A volunteer-run group tasked by the City of Vancouver to analyze its budget is suggesting the city generate revenue from city assets through selling naming rights and running sponsorship campaigns.
- “Vancouver Mayor’s Budget Task Force recommends selling naming rights to increase cash flow”. Isabella Zavarise. 2024-01-24T03:45Z. CTV News Vancouver (https://bc.ctvnews.ca/vancouver-mayor-s-budget-task-force-recommends-selling-naming-rights-to-increase-cash-flow-1.6739602)
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Sponsorship I can get behind; naming rights has always seemed like a bad idea.
I do think that city-owned assets should be properly labelled though, and putting a “maintenance of this made possible by sponsorship of xyz” on a plaque makes sense to me. But sponsorship should be a subscription, not a one time payment.
When you build it yourself you get to name it. When it’s city (public) money you don’t.
Sonsorship subscriptions are fine though. I’d even suggest that a certain portion must be set aside in a fund that generates interest or investment revenue.
An important thing to add to this, I think, is that it’s important that the sponsorship has no final say in the direction, or management of the asset. It should just be treated as an advertising/philanthropic opportunity for the sponsor.
One concern that I do have is over-reliance and dependence on the sponsor. It would not be great to have a situation where the City is beholden to some corporation.