City should retain arena naming rights, says councillor

City negotiators should have pushed harder to get the naming rights forEdmonton's proposed downtown arena, says Coun. Kerry Diotte.

"It's just ludicrous that we own it, build it, finance it and yet we don't have the right to name it," Diotte said.

Oilers owner and drugstore magnate Daryl Katzpurchasedthe naming rights for Rexall Place before he owned the team, paying the previous owners several million dollars.

Under the framework agreement reached this week with The Katz Group, the city is allowing the Oilers owner to keep any moneyearned from naming rights.

Brad Humphreys, a sports economics professor at the University of Alberta, said the usual practice is to giveteamsthe money from naming rights.

"The teams hold the upper hand in these negotiations- the team owner can always threaten to go somewhere else if they don't get what they want," he said.

The value of the naming rights depends on the visibility of the arena, success of the team, and the size of the market, he said.

In the case of the new Edmonton arena, the rightscould be worth tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars, Humphrey said.