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Law Firm Asked About Tampa Arena Naming Rights

Tribune file photo by JIM REED

The St. Petersburg Times is halfway through a 12-year contract signed in 2002 for the official naming rights.

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By RICHARD MULLINS

rmullins@tampatrib.com

Published: December 4, 2008

For now, Tampa's downtown arena is officially called the St. Pete Times Forum.

But at least one big Florida advertiser thinks he could change that, and he's settled on a dollar figure to put his name on the building instead of the Times'. It's a name that's quite familiar to people in Florida.

John Morgan of the high-profile law firm Morgan & Morgan said he was approached recently by an advertising executive in Tampa about a potential deal to buy the naming rights on the arena.

Forum officials, including the owner of the Tampa Bay Lightning, vigorously deny they're shopping around for a new naming rights partner.

By no means is any deal in progress, Morgan said, but he said "I was asked if I have an interest in buying the name of the stadium, and I do ... Putting 'Morgan & Morgan Forum' on that building - that appeals to me."

Morgan said he was offered a price of $1.7 million per year, almost a million dollars less than the St. Petersburg Times now pays for those same rights. That puts the purchase within his reach.

Morgan & Morgan is one of the nation's largest plaintiff's law firms, known for its ForThePeople.com Web site. The Orlando-based firm normally spends about $20 million in Florida each year on advertising and marketing, so $1.7 million would represent a significant part of its annual budget. "I'd have to take a long, hard swallow, but it's doable," Morgan said.

Morgan's contact in Tampa is not directly working for the Forum, or the Tampa Bay Lightning owners who manage the building. Instead, it's John McKay of McKay Advertising, an independent advertising firm in Tampa. Although McKay says he wasn't authorized to go looking for new advertisers, he has other connections to the team.

McKay said he went to Lyon's Township High School outside Chicago with Andrea Koules, the sister of a Lightning owner, Oren Koules. McKay also has known Morgan for years through the advertising community in Florida.

"John Morgan is one of the biggest advertisers in the state, and Oren's got big ideas, so let's get them together," McKay said.

Any shift in naming rights would fit with marketing changes already under way around the building. Forum officials recently extended a deal that lets the cell phone company MetroPCS put its name on a large banner above the neon St. Petersburg Times logo that faces the Selmon Crosstown Expressway.

Just this week, Tampa city officials also disclosed plans to rename the road in front of the Forum, now called "St. Pete Times Forum Drive" to its original name, "Old Water Street," as part of construction of the new Tampa Bay History Center. Originally, the Times paid to have its name on that street as part of its naming rights deal, but officials with the Times agreed to the street name change.

A number of loose ends remain for any potential deal for the stadium name. Whether McKay's and Morgan's hopes ever go beyond wishful thinking remain to be seen.

The St. Petersburg Times is halfway through a 12-year contract signed in 2002 for the official naming rights, paying $2.1 million the first year, with payments rising 3 percent annually to $2.9 million in the 12th year of the deal.

If a new deal were to be struck, it would come in a dramatically different economic atmosphere than when the current deal originated in 2002. Since then, both the advertising and newspaper markets nationally have declined. Like virtually every newspaper in the nation, the St. Petersburg Times has reduced staff and consolidated its offerings to cope with a slower economy.

Forum officials rejected the possibility of a new deal.

Oren Koules said Morgan was never offered a deal, and McKay doesn't have the authority to do so. He said McKay told him that Morgan made the suggestion and named the price.

"There's absolutely no way in a million years we would do $1.7 million," said Koules, the producer of the "Saw" series of horror films.

If the Forum were shopping the naming rights, he said he would give the job to a national search firm and be asking $4 million or $5 million a year.

Reporter Richard Mullins can be reached at (813) 259-7919.

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