I always thought these corporate naming deals for stadiums were gross. I remember when Canadian stadiums had names like "The Coliseum" and "The Skydome" instead of "The Roger's Center".
That's the closest to Nascar I've seen yet. At the same time, I'm still a fan for the idea that elected officials should be forced to wear their sponsor's logos on their suits like this as well.
My favourite is MAC³PARK Stadium, the home of FC Zwolle in Zwolle, the Netherlands.
It is named after MAC³PARK, a collection of extremely boring business parks (ie office buildings in an industrial zone). The business parks in question are in nowhere near Zwolle (for Dutch standards).
I mean F1 teams are literally named directly after their corporate owners too (who are not necessarily the ones designing the engines/...) and people seem to love that.
I get why they do it, but at the very least it should be "sponsor name real name", not "sponsor name generic description of arena".
Spotify Camp Nou is annoying and worse than Camp Nou, but at least there is some soul and belonging. "Spotify Arena" would have been disgusting and empty.
It always boggles my mind when fans say "so and so at the AT&T stadium"... Until a new sponsor comes in.
In at least one town with a stadium of that name, most people do not refer to it by that name. Instead, it is referred to as Jerry's World for the owner of the franchise.
Concert venues are another naming rights area that is confusing. There's one in particular that has had its name changed so many times that I do not know what it is currently called. Instead, it is often referred to by the original sponsor by pretty much anyone of a certain age. Even if you call it the older name to younger people, they know which venue. Some names stick.
I guess they are laughing it off because it was another Allianz sponsored stadium depicted, and they got the OK from Allianz to make the joke as it is free attention.
If the AI design had chosen a non-Allianz branded location I bet the response would be different.
The race has nothing to do with the stadium, other than running past it. They don’t have to get permission from anyone. Also, there’s no evidence that AI was involved, it could have just as easily been some designer googling for “Allianz Stadium” and illustrating the first thing that came up.
Years ago I was doing internal login pages for pay day loan insurance saas. Decided to put their logos to avoid mixups. Just googled. One was named Vision, copied logo from https://www.visions.ca figuring they did land on the side. Couple years later I realized my mistake & fixed, nobody else had said anything
The government of New South Wales (the Australian state of which Sydney is the capital) commissioned a corporate logo depicting a waratah (the NSW state flower) and got one showing a lotus. They still use it on everything.
"Good enough for Australia" is a phrase I frequently heard from Aussies. There seems to be this attitude there that they're a frontier country where one improvises (half asses?) everything.
"Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck." - coined by social critic and journalist Donald Horne in his 1964 book The Lucky Country.
On the subject of flowers, the late Donald was a friend of a family friend who came over one night and after drinking a huge amount of wine decided in a midnight fit of inspiration (when we'd all gone to bed) to rearrange flowers throughout the house. We woke up in the morning to find little bits of flowers everywhere except the vases! Sadly, she passed away recently but it became a running joke in the family. Good sorts.
Pretty much. A lot of the innovations of our nation, come from that. Things like utes, inflatable escape slides on planes, race cameras, are all "hacks".
But considering you can still see the gold mine which caused the foundation of my town, it isn't that surprising. We might not be the battlers we believe we are, but there's still a history of a people all around us.
And they just flat out told everyone who pointed it out -- nope, you're looking at it wrong; and anyway we already paid those consultants so we'd better use it, what?
The more likely explanation is that the person manually googled all the landmarks of Sydney to get some vector images to cut and paste into a CAD program to extrude, and accidentally got the wrong one.
Easy mistake when there are 7 Allianz Stadiums in the world
https://www.allianz.com/en/about-us/brand/partnerships/stadi...
And it was probably 8 when they were designing the medal but Palmeiras didn't extend the naming rights contract https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nubank_Parque
Bayern Munich's stadium is one of the more famous in the world. More interesting that 0 people recognised it in the design process.
The US managed to issue a stamp with clearly the wrong Statue of Liberty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Liberty_Forever_stam...
Which presumably everyone in the design process should have recognized, if not practically everyone in the world.
The moral being, uh, it's weird how blind people can be when they're not looking for it.
To be fair, if I'm reading that right, the difference is "a small light patch on the middle spike"?[0] I can see people missing that easily enough!
[0] Absent contextual cues about height, location, etc., which aren't on the stamp
Wow, the sculptor got 3.5 million USD for copyright infringement from his copycat statue.
The Statue of Greed, located appropriately at a Casino
I always thought these corporate naming deals for stadiums were gross. I remember when Canadian stadiums had names like "The Coliseum" and "The Skydome" instead of "The Roger's Center".
They remind me of the "Brought to You by Carl’s Jr" scenes from Idiocracy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAM1rSObk4c
Year of the Depend adult undergarment.
Brought to you by a burning desire to serve supremely my own interests.
Lower league european football kits are my favourite, there is a team behind the ads
https://files.catbox.moe/a3fxhw.webp
https://files.catbox.moe/0op34u.jpeg
That's the closest to Nascar I've seen yet. At the same time, I'm still a fan for the idea that elected officials should be forced to wear their sponsor's logos on their suits like this as well.
