New Zealanders are likely to be as familiar with the name Richie McCaw as they are with the name Westpac Stadium.
AMI, Forsyth Barr, and Yarrow Stadiums. Investec Super Rugby, the Hertz Sevens - corporate presence seems as inherent to sport as the handball rule is to football.
Previous sporting no-goes are even starting to succumb to the sounds of sponsors' tills ringing.
Recently the logo of multination insurance company AIG was emblazoned across the front of the sacred All Blacks jersey - a previously untouched icon.
At last month's NZRU annual general meeting, chairman Mike Eagle said between adidas and AIG, the union now had the "two most valuable rugby sponsorships in the world."
Reported to be worth $80 million over five years, the financial benefit of the sponsorship is obvious - a $3.2 million profit for 2012, the first surplus following three years of losses. Chief executive Steve Tew attributed this to AIG's investment.
On a global scale, some of the more lucrative sports' sponsorship deals are those of naming rights for stadiums.
In New Zealand, however, the value of naming rights sponsorship for stadiums is less clear.
Westpac has been naming rights sponsor for Wellington's stadium for over a decade now, but the dollars associated with the deal have been kept quiet.
The All Blacks continued success is an obvious draw card for AIG. But for a stadium, there may not be such a clear parallel between success and value.
Naming rights sponsorship is no secret. The value of these deals, however, to both the corporation and the sport, mostly is.
The sponsorship brokers
Murray Stott has been a broker for global naming rights and sponsorship deals through his company Database Publishing Limited for about 25 years.
He said naming rights opportunities did not come about very often in New Zealand and the value of the deals were kept confidential.
"The naming rights of stadia in New Zealand are all very clandestine, very secretive.
"But $10 million to $20 million is the benchmark for New Zealand."
Stott said there was one main factor which influenced the amount of money a stadium could attract from would-be sponsors.
"The primary value of naming rights platforms is proportional to levels of gross impressions a venue or event can generate, and the out-of-stadium impressions delivered essentially by television coverage."
Impressions could be created in a number of ways.
For instance, a spectator at Westpac Stadium may see the Westpac logo 200 times, all of which would count as impressions.
Similarly, impressions were generated every time a commentator said "Westpac Stadium" or a journalist wrote "Westpac Stadium".
Stott said a New Zealand stadium hosting a Super Rugby game or All Blacks test could get anywhere from 38 million to 100 million impressions.
"To a global brand that's of great value.
"Generally speaking, a mainline sport like rugby, or league, or cricket, anywhere that had a big television audience and is being shown from that venue or that stadium, will provide some leverage to the expectation of the naming rights that that stadium should get."
Stott said the generally longer terms of naming rights deals, as opposed to other forms of sponsorship, meant it was reasonable for rights holders to expect consumers to more readily recognise their brand
"Is there anybody in New Zealand who has not heard of Westpac, Jade and Ericsson Stadiums?
"At the end of the day, it rests on the impressions."
Gemba group, with offices in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand, provides organisations with strategies on involvement in sport and entertainment.
Gemba New Zealand general manager Richard Howarth said the value of naming rights depended on objectives ranging from increasing brand awareness to helping with brand engagement.
Howarth said both the companies and the rights holders were generally very bad at measuring their sponsorships, however.
"I don't think I'm the only person in the world that would think that, measurement is usually an afterthought."
He said corporate mentality had started to shift from sponsorship being considered "as a luxury or nice-to-have" to a legitimate form of marketing.
"It's a sponsorship that requires essentially a right fee and you have to do very little in terms of leveraging it afterwards."
Naming rights deals could be particularly useful for corporations entering into a new market.
Howarth said a good example of this was airline Etihad's naming rights deal for the Etihad Stadium in Melbourne, established in 2009.
"That works especially well for Etihad because they've just started flying a new route into Melbourne.
"Most Victorians have never heard of the airline and so that's one way of getting in there."
This was helped by the long-term nature of the contracts.
"The awareness might take a period of time to actually pick up, they tend to be a minimum of five-year deals, sometimes they're ten- or 20-year deals.
"Normal sponsorship deals would be somewhere more two to four years."
A stadium sponsorship could also be perceived as a way of giving back to the community and to a business's staff, he said.
For example, a corporation with a big presence in a certain area may sponsor the local stadium and provide free tickets to events and other incentives.
