When do corporate identities for professional sports stadiums go too far?

SeatGeek Stadium.

You just know that name is going to bring about derision amongst Chicago sporting fans for the Chicago Fire professional soccer club.

SeatGeek the stadium off in the distance from the Loop

BUT IT SEEMS the Fire (not the actual blaze from 1871, but the team playing in a stadium built for their use out in suburban Bridgeview) will allow their home pitch to be given that public identity with the coming of the 2019 season.

This is the final year that their stadium will carry the name Toyota Park.

Which as far as I’m concerned isn’t really a loss, since I don’t care for building names that are meant to be nothing more than advertising for somebody else’s product. I’d love it if the building in which the Chicago Bulls and Chicago Blackhawks had never been given a name promoting the interests of United Airlines.

But at least that was a Chicago-area entity. Unlike Toyota, which sells their products throughout the Chicago area, here but doesn’t really make them here.

Soldier, or Soldiers? Front room, or fronchroom?

COME 2019, IT will be SeatGeek Stadium. And yes, I’m sure there will be some people anal retentive enough to argue about whether there ought to be a space between “Seat” and “Geek,” or whether the company’s desires ought to be respected and the name spelled out as one word.

For the record, I had to look it up, since I had no idea what SeatGeek was. It seems it’s a website (seatgeek.com) where one can go to find tickets to various types of events. Including sports.

And including professional soccer.

A corporate identity of nearly three decades

It seems the company is an official Major League Soccer corporate partner, and the Minnesota United, Portland Timbers, Seattle Sounders, Sporting Kansas City and LAFC (a Los Angeles-area team that competes with the more traditionally-named Los Angeles Galaxy) have partnerships.

I SUPPOSE WE should also include the Chicago Fire on that list, since the company has now bought the right to have their identity on the Fire’s building.

For what it’s worth, Bloomberg Markets reported that the deal could result in payments of up to $4 million annually to the Chicago Fire. Not a bad sum, although I wonder how seriously people will take a name like “SeatGeek.”

It makes me wonder if Chicago Fire fans will go out of their way to refuse to use the name and come up with their own identity for the stadium out in the southwestern suburb (not far from Midway Airport, if you must know).

Although I wonder if SeatGeek could surpass Guaranteed Rate Field in terms of an unpopular identity for sporting fans to use. Yes, there are many Chicago White Sox fans who haven’t come to terms with the latest corporate name the White Sox bought for themselves two years ago.

Is baseball's sporting superiority in large part because "Sox Park" ...

THERE ARE MANY Chicago Cubs fans who go out of their way to deride the stadium name, and for all I know they will refuse to let SeatGeek Stadium somehow become a tackier name than Guaranteed Rate. Just because, in their mini-mindsets, the White Sox have to rank at the bottom.

Although when it comes to Chicago stadium identities, I always thought the most off-beat debate concerned the home of the Chicago Bears and the great number of allegedly hard-core fans who persist in calling the building “Soldiers Field” rather than the proper “Soldier.”

... and "Cubs Park" make sense?

By comparison, I’m sure there will be some sports fans who will show derision for professional soccer (mostly because they don’t comprehend “real” football, which ain't da game da Bears play so badly these days) by refusing to acknowledge the Bridgeview stadium altogether.

It’s a shame that all sports teams can’t be like our baseball clubs – where there are some people who steadfastly call the stadiums “Sox Park” and “Cubs Park” regardless of whatever name appears on the marquee. That would make sporting sense, even if it wouldn’t generate the million-dollar payoffs for the teams themselves.

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Posting pictures at United Center entrances -- how else to ban them?

Chicago Blackhawks officials say four fans of the hockey team are now banned from the United Center for life because of their behavior at a weekend game against the Washington Capitals.

You know, the four who insisted on shouting racially-motivated taunts at a black Capitals player during his time in the penalty box!

THE BLACKHAWKS HAVE made all the appropriate statements how they’re appalled that any of their fans could have such horrid thoughts. A lot of people are engaging in verbiage meant to make themselves sound appropriately concerned.

