It was nice knowing you, Naming Rights Sponsor Stadium.
Today New York City FC finally dropped that placeholder name for its new soccer stadium in Willets Point, Queens, announcing what has always felt a bit inevitable: Etihad Airways has purchased naming rights for the team's 25,000-seat home scheduled to open in 2027.
The team unveiled its fully-sponsored new name for the stadium, dubbing it "Etihad Park." As of the time of publication, it's unclear how much Etihad will pay to drape its name across New York City's first-ever soccer-specific stadium, which is designed by architectural firm HOK and is being built across the street from Citi Field at an expected cost of $780 million. The announcement of the naming rights agreement does say it's a 20-year, exclusive deal.
New York City’s first-ever soccer-specific stadium now has its official name 🏟️ pic.twitter.com/VzzPbnX8n1
— New York City FC (@newyorkcityfc) November 21, 2024
It comes as no surprise whatsoever to see Etihad Airways become the stadium sponsor, given that Etihad is the national airline of the United Arab Emirates and that City Football Group is owned and funded by a member of one of the UAE's royal families, the multi-billionaire Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
Etihad has been the front-of-shirt sponsor for every New York City FC kit in the team's history, sponsored the pitch at Yankee Soccer Stadium, and has its name similarly plastered on the home of Manchester City FC, Etihad Stadium, and all their kits.
The Outfield has also reported that Etihad was listed as the naming rights sponsor on the stadium's draft lease and that the UAE airline was "pre-approved as primary naming rights sponsor" on a 2023 term sheet for the Willets Point project.
What seemed inevitable finally becomes real with today's announcement, and it's another box checked as the soccer stadium inches toward its eventual opening.
The Willets Point project has progressed smoothly and steadily since the team and the city finalized plans to create 1,400 new apartments, a 250-room hotel, 2.8 acres of open space, and the soccer stadium on the city-owned plot of land across from Citi Field.
The final necessary approvals clearing the redevelopment arrived in April via the New York City Council. Since then, the club has been busy building momentum towards the stadium's groundbreaking.
That has included reorganizing the team's ownership structure to bring in Bolivian-American billionaire Marcelo Claure as part-owner of both the team and the forthcoming stadium. It's also meant unveiling a new, redesigned club crest that will be omnipresent in the Willets Point stadium.
Andrew Leigh
Premium seats and suites are being sold – by Legends – and brands are being pitched on "premium sponsorships" of the new stadium by Klutch Sports Group. Deposits for seats in the new stadium for non-season-ticket-holders went on sale in August, and more recently, NYCFC hired two new lawyers to focus on “the stadium project and other legal matters,” according to a report from BloombergLaw.
Now with today's announcement, the name that will officially adorn the new stadium is known. It's Etihad Park for official purposes, but we learned some months back that our readers really want to refer to NYCFC's new home in Queens as The Valley of Ashes, at least according to this highly scientific reader poll. The allure of that F. Scott Fitzgerald-coined nickname harkening back to the land’s past is hard to resist.
Plans continue to come into focus around the Willets Point stadium as the project's groundbreaking gets closer. Just how close is that groundbreaking, really? The team's CEO, Brad Sims, originally said back in April that the goal was a late-summer or early-fall start to construction, but that optimistic timeline has passed.
In a September interview at Icahn Stadium with Jennifer O'Sullivan, the COO and chief legal officer of New York City FC, she told Hudson River Blue regarding the stadium groundbreaking, "There's a lot of time-consuming work that's going on in order to get everything finalized. We'd love to have it certainly before the end of this year, and that's our target."
The developers broke ground on the first phase of the redevelopment of Willets Point on December 20, 2023, so perhaps New York City FC will give its fans a holiday gift in the form of an official start to construction work on the club's permanent home, now dubbed Etihad Park.
Andrew Leigh
