The Stadium We Were Born to Sponsor

When we needed a name for our new stadium, we thought about keeping it simple. Wealthsimple Stadium has a certain ring to it, right? It sounds almost perfect. But we weren’t satisfied with almost. Because when it comes to building a stadium, almost perfect isn’t good enough.

After all, we did a lot of preparation for this. We scoped out a site — we demanded it be in downtown Toronto, our home city. We wanted a prominent location, and decided to put it right next to Rogers Centre where the Blue Jays play, and blocks away from Scotiabank Arena, where the Raptors recently won Toronto’s first basketball championship. We dreamed it up, made plans, and hired a firm to design it to our specifications.

Of course, because we’re a financial company with an almost obsessive eye toward cost efficiency, we did the math on stadium sponsorship. We discovered that it’s not cheap to put your name on the place where people play sports.

We realized stadiums are like Sean “Puffy” Combs (or “Puff Daddy” or “P. Diddy”): the names change, even if what’s within the arenas never really do. The San Francisco Giants’ waterfront ballpark was christened in 2000 as Pacific Bell Park, then rechristened SBC Park in 2003, then re-rechristened AT&T Park in 2006, and remained AT&T Park for 13 years until this spring. Now it’s called Oracle Park, meaning that for a brief period the Bay Area had both an Oracle Park and an Oracle Arena. The O, as the arena was called, was the longtime home of the Golden State Warriors. The O closed this summer, though, so next season the Warriors will move into their glistening new home, the Chase Center — not to be confused with Chase Field, which is where the Arizona Diamondbacks play.

And just because you’re not a giant bank or telecom company or even something people haven't heard of doesn’t mean that you can’t name a stadium. Like: there’s a Smoothie King Center. And a Walking Stick Resort Arena and a KFC Yum! Arena and a Serenity Adult Undergarments Field House. All totally real. Except the Serenity Adult Undergarments one.

So, given all that information, what did we decide to do? Sponsor a smaller stadium. Like, a lot smaller. Like the perfect size if you live in a dollhouse and could be crushed by a commemorative collectible beer cup. That’s why the name Wealthsimple Stadium didn’t sound perfect. But Wealthsimple Tiny Stadium did.

We only wanted to sponsor a stadium that’s a tiny fraction of the size of other stadiums because Wealthsimple’s fees are only a fraction of the fees charged by traditional financial institutions. In the five years since we launched, Wealthsimple has saved its customers more than $55 million in fees compared to what they’d have been charged by the average big Canadian bank. Saving our clients money — and helping to put that money to work to help it turn into even more money — seemed like a better use of our funds than seeing our name on a big fancy ballpark.

But you can still visit Wealthsimple Tiny Stadium — because even though it’s small, it’s also real. Come on down to Front Street West in downtown Toronto. We're just south of the CN Tower, near Bremner Blvd. Swing by and we’ll take a photo that makes you look like you’re the size of Godzilla. And then just marvel at how tiny the thing is. Just like our fees.

Written By

The Editors