On Tuesday morning, photos and videos began circulating on social media showing the removal of Footprint Center signs from the home of the Phoenix Suns and Mercury. With no official announcement from the teams, fans were left wondering why the signs had come down.
The venue is quietly reverting back to the name PHX Arena, the Suns and Mercury confirmed to Front Office Sports.
The materials science company Footprint is still going to be a sponsor of the teams, with its products appearing in the arena like it has before, but it won’t have its name on the stadium anymore. In the meantime, the teams are heading out to find a new naming rights deal.
Footprint secured naming rights in 2021, with the name changing during the Suns’ NBA Finals series. Before that, the venue was also briefly called PHX Arena and Phoenix Suns Arena in the interim after Talking Stick Resort’s naming rights deal ended in November 2020.
“We were presented with a unique opportunity to reimagine and strengthen our partnership with Footprint to better align with their mission and commitment to sustainability and innovation,” Suns and Mercury SVP of communications Stacey Mitch said in a statement to FOS. “Footprint will remain the official sustainability partner of the Phoenix Suns and Phoenix Mercury, and we have begun the process to find a new naming rights partner.”
The arena is owned by the city but operated by the teams, and the city does not receive any revenue from the naming rights agreement, a spokesperson tells FOS.
Naming rights agreements vary widely in the NBA and WNBA. Crypto.com paid $700 million for a 20-year deal in Los Angeles. Compare that to Miami, where Kaseya agreed to a 17-year deal for just over $117 million.
