Warriors President & COO Rick Welts said Chase landed the naming rights to the team's new arena scheduled to be built in S.F. in part because the company "shared a vision of what we wanted this to be." Appearing on CSN Bay Area's "Sports Talk Live," Welts said, "They’re amazingly experienced through their other commitments ... (and) they know how to make deals like this work, not only for the companies that are involved but for the people who are actually going to be experiencing the things that we’re creating here. It’s a world-class brand, it sets the table for what’s to come ... for putting together a pretty good team.” He said in addition to the Warriors, Chase Center will allow family entertainment events like ice shows and the circus "that have never been here before." The expected opening of the arena recently was pushed back to '19, and Welts said, "At the beginning of the process, there were a lot of regulatory hurdles and a lot of approvals that we had to go through. We have completed that race, everything is behind us. We have one lawsuit left and we have some legislative direction to the courts that they have to resolve that within nine months. When that’s resolved in nine months, that means we can put a shovel in the ground a year from now and have a real certainty to open in 2019” ("Sports Talk Live," CSN Bay Area, 1/28). Welts said that it was "important for the team to sign a partner that had vast experience in marketing." He said, "San Francisco is the only top-25 market that doesn't have a world-class arena for sports and entertainment. San Franciscans have never had the opportunity to be part of the typical concert tours that go through big cities. That will now happen." JPMorgan Chase Sports & Entertainment Group Managing Dir Frank Nakano said that the company "will use the naming-rights deal to pitch all aspects of the bank's business, from consumer credit cards and home-mortgage financing to private money management" (ESPN.com, 1/28).
SILICON VALLEY PRICED OUT: In S.F., Ron Leuty wrote in "lining up an expected nine-figure deal" with Chase, the Warriors "chose to go blue chip, not Bay Area." Chase Center "is as San Francisco as a coney dog and Donald Trump." Virgin America CEO David Cush said sports facility naming-rights deals are "too pricey for us." Cush: "If you can afford it, it's a good bargain -- especially this arena, which will be used 300 nights a year. But it's just a little bit outside of our price range." Leuty noted JPMorgan Chase's deal with the Warriors "could signal a challenge" to S.F.-based Wells Fargo and "highlight the decrescendo of Bank of America as a local banking brand of force" (BIZJOURNALS.com, 1/28).
