Update:
The claim that naming rights of McCovey Cove have been sold is a hoax and completely false.
— #OctoberTogether (@SFGiants) October 24, 2014
Soooo … I’m the idiot for taking an NBC Bay Area report as gospel. My incredulous, snarky, totally-jumping-the-gun reaction (in other words: the original post) is below Boatbound’s pseudo apology.
Nice try, jerkoffs:
The Story Behind the Renaming Hoax
This morning, we announced the official renaming of San Francisco’s beloved McCovey Cove to “#BoatboundBay.” As much as we’d love to have our name on one of the best boating hangouts in the Bay, we’d never dream of stealing Willie’s thunder by renaming his cove. The public response was overwhelming and we wanted to jump in before it went too far.
McCovey Cove is still McCovey Cove and as far as we know, always will be.
As further support of our hometown SF bay, McCovey Cove, and the Giants, Boatbound will be making a donation to the Port of San Francisco to help with the upkeep of McCovey Cove so it can be enjoyed safely for years to come. We hope that this hoax will help encourage the city to take this chance while it’s in the public spotlight to remove the “unofficial” name McCovey Cove and make it permanent.
***
It’s a great PR move, except everyone who didn’t know this company existed before now hates it.
McCovey Cove is now officially called #BoatboundBay, according to the founder and CEO of Boatbound, a company that helps boat owners rent out their vessels.
The name change begins Friday as the San Francisco Giants host the Kansas City Royals in Game 3 of the World Series.
Boatbound calls itself a “pier-to-pier boat rental platform.” The company says, in honor of its newly acquired naming rights, it will celebrate each home run by awarding $5 credits for users.
The price the company paid for the naming rights was not immediately disclosed.
I wasn’t even aware that the naming rights to McCovey Cove were up for sale. I have questions.
- Who sold the naming rights?
- Does this mean announcers have to say that “splash hits” landed in “#BoatboundBay” (cringe) while the Yahoo yodel plays over the speakers (double cringe)?
- Isn’t this the most tech-douchey thing you can imagine? They want to cover up the name of a Giants icon, by all accounts an amazing person who recently got out of the hospital, with a hashtag. Gross.
Here are the keys to spending naming rights money successfully.
1. Make sure you get in on the ground floor. If a place was already known as something non-corporate, people aren’t going to be all that receptive to change.
2. The name has to have some sort of ring to it. Pac Bell Park wasn’t bad. There are worse names than Levi’s Stadium. #BoatboundBay is a naming rights disaster on the scale of 3Com Park.
I feel dirty writing about this, because BASG is giving this company more free advertising. But I will never, ever, ever refer to McCovey Cove as anything else. Don’t worry, Willie McCovey — I have a feeling the entire Bay Area will stand together on this one.
