Don Roy, a sports marketing researcher at Middle Tennessee State University, said one of the main stumbling blocks the team faces is that the arena has already gone through two other corporate brand names — Gaylord Entertainment Center and Sommet Center — in just over 10 years.
"There is typically a lag effect that occurs for venue names," Roy said. "A lot of effort and promotion went into branding it as Sommet Center, and you can't turn that off like a light switch."
Just as fans continued to call the arena the GEC (pronounced by locals as "geck") after the name disappeared, so too will people keep calling the facility Sommet. Roy said some companies might view that as dealing with "used goods."
RelatedPredators sue arena sponsor Sommet GroupNashville Predators terminate naming-rights deal with SommetVIDEO: What is Sommet, anyway?The bigger problem, though, is that naming-rights contracts are usually in place for 10 or more years, and finding a company willing to commit that many years into the future will be a challenge, Roy said.
The 2007 agreement with Sommet, signed under former owner Craig Leopold, was for three years. On Wednesday, the local group that owns the Predators filed a suit in Davidson County saying it will terminate its naming-rights agreement with Sommet Group because the company has stopped making payments on the contract.
The team said it would look for another sponsor at the end of the season. Until then the Metro-owned venue would be called the Nashville Arena, pending approval by the Nashville Sports Authority.
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