Skip to main content

Welcome to the Sommet Center

There's encouraging news out of Nashville this morning, as the Sommet Group has agreed to a long-term arena naming rights deal with the Nashville Predators. The erstwhile Gaylord Entertainment Center/Nashville Arena will now be called the "Sommet Center".


This spring, the Sommet Group participated as a title sponsor of the Predators (brief) playoff run, and this commitment should help the Predators build their long term base in the Music City. All along, owner Craig Liepold has discussed the need to build stronger ties in the business community, and this deal represents two significant steps forward in that regard. First, he's landed a local firm for the naming rights (the Sommet Group is based in nearby Franklin), as opposed to a large national firm that's just looking for a billboard to put their name on.

Secondly, however, the Sommet Group represents a good partner for the Predators - they are in the business of outsourcing back-office processes (i.e. Human Resources, Payroll, IT), and as such, have ties to a vast number of small- to mid-size businesses, the types of companies that might be good candidates to buy a few tickets each here or there, but are very difficult to market to. It's one thing to lobby a big firm like Nissan to buy some season tickets, but going door-to-door to the gazillion smaller firms is laborious and unprofitable. Now, the Predators can hook up with the Sommet Group to offer promotions and incentives through their network and hopefully build a stronger corporate support base.

So three cheers for the Sommet Center (and by the way, it's pronounced so-may)!
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

My goals for 2011: Make sports blogging pay off

In my never-ending quest to figure out a model for making what is currently my hobby & passion into something bringing in at least a side income, I've decided to set a couple goals for myself to complete during the rest of 2011. Simply put, I plan to publish two products over the next few months, which I hope will provide real value to hockey fans, and that they'll be willing to pay for. Will it succeed? Will it fail? The only way to know is to put my nose to the grindstone and get these two things done (I'll keep the details under my hat for now). The important thing to note is that these efforts are in addition to anything I'm doing over at OTF . Taking away what we're doing over there and asking people to pay for it is a surefire lose-lose all the way around, because if there's anything we've learned over the last few years, it's that people love to read about sports, but only for free. I'm also optimistic about Hockey Gea...
Read more

My Letter To Gary

Dear Mr. Bettman, When the announcement was made a few weeks ago that Jim Balsillie had entered into an agreement to purchase the Nashville Predators, speculation immediately began that a relocation to South Ontario would come in short order, and many hockey fans in the Nashville area jumped to the conclusion that we'd see a "Major League" scenario, whereby the new owner would deliberately undermine local support of the team so as to trigger the escape clause in the team's arena lease. As for myself, I decided to give Mr. Balsillie the benefit of the doubt - surely as a lifelong hockey fan and player, he wouldn't do such a thing after acquiring one of the best young teams in the game, with the Stanley Cup potentially within reach. I've waited and watched over recent weeks, and was initially encouraged by Balsillie's promise to field a competitive team, giving GM David Poile an ample budget to put together the best team possible. His legal representative ...
Read more

Cheer up, it's the holidays...

Why is it that various media outlets continue trying to put their own spin on the "what's wrong with the NHL" story? Our latest example comes from The Hockey News , in a piece by Jay Greenburg entitled, "Excitement Level On The Decline." Take the opening sentence: Attendance is down and yet still up from before the lockout, leaving it arguable whether buildings in New Jersey and Florida are half-full or half empty. It's no surprise that attendance is down from last season, particularly if you compare the first half of 2005-06 to the first half of this year. Coming out of the lockout, there were legions of fans starved to see the on-ice product, particularly in light of the massive rule changes. This year is more indicative of business as usual, so the fact that the league is above pre-lockout levels is a positive. Toss in the projection that overall revenues are increasing despite a 1% decrease in attendance, and I'd say that paying fans have come back ...
Read more