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Assembly Hall (IL) Renamed State Farm Center


Billy B

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Don't Illinois and Indiana both call their primary venues "Memorial Stadium" and "Assembly Hall"?

They did/do, though Illinois was first in both cases.

"State Farm Assembly Hall" seems like it would have been a fair compromise.

Like I said, this probably isn't done because from the sponsor's stand point, it defeats the purpose. Their goal is to gain exposure in every mention of the building. If you just add to the existing name, nobody is going to bother including the new sponsor. They'd just keep saying "Assembly Hall."

In some cases you do see this. I imagine people in Boston always called their old arena "The Garden," and I assume they call their new one "The Garden" because the powers that be kept that in the name. That's cool, but it kind of sucks for the sponsor.

Still, corporate naming rights for college venues not located in major cities (where perhaps they're doubling up with soulless pro teams) seems kind of icky to me, because I mean it's still a campus building. At that point, why not have the Coca-Cola Student Activity Center? "Meet you at the Coke!" ugh, FOAD

It's a fine line, but Universities have relationships with big companies for a variety of reasons, many of which aren't bad in the least. These companies might do research on campus. They might be a big donor. They might recruit heavily from the campus. Or often all three and more. And since many universities, especially public ones (and especially public ones in broke ass states like Illinois) need to keep finding revenue sources to compete, it's hard to ask them to turn down such easy money.

In the case of of athletic buildings, at least at Illinois, that money is completely separate from the academics, but I'd still go back to the fact that the money is needed (to renovate the building) and it's about as easy of money as you can get.

(In the case of Assembly Hall, it's actually not strictly an athletics building... it's co-owned or whatever. Has always confused me really, but it's something like that.)

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(In the case of Assembly Hall, it's actually not strictly an athletics building... it's co-owned or whatever. Has always confused me really, but it's something like that.)

I believe the Assembly Hall is actually owned by the Illinois Student Union. This is why the university can't stop Chief Illiniwek from performing there.

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