Lifelock to Continue Sponsorship of Mercury for 2010

Lifelock will continue its sponsorship of the Phoenix Mercury for the 2010, accordiing to the Arizona Republic.

According to the Arizona Republic, the sponsorship is in the second of three years and was a seven-figure deal.

[Jay Perry, Mercury President] and [Andrew Wyant] said the benefits of last year's uniform naming exceeded expectations. It was covered extensively by ESPN, financial-news networks and mainstream media.

"We blew those initial projections away probably six times greater than we thought it would be," she said.

Wyant said the value of the initial media coverage "far exceeded" sponsorship costs.

Now all we need to see this year is a Coke sponsorship for the Dream. And if Coke won't agree...go to Pepsi. (Evil laugh.)

The Phoenix Lifelock - A Proud Tradition

Scott Ostler over at the San Francisco Chronicle brings some historic perspective with regards to the Phoenix Lifelock and Los Angeles Farmers:

"Memo to knee-jerk WNBA haters laughing at the Phoenix Mercury and L.A. Sparks for wearing a sponsor on their jerseys, instead of team-name/city: It's a grand tradition. The Detroit Pistons began in Fort Wayne, Ind., as the Zollner Pistons, named for their owner and his business. Also in the NBL, no joke, were the Akron Firestone Non-Skids, the Akron Goodyear Wingfoots and the Toledo Jim White Chevrolets."

I don't think they were laughing so much as they were terrified, like a bunch of old people yelling at the girls to Get Off Their Lawn.

Packers Thinking of Putting Logos on Their Jerseys

From Sports Business Daily. The article is hidden behind a paywall, but you can get the gist from the title.

I suspect that the other sports were just looking for someone to step into the limelight and take the hit before bedecking their gear with logos. That "someone" turned out to be the humble Mercury of the WNBA, with the blessings of NBA Commissioner David Stern. Yes, soccer clubs have corporate logos but American soccer doesn't have a David Stern.

Corporate logos might be the road to heaven, or the road to hell. But wherever that road leads, the first milepost of the road was in Phoenix.

Phoenix Aftermath - The Roundtable

Ben York has a good thing going. He got some of the best writers of women's basketball together at the Phoenix Mercury community at Fanster.com.

Greg Esposito (Fanster.com), Kevin Pelton (Basketball Prospectus), Quentin McCall (Rethinking Basketball), Alex Chambers (13 Teams 1 Journey), and the famous Fat Louie (Women's Sports Blog) held a round table discussion there about the new sponsorship deal between Lifelock and the Phoenix Mercury.

The conversation is here. There's some good reading there and I suggest you visit.

As it turns out, this is the second Mercury blog I'll be adding to the ol' blogroll. The other is by Phoenix Stan in his Bright Side of the Sun blog. It's a blog primarily devoted to the Phoenix Suns, but during the off-season one can expect the blog to turn its attentions to the Mercury.

Trust me. Good reading. Check it out.

Update: LifeLock Logo Scrubbed from Mercury Website

In my earlier post today about the presence of a LifeLock logo on the "lockout" splash page of the Phoenix Mercury, I provided visual evidence that the picture on the lock looked exactly like the logo used by LifeLock, a Tempe, AZ based identify-theft prevention company.

However, if you go to the Mercury website now (link is here until Monday), you will find that the logo has now been scrubbed. The "lock" that locks (theoretically) the entire website now no longer has the LifeLock logo stamped on it.

Curiouser and curiouser? Did we unlock something we were never intended to unlock?