A rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet… and when taxpayers have just poured $600 million into growing that rose, getting $35 million back in naming rights would help sweeten the odour, ever so slightly.

That’s what makes the B.C. Government’s decision to keep the name of B.C. Place Stadium so troubling. Telus, a huge company already making a $3 billion investment in B.C. over the coming few years, wanted the name of the recently-refurbished, taxpayer-owned stadium.

They thought they had a deal, or were very, very close. And then the government inexplicably changed its mind.

The first government news release claimed the B.C. Place name was too iconic to give up. Subsequent interviews have hinted that parceling out advertising rights may generate more money—although B.C. Place is already chockfull of ads. And now, apparently, the naming rights are off the table all together. And then there’s this report—that government itself heavily courted Telus to take the naming rights, before backing out.

As a sports fan and a lifelong B.C. resident who has been to events at B.C. Place ranging from Olympic medal ceremonies to the 1994 Grey Cup to a Billy Graham crusade, let me say this: quit being so precious about the B.C. Place name. Take the money and go.

I’m not sure what government thinks they can get out of naming rights. This is a stadium that hosts ten CFL games and 15 MSL games a year, plus trade shows and the odd super-concert. This isn’t Rogers Arena, which is much more heavily used (and has had three names in its life, with no problems—remember GM Place and Canada Hockey Place?).

In fact, sports business guru Tom Mayenknecht says the dollars offered by Telus are ahead of most offers. The deal was even better than Toronto’s Air Canada Centre (a much more valuable property with 41 NHL games, 40 NBA games, 35 AHL games, and dozens of concerts—naming rights cost $1.5 million a year) or Montreal’s Bell Centre (again, with 41 NHL games plus concerts—at $800,000 annually).

As Tom put it: “So no matter how you cut it, per capita and even in absolute terms, it [the proposed Telus deal] compares with the best naming-rights deals in North America.”

From where I write, $35 million sounds pretty good to cash-strapped taxpayers.