Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Coca-Cola Starplex Smirnoff Music Centre becomes Superpages.com Center

Comments (22)

Live Nation has announced, in huge pat-itself-on-the-back fashion, that the Smirnoff Music Centre will now be called the Superpages.com Center.

For those who will recall, the venue was originally the Coca-Cola Starplex before it dropped to just the Starplex in 1998. In 2000, the venue's street cred was boosted when Smirnoff bought the naming rights. Now the 20,000 capacity amphitheater will be the cumbersome-to-say Superpages.com Center. While the new name is lame on nearly all accounts, at least they've dropped the annoying "r" before "e" spelling of the word "center."

Live Nation press release below:

Live Nation, the world’s largest live music company, announced today that they have signed a multi-year agreement with Idearc Media Corp.’s Superpages.com® to become the primary name in title sponsor for the Music Centre at Fair Park, Dallas’ premiere outdoor music venue. Effective today, the facility, formerly known as Smirnoff Music Centre, will now be known as the Superpages.com Center.

“This is a great and strategic opportunity for us locally and nationally,” said Robyn Rose, vice president of marketing at Superpages.com. “We are thrilled to be starting this relationship during the venues’ twentieth anniversary celebration – we really know where to find great music at a great venue around here.”

Opened in 1988, The Superpages.com Center has hosted over 600 concert events for over 6,000,000 patrons, making it the Metroplex's premiere and longest running outdoor facility dedicated solely to live concert events. The venue is part of Dallas’ Fair Park complex, which includes museums, an aquarium, gardens and the Cotton Bowl football stadium.

Avril Lavigne, and rock and roll icons Rush, are the first of many shows which will be part of the 2008 Superpages.com Center’s line-up. 2008 marks the 20th anniversary season for the venue so stay tuned for additional shows to be announced throughout the spring and summer as part of this special season at Superpages.com Center.

“Our new relationship with Superpages.com is an important venture for us, the City of Dallas and the entire Metroplex community. I am extremely proud of the legacy of this facility, and we have now opened a brand new chapter in the venue's history. I anticipate the inaugural season at Superpages.com Center to be one for the record books,” said Bob Roux, regional president of Live Nation.

Daniel Huerta, executive general manager for Fair Park said, “We look forward to a successful 2008 concert season at the Superpages.com Center in Fair Park, Texas. We enthusiastically support Live Nation in providing top notch music entertainment essential to our efforts in positioning Fair Park as a world-class cultural park that offers year-round activities and attractions for all ages and interests and provides community and family oriented programming. “

Posted by Erin

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Comments

Kevin Kunreuther Verified

Great. The Vodka-plex is now the Stupor Center. Is it any wonder the Knock-Knock in Big Bad Fairie and The Corporate Cathedral at Victory-less Park get all the good shows? Looking forward to the puppet show and Spinal Tap re-Reunion tour this summer ...

1 year, 9 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

Howard Wen Verified

If I was crazy rich, I would pay to have it named "The Baby Dolls Music Extravaganzaplex 3000."

1 year, 9 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

JW Richard Verified

Since Idearc Media is the arm that produces Superpages for Verizon, why didn't they just call it Verizon Center (like Verizon Park in Houston) or Idearc Center? Why would you put a .com in the middle of your venue name?

1 year, 9 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

James Scott Verified

"Extravaganzaplex" - nice.

...and yeah JW, in this day and age, isn't it kind of an insult to assume that people are that out of touch with this new thing called the World Wide Web (I think that's what WWW stands for) that we need to be told to put ".com" on the end of something to get their website? Like if we had any inclination of looking them up, we would have had no chance unless they provided that bit of information?

Can we just secretly go back to calling it the Starplex?

1 year, 9 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

Sander Wolf Verified

Can't we publicly refer to it as Starplex? It's bad enough that corporations are naming public venues. It's even worse when they keep changing the names. I hope Daniel Huerta got a decent cut of the $ to be shilling for a corporation that's not his employer.

1 year, 9 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

incognato Anonymous

ahh, ".com" on a large venue name. That takes me back about 10 years ... before the bubble popped. So I guess this internets thing is picking up?

In all honesty, I think I'd prefer "superman" over "superpages", but that's just my opinion. Oh well.

And, It'll always be starplex to me. I'll always remember Jane's Addiction with Siouxsie and the Banshees.

1 year, 9 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

John McClelland Verified

I know this isn't arena related, but as far as sponsors go, I still miss the Poulan Weed Eater Bowl.

1 year, 9 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

jtmbls Anonymous

OOOH! We could hyphenate like those women who remarry over and over.

The Starplex-Smirnoff-Superpages Center! ...dot...com...

1 year, 9 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

Peter Stawicki Verified

I understand that this is all about advertising dollars but for crying out loud the name is stupid and sounds stupid. I agree with Sander, lets just call it the Starplex!

1 year, 9 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

amyarnold Anonymous

Clearly, none of you are in marketing.

1 year, 9 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

Jeremy Dunck Staff

I took a couple marketing classes.

I thought marketing was supposed to be about making sure that your product (or service) filled a need and clearly communicating that product to the intended consumer of that product.

I understand that forcing people to say your company name when referring to their daily lives is good for brand recognition and that it may have some residual effect when it comes time for people to use the service, but that doesn't make it good marketing.

1 year, 9 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

Mike Orren Staff

Jeremy, your "marketing classes" clearly don't qualify you to make this sort of analysis. I'm with amyarnold and the good people of Idearc. This is a marketing masterstroke -- and we'll be making a similar, if marginally less market-impactful announcement of our own in the next week.

1 year, 9 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

Scott Doyle Verified

A marketing masterstroke?

They paid a bunch of money to have their company name (technically website) on a venue. It's effective in that it shoves their name down our throat, but it's no masterstroke. You have to be 'in marketing' to know that attention-whoring works?

1 year, 9 months ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )