Enjoy the Miller Park moniker, Brewers fans. Your ballpark will have a new name in 2021. Tuesday night American Family Insurance announced the company has agreed to a naming rights deal with the Brewers and the stadium will be renamed American Family Field effective Jan. 1, 2021. The deal has been in the works since last year.
“The name American Family Field incorporates what we learned from fans, the Brewers and marketing research that included analysis of our brand and other sporting venue names,” American Family Insurance chairman Jack Salzwedel said in a statement. “The name is short, simple and sweet with its alliteration of ‘Family’ and ‘Field’. The words ‘American Family’ capture our brand and reflect the family-orientated atmosphere that our research showed fans clearly value in the ballpark.”
Miller Park has been known as Miller Park since it opened in 2001. The club’s naming rights deal with Miller Brewing Company expires at the end of this year. As part of the agreement with American Family Insurance, the club’s spring training park in Arizona will be renamed American Family Fields of Phoenix. It had been known as Maryvale Baseball Park.
To state the obvious, Miller Park is a far superior ballpark name to American Family Field. If you’re going the corporate sponsor route to name your ballpark, you can’t really go wrong with a brewery. Beer and baseball just go together (especially when the home team is named the Brewers). An insurance company doesn’t have the same feel, you know?
SunTrust Park, home of the Braves, is the only MLB park to undergo a name change in 2020. It will become Truist Park following SunTrust’s merger with BB&T. The Rangers are moving into a new stadium, Globe Life Field, this season as well.
