Tonight was the 11th and final day of “Snapdragon Stadium,” a temporary moniker rented by Qualcomm for its smartphone processor. San Diego’s
largest company has held the naming rights for the former Jack Murphy stadium since buying them in 1997 in a deal that set the trend for the rest of US pro sports (including
Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles and the onetime
Ericsson Stadium in Charlotte).
Qualcomm
paid an unspecified amount for the temporary renaming to capture
three nationally televised games over 11 days, December 18 to 28. This included a Sunday Night Football game by the Chargers (where the Bolts cruelly
raised the hopes of their long-suffering fans), the Dec. 21
Poinsettia Bowl (where TCU defeated Lousiana Tech) and tonight’s
Holiday Bowl between the UC Berkeley Golden Bears and the Texas Longhorns.
Inside the stadium, they showed a brief snapdragon promo in the same screaming red color scheme as the signs. They also bought the Google adword for “snapdragon” (pointing back to their
standard website) to make sure no TV viewer would miss the message. The website
also allowed you to pick an Android, Blackberry or Windows Phone OS device with Snapdragon inside. (iPhone lovers need not apply).
As noted by others, this was all reminiscent of (if not blatantly copied form) the “Intel Inside” campaign of the 1990s.
I took some pictures of the signage both outside and inside the stadium on its final night. While I(as a researcher) I was excited to see the signs during their brief tenure, I was depressed to see the Bears to meet the same fate as during my last trip to the Q, when they lost in the 2004 Holiday Bowl to Texas Tech. (Since Cal finished 2011 with a 7-6 record, it should be noted they would not been bowl material back before every town added a bowl or two.)
Presumably tomorrow the signs will start coming down and the stadium will revert to
“Qualcomm Stadium.” The next football game at the Q won’t be until next summer, so they have plenty of time to get the stadium ready for the
monster truck rally in three weeks.
2 comments:
An update... Qualcomm paid $1,000 and this has caused a minor stink as it became public that the city attorney has ruled the deal needed city council approval. If it had any traction it might be called "cupcategate" ... and now some snarky email exchanges made public.
Gosh, it seems like it would have been worth $10k. That's one of the problems with no-bid contracts with government agencies.
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