The corporates
New Zealand has a number of stadiums which feature naming rights sponsors.
Fairfax asked asked Westpac, AMI and Forsyth Barr what the value of these were to the respective companies.
Westpac has been naming rights sponsor of Wellington's Westpac Stadium since it opened in January, 2000, having officially bought the rights in December of 1995.
The stadium's 2012 annual report showed license fees and sponsorship revenues of $6.2 million for 2012, but the value of the Westpac naming rights deal has not yet been disclosed.
In a statement, Westpac said they used a wide range of tools and measures to assess the success and impact of their sponsorships and they were satisfied these had been met with the Westpac Stadium.
Forsyth Barr, a New Zealand-owned investment firm, was more forthcoming in their appraisal of their naming rights deal with Dunedin's stadium.
It was reported last month the stadium would receive $7.15 million a decade in private funding, of which $5 million was rumoured to be from Forsyth Barr's naming rights agreement.
Forsyth Barr head of product development and marketing Trish Oakley said the company's naming rights deal followed the expiration of its principal sponsorship with The Arts Foundation.
"As this partnership fell due, the opportunity to participate in a significant development in our founding city presented itself.
"The opportunity to embark on a high profile partnership supported our broader business strategy."
She said the high visibility and unique appeal of a covered stadium was crucial to Forsyth Barr's decision to seek naming rights.
"This partnership is designed to lift our profile and provide New Zealanders with an understanding of our business and its operations."
The stadium was also used to host and thank clients and staff, she said.
Forsyth Barr Stadium was the company's major sponsorship commitment, and the company was pleased with its performance.
AMI were not in a position to comment on their sponsorship with the temporary AMI Stadium in Christchurch, opened last year.
The former AMI Stadium, previously Lancaster Park, was damaged during the Christchurch earthquake in 2011.
The old AMI Stadium's naming rights deal had begun in 2007.
The picture today
Gemba has surveyed nearly 10,000 New Zealanders about 16 of the country's stadiums since July last year, which Howarth said was based around awareness and attitudes towards the venues.
"Eden Park topped the awareness ladder with 81 per cent of Kiwis recognising the Auckland stadium.
"Six in ten New Zealanders knew of Wellington's Westpac Stadium and just over half of that number acknowledged TSB Arena in the capital."
He said in terms of simply reaching audiences, naming rights sponsorships could represent a more efficient return on investment than deals that paired corporates with teams, events or athletes.
"However, they work best for organisations who are very focused on increasing general awareness of their brand, or wishing to heighten their profile in a particular city or region."
Murray Stott was previously unsuccessful in brokering a naming rights deal for Eden Park ahead of the 2011 Rugby World Cup.
He said the number of impressions stadiums could gain were being diluted by the amount of people who watch sport on television, as opposed to going to stadiums.
"I've been offered three stadia naming rights to broker in Britain recently, all of them are dead ducks because the economy is so flat.
"I'd still like to have a crack at Eden Park," he said.
Putting your name in lights
Murray Sott said the aggregate impressions of somewhere like America's Citi Field in New York, home to Major League Baseball's New York Mets, was "absolutely staggering".
"Most of them have concerts every week; most of them have got home teams playing there."
Citi Field's naming rights sponsor is bank Citigroup, which holds rights worth US$20 million a year for the next 20 years.
The deal may be extended to 35 years, meaning the total worth could reach US$750 million.
He said the United States was the leading nation for naming rights in sport, but this was mainly because on-shirt branding was largely absent.
"The budget that would normally have been spent on on-shirt branding found its way somewhere else, the naming rights of stadia."
Manchester United, according to Forbes the second most valuable football team behind Spain's Real Madrid, recently signed a naming rights deal with insurance firm Aon for just their training ground, estimated to be worth US$230 million over eight years.
Last year Forbes reported a naming rights deal for Manchester United's home ground, Old Trafford, could attract US$1 billion in a 20-year deal.
The club is said to have more than 300 million supporters worldwide.
Eithad, on top of the Melbourne stadium, has the rights to English Premier League football team Manchester City's stadium and the team's on-shirt branding, in a combined 10-year US$640 million deal according to Forbes.
English Premier League side Arsenal also has a combined naming rights and jersey sponsorship deal, with Emirates, worth US$240 million over five years.
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