Yet the truth is I don’t have a clue how you can possibly do anything to enforce this; unless you can find a way to put a Scarlet Letter, of sorts, on all the racist knuckleheads of our society.

Many of whom, if you branded them with a “K” (or a “B” for bigot) would probably take it as a badge of honor – that’s how twisted their thought processes are.

I don’t have a clue how the Blackhawks can say they’re banning four individuals from the stadium and their games. Do we literally post their pictures at the stadium entrance – with orders that the quartet be shot on sight if they try to attend a game.

DO WE EXTEND it to all the ticket services that none of the four ever be sold tickets to a Blackhawks game?

Maybe we should ban them from even following hockey games or teams? Although I don’t have a clue how this could be enforced.

Many people have gone out of their way to say the proper things, but I’m not convinced there’s going to be any serious change in attitudes or behavior.

Because a part of me believes that many sports fans are serious believers of Homer J. Simpson when he once said, “This ticket (to a ballgame) doesn’t just give me a seat. It also gives me the right, no the duty, to make a complete ass of myself.”

WHICH THOSE FOUR fans now banned from the hockey arena certainly did on Saturday when they insisted on implying that a black player doesn’t belong in hockey.

What I find almost humorous (but in a pathetic way) is the marketing campaign the National Hockey League has ongoing these days – “Hockey is for Everyone,” which is supposed to make the sport out to be something for all, and not just for white people from Canada.

In fact, the Blackhawks had a promotion based on the theme during their Thursday match against the Anaheim Ducks. It seems the message of a “safe, positive and inclusive environment for players and families regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, gender, disability, sexual orientation and socio-economic status” didn’t take.

Because just two days later, the incident singling out Devante Smith-Pelly occurred. Although the Blackhawks’ lone black player, Anthony Duclair, said those four fans’ bad behavior wasn’t in any way unique, or isolated.

I’M SURE THOSE four fans, along with many others, are prepared to dismiss the whole affair as a lot of ‘politically correct’ trash talk about nothing. There probably isn’t anything that can be done to change such attitudes, or convince them of how big of knuckleheads they truly are.

Now I’ll admit to not being much of a hockey fan (although I appreciate the significance to the Chicago sports scene of a team that has three Stanley Cup championships in this decade). Part of it is that I have never ice-skated – and floor hockey is a second-rate game that filled up some childhood gym class time.

I’m sure that is true for many others – particularly in parts of the country where the existence of ice and snow is considered a myth.

Which means we’re likely to see more continued bad behavior – and most likely the instances of the four banished from the United Center finding a way to sneak into a Blackhawks game; while taking a perverse pride in being able to do so.

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Times change and attractions of the past don’t carry the same weight w/ public

The United Center in Chicago may well be the House That Michael Jordan Built, but the reality of the operators of that West Side structure is that the Bulls got kicked out of their home every November to make room for the circus.

Who knew back in November that Ringling Brothers wouldn't be coming back to Chicago?

The Ringling Brother, Barnum & Bailey Circus to be exact. Which is in the news these days because the so-called Greatest Show on Earth that can trace its origins back 146 years is soon to become defunct.

THEY’RE GOING TO finish out their show schedule through mid-May before becoming no more. As things turn out, their last Chicago appearance were the ones back in November when they staged their show at the United Center.

For those of us Chicagoans who feel one more need to go see the circus with the Ringling Brothers brand name, you’ll have to check out one of the performances come March in Cincinnati – which is about as close to the Second City as they will come in the rest of their lives.

Now I know some of us are getting nostalgic while others are expressing anger.

Some are going out of their way to make politically partisan statements against liberals, whom they want to believe are responsible for the circus’ demise.

FOR WHAT IT’S worth, circus officials in their statement announcing their closing did say that attendance had declined significantly since changes were made in the program to downplay the elephant displays – whom the animal rights activists had always complained were potentially being mistreated.

Although they also conceded that attendance had been on the decline even before that.

