just think of it as the Rockets arena.
Lets name is " Legendary21 Arena ". Because we all know you have 120 Million CHUMP change to spare. Better Yet. Lets name it "Pee Wee's House"!
OK, I'm curious what people think is the best named sports park today. Main assumption here is that someone has to have paid for the naming rights. Toyota arena ranks pretty low on the list. But #1 for me has to be Great American Ballpark (new Cincinnati Reds stadium). For america's pasttime, there can be few better names for a ballpark. What do you think? Compaq center had a decent ring to it, at least compared to Toyota center.
Toyota recently started a 50-50 joint venture with a Chinese company to manufacture cars in China. They planned to start in mid-2003 but I don't know if they've started yet. They hope to sell 300,000 to 400,000 cars a year in China by 2010. In short, Toyota is hoping to enter the Chinese market in the near future and be a big player there. This seems like a decent way to combine advertising in America with advertising in China.
I read an analysis report about the auto market in China, and it seems among foreigh players Volkwagen has a huge head start. Even more interesting, American cars seem to be doing better than Japanese cars there too. As popular as japanese cars are here, they don't do well in China. Similarly, Sony, Panasonic, Sharp, Toshiba, JVC, do miserably in China too. There seem to be two reasons: one, Chinese are less superstitious about Japanese stuff and more confident about the stuff they make on their own, such as Apex and Haier. two, historical reason make asians outside of Japan hate Japanese and volunteerly boycott Japanese stuff to some extent. Well, I think Toyoto did this to promote its business in US and Japan (there are a lot of Yao fans there, hard to believe). Whether this will affect their venture in China is highly doubtful. After all, a lot of things come to Chinese's mind before the name of a statium's name.
The Toyota Center has a nice flow to it. Any ideas for nicknames yet? - the Toy Box - Yao's House - Sterling Mccall Central - the 'Yota
Yes that's right... Volkswagen, Jeep, Buick, and Mercedes-Benz are the "Big Four" in China... (2 German, 2 American, 0 Japanese) Unless Japan makes a formal apology to its war crimes during WWII, Toyota will not be able to sell that many cars there...
