Comcast Center
This university’s athletics department announced Monday that the arena once known as Comcast Center will now be known as Xfinity Center.
“We have enjoyed a longstanding and successful partnership with Comcast for more than a decade, and are excited to extend this relationship with the renaming of the XFINITY Center,” Athletic Director Kevin Anderson said in a news release. “It is our goal to continue to provide our fans with a special gameday experience, and we look forward to unveiling new amenities at the XFINITY Center in the near future.”
Since 2002, the building has housed the men’s and women’s basketball, gymnastics, volleyball and wrestling teams as well as administrative offices for the athletic department and the student-athlete Academic Support and Career Development Unit.
The change was agreed upon in a clause of the original contract between the university and Comcast Corp., which granted the company the ability to make changes like this that would not affect the terms of the agreement, Tim McMurray, the interim deputy director of athletics for external relations, wrote in an email. Xfinity is the brand name for Comcast’s cable, television and landline services.
In the midst of the university’s switch to the Big Ten athletic conference and several other changes around the campus, students and other university community members have had mixed reactions to the name change, some rejecting the alteration and others taking it in stride.
“As a sophomore, it would be a shame watching traditions that I came to love during my first year go away,” sophomore electrical engineering major Lauren Sincavage said. “If we are making one big change, might as well just make a bunch and get them over with. New conference, new brand, I guess.”
McMurray and other athletics executives recognize that with a change this big, “it will take people time to adjust to it,” he wrote.
“The general tone of feedback has been one of understanding, as we are honoring an (sic) provision from a long-term contract,” he wrote.
Changing the signs in and around the venue to reflect this adjustment has already begun and will be finished by the end of August, he said. Additionally, all collateral, including marketing elements, email signatures, business cards and more, will need to change.
Conversation about the change between senior athletic department officials, Xfinity representatives and Maryland Sports Properties began last summer and continued through the most recent academic year, McMurray wrote.
