After 44 years, Commonwealth Stadium has a new name: Kroger Field

Commonwealth Stadium underwent a recent facelift and now it’s getting a brand new name — with the emphasis on “brand.”

The home of the University of Kentucky football team will now be known as Kroger Field, per a deal struck between the university, UK Athletics and marketing partner JMI Sports.

The new deal, which was to be announced Monday afternoon at a news conference at the Don and Cathy Jacobs Science Building on campus, is for 12 years and $1.85 million annually, the Herald-Leader has learned.

New signage soon will replace “Commonwealth Stadium” with “Welcome to Kroger Field” on the west end of the stadium. This marks the first name change since the stadium opened in 1973.

The new name is contingent on approval by the university’s Board of Trustees at its meeting Tuesday.

But this is much more than a switch in naming rights and simple signage. It’s a multi-tiered deal that includes access to campus marketing rights as well Kroger becoming the official fuel partner of the university.

Other parts of the agreement include Kroger becoming the official nutrition and pharmacy partner of UK Athletics and the official grocery store of Move-In (when students arrive and move in to campus housing).

Many of those finer details are still being hammered out, officials said, including a logo.

JMI Sports had been seeking a rights partner for the past three years.

“The thing they’re excited about and we’re excited about too is it’s not just about naming rights,” UK Athletics spokesman Guy Ramsey said. “It’s a company who asked for this and wants it to be long term and much more.”

There is a community component as well. Kroger is partnering with UK to start the Kroger Fields project, which will work to improve youth football fields across the state. The retail chain also will sponsor an annual 5K race that will end at the 50-yard line of the football stadium.

This is the type of deal UK envisioned in 2014 when it signed on with JMI Sports, Mitch Barnhart said.

The UK athletics director noted that if the “right partnership” with the right sponsor emerged, naming rights would be on the table.

“We’re in a finite world in terms of ways to grow the revenues necessary to run sports,” Barnhart said in 2014. “It’s hard. There may be some creative ways we do that, and part of that might be naming rights, and that’s not an unusual deal in our world, in today’s world.

“As much of a traditionalist as I want to be and am, I also have to be a realist, and you have to think, OK, what is in the best interest of this athletic department and this university, and can it absolutely give us the best chance to keep doing — the end game for us, keep our programs moving in the direction we’ve got them going.”

Kentucky will be the first school in the Southeastern Conference to go corporate with its stadium naming rights, but not the first nationally or even the first in the state.

The University of Louisville has Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium and Western Kentucky University plays at the Houchens Industries-L.T. Smith Stadium.

The playing surface, which is named C.M. Newton Field in honor of the former Kentucky athletics director, will now be called C.M. Newton Grounds at Kroger Field. The athletics department consulted with the Newton family before making that determination.

This probably won’t be the last UK athletics facility that will get a new name via the JMI Sports deal. While no deals are in the works yet, the marketing company also has been looking at selling the naming rights to the new baseball stadium and potentially the plaza near Gate 12 of Commonwealth Stadium.

That area is where the statue of Kentucky’s SEC trailblazers sits as well as the pregame concert stage.

It seems unlikely that Rupp Arena will get a corporate name anytime soon. The letter of intent signed by UK and the Lexington Convention Center says “Rupp Arena” will remain the same.

However, the convention center surrounding the men’s basketball facility has issued a request for proposal for naming rights of the new center after it is renovated and expanded.

This means that eventually the facility could be called something like “Rupp Arena at Acme Convention Center.”

According to the Kroger website, the Cincinnati-based retailer owns nearly 2,800 stores in 35 states with annual sales of more than $115.3 billion.

Bill Owen, LCC executive director, said the contract is for 15 years, but won’t take effect until after next year’s basketball season. In that agreement, JMI will take over media rights within Rupp, but the contract will pay the convention center $4.75 million a year for those rights.

The convention center has received some proposals for naming rights, Owen said, but they are still in the discussion phase.

“It’s a response we feel we’ll be able to work with,” Owen said.

This story was originally published May 1, 2017 at 4:41 PM with the headline "After 44 years, Commonwealth Stadium has a new name: Kroger Field."