Farmers Insurance once aimed to flaunt its name across a football stadium in downtown Los Angeles at a cost of $700 million. But the firm said it would not pursue that privilege at a planned NFL stadium in Inglewood.
“We have no such plans,” spokesman Trent Frager told the Business Journal in an email on Monday.
The downtown stadium would have been dubbed Farmers Field with the name emblazoned in red letters across a silver roof. For that rare branding right, Farmers would have paid at least $20 million a year over three decades to entertainment company AEG, the project developer, according to the Los Angeles Times. It would have been among the most expensive stadium naming deals in the United States.
When Farmers announced that commitment in 2011, the stadium plans were so preliminary that not even its location had been approved. AEG Chairman and Chief Executive Philip Anschutz pushed ahead until last March, when he said he had ended talks with the NFL. That cleared the way for Carson and Inglewood to take the spotlight with competing stadium plans.
The NFL voted in January to construct a new stadium for the St. Louis Rams in Inglewood and give the San Diego Chargers the opportunity to join. The project developers have not yet announced the stadium’s name.