Buffalo-based M&T Bank will pay the 2001 Super Bowl winners, the Baltimore Ravens, $75
million over 15 years, for the naming right on Ravens Stadium, which has now been renamed
M&T Bank Stadium.
"There is no better way to utilize our marketing dollars to achieve
cost-effective, high-impact recognition in a new marketplace," M&T Bank
President Robert Sadler said, reports the Baltimore Business Journal.
According the Dean Bonham, president of the Denver-based Bonham Group sports
marketing company, the deal falls within the range of most naming-rights agreements, which
run between $2 million to $7 million a year for 20 to 30 years.
The M&T name will be on the inside and outside of the 68,915-capacity
stadium as well as in a broad range of corporate identity signs,
in-stadium M&T Bank ATMs, highway signs, promotional events and the
team's renamed M&T Bank Marching Ravens.
M&T Bank Stadium was built in 1998 and cost $220 million. For the next four years it
was known as PSINet Stadium, after the Internet service provider bought the naming rights.
However, PSINet went bankrupt in 2002.
