A Major League Soccer team located at the heart of Silicon Valley should be able to leverage its unique location to secure lucrative sponsorship agreements with hot startups or major tech powerhouses. However, the San Jose Earthquakes have been unable to do so for a frustratingly long time, even though the team plays within walking distance of some of the largest technology companies in the world. At various points over the last five years, the club has gone without any shirt sponsors and stadium sponsors at all.
Not anymore.
On Monday morning, the Quakes changed that narrative with the announcement of a new 10-year sponsorship agreement with PayPal that includes the naming rights for the club’s stadium, which will now be called PayPal Park.
The deal was first reported by Sportico in February and is estimated to be worth between $2 million and $4 million annually. According to a club spokesperson, it is the largest corporate partnership in the history of the club.
San Jose’s previous naming rights deal with telecommunications firm Avaya was worth $2 million a year, but was scuppered after the company went bankrupt in 2017. Last season, San Jose’s home venue was rebranded as Earthquakes Stadium after the club failed to find a new sponsor.
That failure was attributed mainly to former club President Tom Fox, who resigned from his post last January. In November, the Quakes hired the entertainment consultancy Elevate Sports Ventures to help accelerate the search, and a club spokesperson said negotiations with PayPal began after San Jose’s Vice President of Strategy Ian Anderson sent a cold email to PayPal CEO Dan Schulman about the possibility of forming a community-driven partnership. Five months later, they now have a deal.
As a part of the agreement, the Quakes will integrate PayPal technology throughout the stadium, which will make it possible for fans to pay for tickets, merchandise, and concessions using Venmo, the company’s popular mobile payment service. PayPal will also become a jersey sleeve sponsor for the Quakes.
The company, which was founded by a group including controversial Silicon Valley billionaires Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, is headquartered less than two miles from the stadium, just on the other side of the San Jose International Airport. They are not the only tech firm betting on a surge in interest in Major League Soccer in the post-pandemic world. Recently, LAFC also announced Postmates and Uber as new sponsors.
While San Jose don’t yet have the same cachet as their southern rivals, Quakes General Manager Jesse Fioranelli sounded optimistic about the club’s business operations in a conference call with reporters last month. Notably, he said the Quakes managed to maintain the majority of their existing sponsorship deals throughout the pandemic.
Now, it’s Fioranelli’s job to ensure that all of this sponsorship revenue is reinvested into the team’s soccer operations. The Quakes’ failure to sign a new Designated Player this winter has been disappointing, but could potentially be mitigated by a large spending spree in the summer transfer window.
The club also need a new home for the Quakes Academy, which is currently forced to rent field space at various locations across San Jose (a logistical nightmare). Although the project has been put on the back-burner for years, this new sponsorship agreement is definitely large enough to open new possibilities for the Quakes.
Update: This article was updated to correct the spelling of Elon Musk’s name and to clarify the origins of the deal
