A minor league arena outside Austin, Texas, and operated by Tom Hicks has hired Shamrock Sports & Entertainment to sell the facility’s naming rights.
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Cedar Park Center is home to the Texas Stars hockey team, as well as a D-League team.
Photo by: SPORTRAITS BY DEENA
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Cedar Park Center is home of the Texas Stars, the Dallas Stars’ American Hockey League affiliate, and the NBA D-League’s Austin Toros. The 6,800-seat arena, which opened in 2009, is owned by the city of Cedar Park and operated by Hicks Cedar Park. The firm owns both sports tenants.
The addition of the Toros last season doubled the number of sports events at the facility, which now books about 130 dates annually, drawing more than 500,000 attendees in a strong market for live music and technology.
Those factors led Shamrock officials to believe they can sign a deal for a minimum of 10 years, valued in the mid- to upper-six figures annually, said Brian Corcoran, president of the two-year-old marketing firm.
Corcoran, whose experience includes stints at NASCAR, SFX Sports and Roush Fenway Racing, worked on the $700 million Nextel Sprint Cup sponsorship as well as the naming-rights deals for the NASCAR Nationwide Series and Camping World Truck Series.
Twelve of the nation’s top 13 technology brands have offices in Austin, including Dell, IBM, Cisco, SAP, AMD and Oracle, and that’s where Shamrock’s initial focus will be, according to Corcoran.
“We are just starting our road show and will hit the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas [in January], knowing that technology is front and center in Austin,” he said.
The banking and automotive categories are also possibilities.
The revenue from naming rights would be shared by the city and Hicks Cedar Park.
Shamrock’s deal runs for 12 months.
