Florida Atlantic Football Stadium Will Be Named For Private Prison Company [View all]

via Occupy The Hood L.A. Action Assembly

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/19/florida-atlantic-football-stadium_n_2720223.html

For more than two years, Florida Atlantic University has been searching for the name of a corporate sponsor to adorn its new 30,000-seat, palm-ringed football stadium.

The public university on Tuesday announced an unconventional partner: the nation's second-largest operator of for-profit prisons, the GEO Group Inc. The newly christened GEO Group Stadium came as part of a $6 million donation from the prison company's charitable foundation, which will be paid out to Florida Atlantic over 12 years.

America has a long tradition of unusual corporate athletic sponsorships -- Cleveland's Quicken Loans Arena and Houston's Enron Field (now Minute Maid Park) come to mind. But the GEO Group Stadium puzzled several experienced sports marketing experts.

Stadium sponsorships usually involve a product that a company wants to market to consumers: Cars, in the case of the Mercedez-Benz Superdome in New Orleans; or bank services, with Citi Field in New York. GEO Group's customers are government agencies offering contracts. Prisoners don't have a choice of where they land behind bars.

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