The fact is that it wouldn’t shock me to learn that many young people just don’t feel the same attraction to a show that could trace its origins back so far. It wouldn’t shock me to learn that they’d rather play the latest video game (or perhaps take part in a virtual circus in which they could simulate the participation of an actual event) rather than seeing the real thing in person.

After all, the animals smell, and sometimes they poop right in front of you. Yuck!

PERSONALLY, I CAN remember that being the gut reaction I had the one time I went to a circus – back when I was about 5 years old. It wasn’t something I ever felt compelled to do again. And for those people who will claim that a circus gives people exposure to nature and animals, I’d argue that it shows us animals under very unnatural circumstances.

United Center won't need this configuration any longer

Unless you really want to believe that an elephant wears a tutu and dances, or that horses perform tricks for our amusement.

The baseball fan in me is reminded of when the New York Giants left Gotham to relocate in San Francisco, with then-team owner apologizing to the children of New York, but adding, “We didn’t see many of their parents out there at the Polo Grounds in recent years.”

I suspect many of the people who are complaining the loudest about no more circus are the same people who didn’t bother to buy tickets.

THEN AGAIN, THE idea of no more circus makes the baseball fan me think of those people who complain about World Series games being played at night, because supposedly we’re depriving kids a chance to see the ballgames. If they’re playing late into the night, after all, they can’t listen to the broadcasts of day games on the transistor radios they sneak into school.

Except when was the last time a kid ever listened to a transistor radio? And if they are looking at the Internet on a computer during school time, I suspect a ball game is the last thing they’d care to watch!

Nostalgic image? Or everything that was wrong with the circus?

Besides, I’m sure Chicago Bulls fans will enjoy their team getting control of its home arena back. Although I almost feel the extended road trip of a few weeks long every November is something of a team tradition.

Just what will the Bulls do with themselves with all that extra time they’re going to spend in Chicago come November?

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EXTRA: From 3-1 to 3-3; What a difference three days can make!

Wednesday night, the Chicago Blackhawks had just a few minutes left of play and were down to the Los Angeles Kings – who may be a completely-competent hockey team.

It looked like the end was near. The shame of it all to have the mighty Blackhawks of the 2010s have their dreams of being remembered as one of the elite hockey teams of all time get squashed by such a sissy city – one where hockey isn’t even part of the social equation.

BUT WE ALL (or those of us who care) know that the Blackhawks managed to tie up that game, then win in double-overtime. The Blackhawks then came back Friday night to again beat the Kings.

4-3, with the winning goal coming with about three minutes left in the final period.

The final game of this round of the playoffs will be Sunday at the United Center. Any advantage the Kings had with a 3-1 edge is gone. The two teams are tied. Sunday is a winner-take-all situation.

If anything, this is one of those moments where I wish we could have the stadia of old. Just think how raucous the scene would be at the old Chicago Stadium. The echoing of the capacity crowd and that old pipe organ built right into the structure would have created a truly intimidating production.

ONE THAT I just don’t see being fully created at the United Center, which in some ways feels more like it belongs in a floofy city such as L.A.

Now I’m not the biggest of hockey fans. I’m sure anyone who really comprehends the game would quickly come up with enough trivia questions to expose my ignorance.

But I can appreciate how special it would be for the city’s pop culture image if the Blackhawks were to win their third Stanley Cup championship of this decade. And for that of the Blackhawks, who despite being an 88-year-old franchise and a part of the “Original Six” of the National Hockey League had only three league championships (1934, 1938 and 1961) during the rest of their history.

It is something to be enjoyed. Because this may well be the highlight of the Blackhawks franchise during our lifetimes.

The old building will be missed Sunday

AND IF IT turns out that we get a Stanley Cup finals this year of the New York Rangers (who have already qualified) up against the Blackhawks, it will be a good ol’ fashioned Chicago/New York brawl.

Do you really think New York/Los Angeles would be any more intriguing? Except that it would show us the degree to which the sporting fans of that California city are more interested in the Laker Girls than anything else!

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