Sports Commission Rejects Tribe Due to Gaming Interests
“Unfortunate.” “Hypocritical.” “Ridiculous.” “Not surprising.”
These are some of the adjectives being used to describe the apparent rejection of the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation as a possible naming-rights sponsor to the prospective San Diego Padres ballpark.
In a confidential memo that was brought to light late last month, Major League Baseball commissioner Allan “Bud” Selig politely said that Sycuan wouldn’t be an appropriate name sponsor because of its gaming interests, said Dan Tucker, vice chairman of Sycuan.
For several reasons, Tucker didn’t agree, describing the commissioner’s reaction as “unfortunate.”
“We consider ourselves a legitimate business, not the gaming center itself, but the tribe itself as a government,” he said. “That’s the whole issue here. Whether we have a banking center or a fire department or some other business off the reservation, the casino is not our only source of revenues. We just consider it part of our everyday business of the tribe.
“The casino is ours, but we consider ourselves a tribe first,” he continued. “The casino is part of what we do.”
George Belch, head of the marketing department at SDSU’s business school, wasn’t surprised by the league’s response.
“I would be very surprised if they would approve it professional sports is always trying to distance itself from gambling,” Belch said. “I realize that Sycuan’s not a bookmaking type of place, but it still is gambling, and given the choice, I think professional sports is going to try to disassociate itself.”
Sycuan, which has sponsored the Padres in various ways since 1993, has an unusual sponsorship with the club this year. The tribe is a title sponsor to the team’s 2000 season.
Officials from the tribe and the Padres wouldn’t discuss how much the 2000 season sponsorship was worth, but the San Diego Union-Tribune had previously reported that it cost Sycuan $1.5 million.
According to Mike Dee, the Padres’ senior vice president of corporate marketing, Major League Baseball approves all team sponsorships, whether for a season title, or one-year or multi-year deals.
“Clubs look to Major League Baseball for guidance on those issues and ultimately approval for all of those relationships all of the time,” Dee said.
Season Sponsorship Approved
For Sycuan’s season sponsorship, the Padres went to the league, reviewed the program and had it approved before selecting a sponsor.
When the Padres eventually signed Sycuan, the league reapproved the exact deal, Dee said.
According to Tucker, there isn’t much of a difference between the ballpark name and a season-title sponsorship.
“It just seems so kind of , what’s the word? , ridiculous,” he said. “Here we are, Sycuan is presenting the Padres this year, and our names are all over the city, all over their logos .”
According to SDSU’s Belch, a ballpark name vs. a season sponsorship has dramatically different scopes, which seems to be apparent to higher-ups at Major League Baseball.
“They might be looking at it differently with the name because the season by Sycuan is very much a local thing,” Belch said. “The stadium name, the ballpark name becomes a national, even an international thing.
For Sycuan, it could be particularly valuable, he said: “It’s a way of building awareness, keeping the company in front of people.”
The sponsorship holds significant public relations value, he said. “The Padres have a great image in town,” he said. “I mean, the people who run the team are very well-respected and popular in the community. Being associated with them clearly is a plus.”
Sycuan could perhaps get more value out of it than a lot of companies would, Belch said.
Building Image
“They’re still trying to build their image in the community,” he said. “There’s a lot of competition among them, Barona and the other ones out there.”
Naming rights would boost the tribe’s profile, Belch said. “Every time the game’s on, they would say, ‘Tonight, we’re in beautiful San Diego Sycuan Stadium,'” he said.
“Interestingly enough,” Belch noted, “that name probably won’t have that much meaning to people who heard it. It would probably have very little meaning outside of San Diego.”
However, the media attention would be important, and the baseball league isn’t likely to put themselves in the position to have to explain why they approved a sponsor, he said.
“I’m sure, given their choice, they would rather encourage them to do (choose) a more typical manufacturing or services company of some type,” he said. “It’s just a much easier, cleaner way to go.”
Dee did not comment in detail on Sycuan’s efforts to be the ballpark’s name sponsor.
“We are obviously in later stages of our process,” he said. It began about a year ago, and has been a “nationwide” and “international search,” Dee said.
The candidates have been narrowed to a very short list, he said.
