Visit your local Tesco Theatre! Er, really?

Times

5 days ago

I remember exactly how I felt when I first entered the Shakespeare North Playhouse, just before it opened three years ago. I gasped. The interior of a 17th-century theatre designed by Inigo Jones had been authentically recreated, using 60 tonnes of beautiful English oak, in Prescot, a far-from-wealthy town ten miles east of Liverpool.
I wasn't just astounded by the woodwork. I was also struck by the vision of the local authorities — Knowsley borough council and Liverpool City Region — that had financed most of its £36 million construction. They clearly believed it was economically feasible to sustain a fabulous new theatre in a 'dying northern town' (the words of James Duncan, Knowsley council's chief executive).
Alas, it hasn't taken long for that faith to be shaken. Last week Knowsley council announced it would sell 'naming rights' to the playhouse to any corporate sponsor prepared to put up about £300,000 a year for ten years. Such a deal would be a significant first. Theatres have been renamed before after generous individuals — think of the Dorfman at the National — and giant arenas such as the O2 in London often carry the names of their commercial backers. But no British theatre has been renamed after a commercial sponsor.
Knowsley council, which is grappling with severe socioeconomic problems, is not hiding the reason for seeking such a deal: it wants to scale back its own subsidy of the playhouse. 'Realistically, the council cannot keep funding the theatre at the level it is currently doing,' Duncan says.
That's an honest admission. It also puts into perspective a letter, published last week in the Financial Times, from ten top arts organisations (including the British Museum, National Theatre, Sadler's Wells and Royal Opera House) discussing the involvement of corporate sponsors in the arts world.
'Corporate sponsorship can never provide a replacement for public funding,' the letter claims. Oh really? There must be dozens of financially stricken theatres and arts centres in the same situation as the Shakespeare North Playhouse, where the hope is that selling naming rights can do exactly that: replace public funding that's shrinking or already gone.
Let's not get too carried away, though. For a start, commercial sponsors aren't charities. They make hard-nosed business decisions. Yes, Spotify is paying a massive £17 million a year for the naming rights to Barcelona's celebrated football stadium, but that's because the team is constantly on TV across the world, so the promotional potential is vast. Even so, I bet every football fan still calls the ground the Camp Nou.
A little further down the football ladder, Everton's new stadium is to be called the Hill Dickinson following a naming-rights deal with that law firm worth £10 million a year — the going rate for a Premier League stadium that will be mentioned virtually daily on TV and radio. But arts venues are rarely mentioned on TV. The notion that even the National Theatre or Royal Opera House could raise ten million quid a year by selling naming rights is far-fetched.
Anyway, would we want our great cultural institutions to become advertising hoardings? Consider how much scorn was flung at the Rugby Football Union last year when Twickenham (a name, like Wimbledon or Old Trafford, that resonates around the globe) was renamed the Allianz Stadium. Clive Woodward, England's World Cup-winning rugby coach, spoke for thousands of fans when he said the RFU had 'sold its soul'. Imagine the outcry if the National Gallery suddenly became, say, 'the Tesco'. Mind you, Tesco might run the place better.
Another source of irritation for sports fans, particularly supporters of clubs in lower leagues, is watching their stadium's name change again and again. Just look at what's happened at Dumbarton FC, who have just been relegated to Scottish League Two. In 15 years their ground has been called the Strathclyde Homes Stadium, the Bet Butler Stadium, the Cheaper Insurance Direct Stadium, the Your Radio 103FM Stadium, the C&G Systems Stadium, the Moreroom.com Stadium and now the Marbill Coaches Stadium. No wonder Dumbarton's long-suffering fans simply refer to the place as 'the Rock', in reference to the mighty basalt outcrop right behind it.
A couple of those name changes came about because the sponsor went broke, which highlights another peril of selling naming rights. What if it brings your organisation into disrepute? Plenty of arts organisations have run into trouble by renaming their premises after philanthropists who turned out to be dodgy. Think of the frantic efforts over the years to erase such names as Sackler, Alberto Vilar and Bill Cosby from exalted cultural institutions (though, rather loyally, the University of York has never removed the 'Sir' from its Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, even though its benefactor was stripped of his knighthood after being convicted of fraud). But commercial sponsors are just as likely as private philanthropists to be sources of future grief.
Classic case? Back in 2000 the Houston Astros baseball team thought they had achieved a great coup when they sold the naming rights to their new stadium to an energy corporation willing to pay $100 million for a 30-year deal. Unfortunately that corporation was Enron. When it went bust just two years later, the Astros had to pay Enron's creditors $2 million to buy back the rights and erase the name from their stadium because, the team said, they were being 'hurt by association' with this colossal corporate failure.