In a conversation with the Chron, Tim Leiweke, the president of Dynamo co-owner AEG, discusses the next big item on their to-do list:
The naming rights is the next task at hand and it will be a hot priority, but we expect to be under construction at the end of the year. And believe it or not we are hopeful to open June 2012.
[…]
The naming rights become key because without them we are going to struggle on this project. We have made a decision not to tie everything into if we sell the naming rights. So much of the risk is going to be dependent upon the contractually obligated incomes that we are going to create in the stadium.
We have all of the agreements we need to sign and we have all of the revenue that we need to lock in and that is going to be an important part. We are fortunate that we have a bunch of people interested (in naming rights).
A couple of them are based here. They see this as an opportunity to be a good corporate citizen and at the same time it makes good financial sense to them. I think because of the nature we are financing this unlike any other stadium that we have built, people like the fact that we are stepping up in the private sector and bearing most of the load here.
They see themselves here as aligning with the right kind of project that won’t have a lot of controversy. They certainly see soccer as the sport of the future because 45 percent of the fans are Hispanic so we have a few of the companies that are very focused on our Hispanic audience.
Anyone want to try to guess whose name will eventually get attached to Dynamo Stadium? Let’s just hope they have better luck with this than the Astros had.