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 Tuesday 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 as an incremental fee under the financial terms, according to sources familiar with the negotiations.

The arena, the Carolinas’ 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.

OVG Global Partnerships sold the agreement. Its research for selling naming rights shows that it takes about 12 months after a building is rebranded to shift the narrative how the public references the arena, said Dan Griffis, the group’s president.

“The bank wanted to make the connection,” said Scott Johnson, First Horizon Coliseum’s general manager. “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.”

Todd Williams, Triad market president for First Horizon Bank, has a strong affinity for the facility. He grew up in the region and attended ACC basketball tournaments at the arena.

“We still respect Greensboro with the name, and hopefully with our investment, the coliseum can do more things,” Williams said. “We think having our brand here will resonate with consumers.”

The First Horizon 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 deal 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, Mike Mitchell, the venue’s director of sponsorship sales, Liam Weseloh, OVG Global Partnerships’ senior vice president, and Derek Goldfarb, OVG’s vice president of global partnerships, were all involved in negotiating the agreement.

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, Scott Johnson, the coliseum’s general manager, said the arena will shift its banking business to First Horizon.

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, Johnson said.

The list of concert acts at the coliseum over the years chronicles the history of contemporary music, especially rock and roll.

Elvis Presley, The Monkees/Jimi Hendrix, Dave Clark Five, Jethro Tull, Humble Pie, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin, Queen, The Grateful Dead and Bruce Springsteen all played the coliseum since its inception.

All told, the venue has posted an impressive 13 concerts surpassing 20,000 in attendance, topped by jam band Phish, which drew 23,642 attendees for a 2003 performance.

“If you think about the history of that building, it’s an iconic venue just for music,” said Griffis, whose son Riley, a swimmer at Middlebury College, won the 200 freestyle at the 2023 NCAA Division III men’s championships at Greensboro Aquatic Center, next door to First Horizon Coliseum. “The age of the building doesn’t really matter as long as you have the traditional assets, which is signage and IPTV stuff and the ability to activate it in the community and for hospitality, hosting clients with tickets.”

For 29 years, it served as the home of the prestigious ACC men’s basketball tournament, which returns to Greensboro in 2027 and 2029. The ACC women’s tournament has been held 24 times at the facility. Its primary sports tenant is UNC-Greensboro men’s basketball, a member of the Southern Conference.

Historically, the coliseum has been run by the city and there was not a strong pull to sell naming rights for a long time, but over the last 15 to 20 years, the city took greater interest in getting a deal done, 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.

OVG Global Partnerships has now sold $1.3 billion in total sponsorships, and $5 billion over the past five years. It’s the group’s  32nd naming rights deal since 2018, Griffis said.

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated. Staff writer Wendy Pearl contributed to this story.