The Kansas City Chiefs are undergoing renovations at Arrowhead stadium that plan to keep us not-as-far-behind the new billion dollar stadium craze. The new stadium and practice facility will bring with it an array of LED screens, revamped club-seating and suites, and many other treats that all the up-to-date stadiums have these days according to the Kansas City Business Journal.
The new screens will be nice. If I ever get tickets in club-seating I'm sure I would enjoy the renovations that are being done to them. But these aren't the reasons I go to Arrowhead stadium.
I go for the tailgating, the somehow-still-astonishing sea of red, the fans and most of all for my team.
I like that I can go there and look at the names of the past on the Chiefs Ring of Honor. Well, those are being replaced by LED screens. Okay, I can live with that. The LED screens will display those contained on the Ring of Honor sporadically throughout the game.
I like that I can challenge anyone to top the gameday experience at Arrowhead stadium.
The renovations cost money. From whom? A combination of people, including sponsorships. Tammy Fruits, VP of sales and marketing for the Chiefs said, "Some of these teams have absolutely crazy amounts of revenue they can raise through sponsorships. Revenues from naming rights are so significant. Even if we land ours, the naming rights for cities like Dallas and New York are probably going to be five times larger." [Ed. Emphasis mine]
Um, naming rights? Like my challenge for the best gameday experience might be changed to Sprint field at Arrowhead or something else completely not KC?
Fruits continues, "It is certainly our hope to incorporate the Arrowhead name and tradition into whatever we end up doing, not unlike Invesco Field at Mile High, that sort of thing."
Tammy, Tammy, Tammy. One thing you do not do in this town, at any point in your life, is compare US to the Denver Broncos. But even that's besides the bigger point.
I thought our charm was the tradition. The fact that we weren't sell-outs. The fact that we did sell out. No matter what. The Dallas' and New York's of the world can spend billions on their stadiums but they can't match our gameday experience or our tradition at Arrowhead.
Unfortunately, the second we change the name of Arrowhead to Corporate whatever, is the second we lose our edge
RIP Arrowhead Stadium: You fell to the (necessary?) desires of a front office to bring in an extra $5 million per year.