The value of the naming rights deal with Caesars is worth approximately $138 million, but specific details were not revealed other than that the Saints will be the recipient of all of the proceeds. That provision is not new, and was agreed upon between the state and the Saints in 2009 when the NFL team was first looking into stadium naming rights deals.

The Saints will use the $138 million from the Caesars deal on the multi-year, $450 million Superdome renovation project.

Saints spokesperson Greg Bensel said the club was still finalizing its partnership with Caesars and that an official announcement of the name change would occur once the agreement is inked. A Caesars spokesperson would not comment until the deal is complete.

But on Thursday, pictures were already circulating of the Caesars lettering going up inside the Superdome as construction crews worked and public officials toured the building.

"It's a done deal," said state Sen. Bodi White, R-Central, who heads the joint budget committee that approved the renaming.

The deal represents a key step for the Saints organization in its hunt for a sponsor to succeed Mercedes-Benz. The German automaker bought the Superdome naming rights in 2011 for 10 years for a reported $50 to $60 million.

That agreement ended July 15, and in recent days workers have removed the silver letters of the carmakers' name and started prepping to remove its logo from the Superdome’s gleaming white roof.
When the Caesars agreement is finalized, the Saints will be the first National Football League team to play in a stadium named for a casino. Hard Rock, the hotel, restaurant, live entertainment and gambling company that holds naming rights to the home venue of the Miami Dolphins, wasn't allowed to have any references to gambling when its agreement was made in 2016.

Two other venues in major professional sports are affiliated with casinos, however. The National Hockey League's Arizona Coyotes play at Gila River Arena, which is tied to a casino group, and the Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut is home to the Women's National Basketball Association's Connecticut Sun.

Evan Holmes, an executive at ASM Global, which operates the Superdome on behalf of the Superdome Commission, told a commission meeting Thursday that the Caesars deal won't affect the Superdome’s ability to host amateur events such as high school football championships or the NCAA basketball Final Four. He also said the logos won't compromise the Superdome’s iconic nature.

"The building has the status that it does, and we didn't want to risk any negative impact of that," Holmes said.
For Caesars, the naming rights could help make the Reno, Nevada-based company a preeminent gambling brand in Louisiana at a critical time. Lawmakers opened the doors to sports betting during this year’s legislative session.

The company, which operates dozens of casinos and other entertainment venues across the United States and overseas, is also in the process of rebranding the Harrah’s casino that it runs at the foot of Canal Street under the Caesars moniker, though the timing of that change hasn’t been finalized.

While the Superdome is owned by taxpayers and overseen by a state agency, the specifics of the Caesars deal “will remain undisclosed,” according to a handout that lawmakers received Thursday’s committee meeting. The documents say Caesars signed a confidentiality agreement with the Saints to avoid putting the team at a “competitive disadvantage.”

“While the team wishes to be fully transparent and respects the members' questions about the financial terms, the team asked that the financial terms remain confidential,” the handout read.

Eric Smallwood, president of Apex Marketing Group in Detroit, which advises on sports sponsorship deals, said the headline terms of the Caesars deal are roughly in line with New Orleans' ranking as the 50th largest designated media market in the U.S.
But in larger markets, naming rights deals have been substantially more lucrative. Two years ago, Los Angeles signed what was the largest such deal so far when it sold the naming rights for the stadium used by the NFL's Chargers and Rams to financial services company SoFi for $400 million over 20 years.

Smallwood said the headline figure is only a part of these deals, which typically include side sponsorship agreements that can generate millions of additional dollars a year for the sports franchises.

"These deals are all over the map, both in terms of the financial arrangements and what is made public about them," he said.

This is just the second time in the Superdome's history that naming rights for the venue have been up for grabs. The building opened in 1975 as the Louisiana Superdome, until Mercedes-Benz bought the rights a decade ago.

In addition to Saints home games, the Dome hosts about 200 events per year and has featured scores of concerts, several national championship football games, multiple NCAA Final Four tournaments and seven Super Bowls. It is set to host its eighth Super Bowl in 2025.

By Amie Just and Blake Paterson