NEW HORIZON: A rendering shows the rebranded First Horizon Coliseum after the bank acquired naming rights to Greensboro’s 22,000-seat arena. (Courtesy venue)
First naming rights deal for 65-year-old arena
First Horizon Bank has signed a 10-year naming rights deal with the city of Greensboro and Oak View Group to rebrand the former Greensboro Coliseum in North Carolina.
The landmark agreement for First Horizon Coliseum, officially announced this morning in Greensboro, has an annual value of $1 million over the length of the contract. The total value approaches $12 million, pending the city securing a minor league hockey tenant next year. The team would receive $100,000 a year under the financial terms, according to sources familiar with the negotiations.
The deal includes options to extend the agreement beyond the initial term. It does not involve the eight other venues that make up the coliseum complex, including the Novant Health Fieldhouse, home of the G League’s Greensboro Swarm, an affiliate of the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets, coliseum officials said.
The arena, the Carolina’s biggest in capacity, opened in 1959 as Greensboro Coliseum and the name remained unchanged for the past 65 years. In that respect, it stands among the country’s oldest buildings to be rebranded after the fact for a corporate partner.
For many years, it served as the home of the prestigious ACC men’s basketball tournament, which returns to Greensboro in 2027 and 2029. In addition, the coliseum played host to an impressive 13 concerts surpassing 20,000 in attendance, topped by Phish, which drew 23,642 attendees for a 2003 performance.
OVG Global Partnerships brokered the First Horizon deal, which comes three months after OVG took over management of the arena and a few years after OVG Hospitality assumed the venue’s food service. Oak View Group is the parent company of VenuesNow and Pollstar magazines.
Scott Johnson, the arena’s general manager, Mike Mitchell, the venue’s director of sponsorship sales, and Derek Goldfarb, OVG’s vice president of global partnerships, were all involved in negotiating the agreement.
“Historically, it’s been run by the city and there was not a real strong pull to sell naming rights for a long time, but over the last 15 to 20 years, it became something the city was interested in,” said Johnson, who’s worked at the Greensboro Coliseum Complex for 33 years. Johnson was promoted from deputy director to GM after managing director Matt Brown retired earlier this year.
“Matt had it on his radar at a certain dollar amount and we could never find the right partner,” Johnson said. “This deal started about a year ago a more of a lower level sponsorship (for the lobby), but it never happened.”
After OVG took over arena operations, the global partnerships group joined the city to make a bigger pitch to First Horizon Bank, a 160-year-old financial institution with $82 billion in assets and whose headquarters are in Memphis, Tennessee.
“The bank wanted to make the connection,” Johnson said. “We all sat down at the table and said, ‘Let’s look at this big picture.’ There’s a storied tradition here and First Horizon saw the value in that. There’s always going to be people that still call it Greensboro Coliseum, but over the course of time, with a new generation and new (ticket) buyers, that will shift.”
For its investment, First Horizon Bank receives signage on the arena’s exterior and interior spaces, plus a suite and club seats to entertain clients. In addition, Johnson said the coliseum will shift its banking business to First Horizon. The new signs will go up in about three months, he said.
Ironically, the arena went cashless as of Sept. 23 and is removing all ATMs from the building, but First Horizon has the option of installing a reverse ATM, which converts cash into gift cards. The conversion coincides to a new Oracle point-of-sale system for arena concessions.
“We went cashless a year ago at Tanger Center (Greensboro’s performing arts center), which has a little bit different clientele going to Broadway shows and the symphony,” Johnson said. “At the coliseum, we have more of a blue collar base. We’ve not had any bumps in the road and people understand. It will be a positive, both in per caps and the savings (to the arena) of not having to manage cash.”
