The Worst MLS Stadium Names

Since 2019, 655 W Church St. has been known as Exploria Stadium. If I’m being honest I wasn’t very thrilled with a timeshare company being the sponsor, but ultimately it grew on me and other than the occasional phone call from Exploria Resorts I got over it and came to accept it.

Now, it has been announced that Inter&Co is the new naming rights sponsor for Orlando City Stadium. Like many of you, I’m not very excited this go-around either. I hope that the positives will overcome the obvious optical negative. In the meantime to cheer myself up — and hopefully you as well — I thought we’d take a look at some of the worst named stadiums in MLS.

The Financial Group

I’m not certain I should rail too much on financial firms being sponsors, but there are a lot of them, including Minnesota United’s Allianz Field, Real Salt Lake’s America First Field, Charlotte FC’s Bank of America Stadium, San Jose’s PayPal Park, and Austin FC’s Q2 Stadium.

The biggest offenders are Toronto FC’s BMO Field and LAFC’s BMO Stadium. Seriously? Same freaking sponsor? Most stadium names are not very creative nowadays because of corporate sponsorships, but at least get your own unique sponsor.

The Runners Up

The Columbus Crew play at Lower.com Stadium, which is named for a mortgage company. That is not the worst part. The worst part is the dot com. I don’t care what club, team, or sport it is, you can’t put in the dot com.

This next one was so close to being the worst: Yankee Stadium. New York City FC plays on a baseball field in a stadium built for another team in a different sport. What’s worse is that one of the conditions for Orlando City to join MLS was building a soccer-specific stadium. How much longer has it been for NYCFC? It’s ridiculous and so is playing on that postage stamp of a field.

I know the Chicago Fire play at Soldier Field, which is also a stadium built for another team in a different sport, but at least it isn’t named for that team.

DRV PNK Stadium

Regardless of what you think of the new name announced today in Orlando, DRV PNK Stadium is the worst name in all of MLS. Let me first say that I support Auto Nation’s Drive Pink initiative to fight cancer. Now, let’s get to the actual reasons it’s the worst. The most obvious is the lack of vowels. It looks like a Wheel of Fortune clue without the necessary spaces.

I assume that Auto Nation is the actual sponsor and is obviously too ashamed to put its actual name on the stadium. Then there is the fact that it isn’t even in Miami, though to be fair, I don’t like being in Miami either.

As you move through the five stages of grief over today’s stadium name (or embrace it), feel free to revisit this article throughout the coming days. Comments are welcome. Vamos Orlando!