Redskins sell naming deal for team headquarters

The Washington Redskins have sold the naming rights to their training facility and headquarters in Ashburn, Va., in a 10-year deal to northern Virginia health care system Inova.

The team was to announce the transaction this week.

Long known as Redskins Park, the venue now will be called the Inova Sports Performance Center at Redskins Park. The deal does not extend to the team’s preseason training venue in Richmond, Va., which is titled by another health care company, Bon Secours.

Terry Bateman, Redskins executive vice president and chief marketing officer, said the facility in Richmond, where the team trains in late July through mid-August, is in a different health care market than Ashburn, which is in northern Virginia just outside of Washington, D.C. Richmond is more than 100 miles to the south.

The Inova deal deepens the Redskins’ affiliation with the company. Inova’s chair of sports medicine, Dr. Robin West, recently became a team doctor. Bateman described West’s appointment and the new sponsorship as “related but separate.”

“Related in the sense that we got to know Inova; we have been talking to Inova for a couple years,” he said. “So there are two completely separate issues here. One is the medical relationship with the team, and the team appointed Dr. West to this position two months ago. That is separate from the sponsorship deal. That is purely getting to know Inova, know Dr. West, her willingness and availability to come in and be a part of our medical team.

“That all happened as part of our getting to know them, and separate from that was the agreement to get together on the sponsorship deal,” Bateman said.

Bateman declined to disclose how much Inova is paying. Neither Inova nor the Redskins used an agency to negotiate the deal, a team spokesman said.

The Redskins in 2014 launched a health and wellness initiative, and Inova now takes a large role in that program. Inova will produce content for the team’s annual health and wellness TV special that airs locally. It also will create a 30-minute, weekly sports medicine radio talk show and a separate “Inova Sports Medicine-Redskins Medical Minute” offering for radio.

The Redskins join four other NFL teams that have a sponsor signed for their training camp operation apart from a deal for the team’s permanent training facility (see chart). The Redskins are the only one to have each sponsor come from the health care category.

Note: Other teams have sponsors for either their full-time training facility or training camp but not both.
Compiled by David Broughton