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Moneybox Superdome Update: The Deal Gets Sweeter

By Rob Walker
Posted Wednesday, Jan. 2, 2002, at 3:16 PM ET

Last week this column made a bid for the naming rights to the Louisiana Superdome—or, as we hope it will soon be called, the Moneybox Superdome. I put a solid $300 on the table, which may not sound like much, but is easily the highest public bid that I'm aware of.

Well, I'm now prepared to up that by as much as a whopping 50 percent, thanks to a new consortium of investors that has emerged to get in on the deal. Reader Larry A. has promised to kick in "up to $50," although with the caveat that he'll only do it to help me win a bidding war. And reader Jay K. pledges another $100, apparently with no strings attached. (Other readers wrote to express support for the bid, which was very nice of them, but made no mention of dollars.)

Meanwhile, the Saints were not only formally eliminated from the playoff picture this past weekend (they still had a very slim mathematical chance when I wrote last week's item), but they played horribly in a blowout loss to Washington. Pessimism about the franchise's chances for major national coverage next year, let alone a trip to the playoffs, obviously makes my bid look even more generous, since I'm raising my offer even as the value of the naming rights sinks. The catch is that I want the Moneybox Superdome renamed before this year's Super Bowl. After all, the value of the naming rights drops even more significantly after that. Maybe another bidder will emerge before the big game—but it looks to me like this negotiation is going my way.

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Notes From The Fray Editor:

We have every respect for Raphael's many excellent qualities (his finest post is here), but wonder a little about his economic abilities. Five hundred dollars. A Star. The Fray team. Might there be a better way to connect these items than naming a stadium?


Comments:

I decided to give MoneyBox some competition by joining the auction. Rather than merely entering one bid though, I decided to enter several. Fellow Fraysters are invited to help me raise the bids of those names they approve of:

"The Stadium" $500
"The Fray" $500
"Unnamed" $500
"Give Raphael a Star" $500

--Raphael

(To find or answer this post, click here.)


Why stop at stadiums? Let's put everything up for sale. Statue of Liberty, dressed in Victoria's Secret's latest, Golden Gate bridge could be McArch's, the possibilities are endless. Of course, most of these newer stadiums being built around the country are still using tax dollars and then being used to advertise for private businesses. But why not, in a country where the call to patriotism this year was to go shop, this all seems appropriate. We stopped being citizens living in a democracy answering to the people a while ago to become merely consumers controlled by corporate political donations. Businesses do not produce things that people want, they now produce things and then tell us we want them. We have been trained to want instant gratification for things we didn't even know we needed. Pavlov wasted his time using dogs.

--Jeffrey

(To find or answer this post, click here.)

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