Metro to Explore Selling Station Naming Rights

Steve Burns
WMAL.com

WASHINGTON – (WMAL) Just as sports stadiums have done, Metro’s Board of Directors this week is set to discuss the possibility of selling naming rights to its stations as a way to boost advertising revenue.

Board documents released ahead of Thursday’s meeting indicate staff thinks naming rights are a possibility at four stations – Navy Yard-Ballpark, Metro Center, Gallery Place, and L’Enfant Plaza.

That would come on top of other aggressive advertising efforts already available, like “Station Dominations,” in which one advertiser plasters the entirety of a station, and train wraps.

Metro admits the idea was tossed around in 2012, and it did not get a favorable response. Riders were mainly looking for concise station names that easily tell them where they are. There was also concern about having brand names associated with historic landmarks.

It’s far from the original vision architect Harry Weese had for the system, according to Metro’s unofficial historian, George Mason history professor Zach Schrag.

“While it was possible to plaster a system with advertising, London in particular had done this, to maximize revenue, he felt that degraded the rider experience,” Schrag told WMAL. “It was more important to have what he called a public approach, that made transit more like a public place, like a park.”

Weese had a grand vision for his system, Schrag said, mirroring the monumentality and elegance of D.C.’s historic landmarks.

‘Just as you wouldn’t put ads all over the Capitol Building, say, he didn’t want ads cluttering up the Metro system,” Schrag said.

The venture is not uncharted water in the public transit world.

Philadelphia renamed the station closest to its sports stadiums “AT&T Station.” New York added “Barclays Center” onto the end of the station near the Brooklyn arena. Metro has yet to decide whether a sponsorship would take over the entire station name, as in Philadelphia, or just be an addendum. Schrag said replacing the name entirely could be a confusing prospect.

“If you take off ‘Gallery Place’ and put in only ‘Verizon Center,’ then you’ve really got a lot of people looking up from their guidebooks or their newspapers and saying, ‘What happened to my station?'”