Rose Garden Moda Center Credit: rosequarter.com
Rose Garden Moda Center

Goodbye, Rose Garden. Hello, Moda Center.

Wait. What the heck’s a Moda Center?

Moda Center is named after Moda Health, which signed a 10-year naming rights agreement with the Portland Trail Blazers. And they are wasting no time: The Rose Quarter website has already been updated with the new venue name.

The Columbian reports:

Physical transformation of the renamed arena and Rose Quarter will begin immediately, with new signage and other visual elements being added gradually. New graphics for the home court surface of the Trail Blazers will debut in time for the teamโ€™s 2013-14 regular season home opener on November 2 versus the defending Western Conference Champion San Antonio Spurs.

While the Moda name might take a little getting used to, there are some good things about the name change. Moda Health (formerly known as ODS) is a locally based company with 1,400 employees. It’s a health company, not a fast-food slinger or a big box store. And it rhymes with “Yoda,” which can only be a good thing.

Ned Lannamann is a writer and editor in Portland, Oregon. He writes about film, music, TV, books, travel, tech, food, drink, outdoors, and other things.

17 replies on “The Rose Garden Is Now the Moda Center”

  1. They could at least have kept part of the name. What would have been so bad about Moda Rose Garden or Moda Garden? Moda Center sounds like a suburban office park.

  2. Pathetic.

    And even more pathetic is the fact that us consumers are such suckers that advertising like this actually works on us (otherwise companies wouldn’t be willing to fork over all that cash to hijack these names). We’re such sheep.

  3. It’s not a problem for me.

    Me, in November:
    “The Blazers are playing at the Rose Garden.”

    Me in five years:
    “The Blazers are playing at the Rose Garden.”

    Me in ten years:
    “The Blazers are playing at the Rose Garden.”

    Problem solved. Anyone who doesn’t know what the Rose Garden is 10 years from now will be like chumps who don’t know what the Banfield is. We can snicker at them and exchange our secret handshake.

  4. Moda Center ranks barely above Sleep Train Arena and Time Warner Cable Arena. I don’t know about everyone else but I’m still calling it the Rose Garden.

  5. You all realize this is how everyone reacts to every arena renaming that’s ever happened, right? “RRRRGGGG NEVER!”

    Tip: try not giving a shit which millionaires are paying which other millionaires to write something on the side of a building. Remember, we only care (on 45 days a year, max) what a handful of the millionaires INSIDE the building are doing with a basketball.

  6. Mercury-bot, I demand analysis of how this marketing decision does or does not relate to shifting incentives in the insurance and medical industry as a result of the Affordable Care Act of 2010!

  7. “Tip: try not giving a shit which millionaires are paying which other millionaires to write something on the side of a building. Remember, we only care (on 45 days a year, max) what a handful of the millionaires INSIDE the building are doing with a basketball.”

    I nominally agree with this, but try suggesting that the world’s largest and richest sport isn’t some indy little niche that successfully marketed itself to Americans too stupid to know that billions had been spent trying to induce Americans to care about soccer and that they didn’t just come to discover this wonderful little piece of Portland.

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