05-18-2007 12:11 AM — The Nashville Arena will become The Sommet Center.
Franklin-based Sommet (pronounced so-may) Group sponsored the Nashville Predators during the team's brief playoff run. The official announcement comes at 11 am in the morning. Financial terms won't be disclosed.
The company is a business-to-business outsourcing company specializing in providing small and medium-sized businesses with payroll processing, insurance and risk management services, tailored benefits programs, human resources administration and information technology consulting and software development.
Sommet replaces Gaylord Entertainment, which had the naming rights from 1999 to 2004. The Nashville's company and the Predators got embroiled in legal fight when the company sought to terminate its 20-year, $80 million deal. Gaylord settled with the team with a payment of $9 million but the company's name stayed on the arena until just before the playoffs.
Sommet's deal isn't too surprising. Predators officials responsible for find a new naming rights deal have said in the past that such deals often times come from an existing corporate sponsorship Jason Bitsoff, the team's vice president of corporate development since last May, was involved with such a deal when he was with the Houston Rockets. Toyota, an existing corporate sponsor for the team, bought the naming rights for the NBA team's arena.
But that was a long relationship with area Toyota dealers. Sommet's sponsorship was a brief one and is almost akin to how deal for Petco Park in San Diego materialized. Steve Violetta, the Predators' executive vice president of business affairs, handled that deal for the San Diego Padres. It came out of a pitch for corporate suites and the San Diego-based company simply had an all or nothing strategy, going right for the naming rights, Violetta said in an interview last year about the deal.
"It's a rarity," Violetta said of the Petco deal. "They were selling us as much as we sold them."
Finance and Ventures | 
You must be logged in to comment. If you do not have an account, you can join our esteemed subscribers.