My favourite is MAC³PARK Stadium, the home of FC Zwolle in Zwolle, the Netherlands.
It is named after MAC³PARK, a collection of extremely boring business parks (ie office buildings in an industrial zone). The business parks in question are in nowhere near Zwolle (for Dutch standards).
E-Sports teams are still the funniest here. From Shopify Black/Rebellion Gold to T1.
"BC Place" is still BC Place. It was the only World Cup venue that didn't have to hang drapes over its real name.
Wait til you see the names of the actual teams in the Japanese baseball league.
Real pro cycling teams:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCI_WorldTeam#2026 for this year's crop of linoleum manufacturers, insurance firms, and sportswashing petro-states.I mean F1 teams are literally named directly after their corporate owners too (who are not necessarily the ones designing the engines/...) and people seem to love that.
One German football team is named after a pharmaceuticals multinational.
(A special case, it was the workers team for the Bayer plant, like Woolwich Arsenal or 'Locomotiv' of many Slavic cities)
At least that one started as a worker's club. The worse offender is named after an energy drink.
This Indian cricket team is splendidly named:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pune_Warriors_India
Any examples?
Most of the NPB teams are corporate owned and named
- Chunichi Dragons > Chunichi Shimbun (news corporation)
- Hanshin Tigers > Hanshin Electric Railway
- Tokyo Yakult Swallows > Yakult Honsha (yes, the probiotic milk beverage company)
- Yokohama DeNA BayStars > DeNA (ecommerce/mobile games/online services)
- Yomiuri Giants > Yomiuri Shimbun (media conglomerate)
- Chiba Lotte Marines > Lotte Holdings (related to the South Korean Lotte Corporation mostly known for their confectionery and ice creams)
- Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks > SoftBank (I think everyone knows them on HN)
- Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters > Nippon Ham (food processing)
- Orix Buffaloes > Orix (investment banking)
- Saitama Seibu Lions > Seibu Railway
- Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles > Rakuten (I think everyone knows them on HN)
But that's not a Japanese only thing, the Korean (KBO) and Taiwanese (CPBL) baseball leagues are the same
Kia Tigers, KT Wiz, LG Twins, Lotte Giants, Samsung Lions
CTBC Brothers, Rakuten Monkeys, Uni-President 7-Eleven Lions, Fubon Guardians
And not even a baseball thing only the football teams in the region are the same
They basically embed company names directly into team names.
Here is a couple of examples: Fukuoka Softbank Hawks and Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters.
I get why they do it, but at the very least it should be "sponsor name real name", not "sponsor name generic description of arena".
Spotify Camp Nou is annoying and worse than Camp Nou, but at least there is some soul and belonging. "Spotify Arena" would have been disgusting and empty.
It always boggles my mind when fans say "so and so at the AT&T stadium"... Until a new sponsor comes in.
>so and so at the AT&T stadium
In at least one town with a stadium of that name, most people do not refer to it by that name. Instead, it is referred to as Jerry's World for the owner of the franchise.
Concert venues are another naming rights area that is confusing. There's one in particular that has had its name changed so many times that I do not know what it is currently called. Instead, it is often referred to by the original sponsor by pretty much anyone of a certain age. Even if you call it the older name to younger people, they know which venue. Some names stick.
The pun in this follow-up makes the whole mixup worthwhile: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn4n4l1yyvro
"'We're not going to run from it': Sydney Marathon laughs off medal error"
I guess they are laughing it off because it was another Allianz sponsored stadium depicted, and they got the OK from Allianz to make the joke as it is free attention.
If the AI design had chosen a non-Allianz branded location I bet the response would be different.
The race has nothing to do with the stadium, other than running past it. They don’t have to get permission from anyone. Also, there’s no evidence that AI was involved, it could have just as easily been some designer googling for “Allianz Stadium” and illustrating the first thing that came up.
Years ago I was doing internal login pages for pay day loan insurance saas. Decided to put their logos to avoid mixups. Just googled. One was named Vision, copied logo from https://www.visions.ca figuring they did land on the side. Couple years later I realized my mistake & fixed, nobody else had said anything
Feels kind of pathetic high-schooler level response... "oh well, we're just going to laugh it off, please join us. Enjoy your sloppily* made medal!"
* whether AI-assisted or just lazy human slop that went unnoticed up all the chain.
My own footnote reminds me of this other slop: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/06/starbucks-sout...
> It turned out some managers who approved the campaign never opened the email attachments showing the marketing material.
The government of New South Wales (the Australian state of which Sydney is the capital) commissioned a corporate logo depicting a waratah (the NSW state flower) and got one showing a lotus. They still use it on everything.
"Good enough for Australia" is a phrase I frequently heard from Aussies. There seems to be this attitude there that they're a frontier country where one improvises (half asses?) everything.
"Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck." - coined by social critic and journalist Donald Horne in his 1964 book The Lucky Country.
On the subject of flowers, the late Donald was a friend of a family friend who came over one night and after drinking a huge amount of wine decided in a midnight fit of inspiration (when we'd all gone to bed) to rearrange flowers throughout the house. We woke up in the morning to find little bits of flowers everywhere except the vases! Sadly, she passed away recently but it became a running joke in the family. Good sorts.
Pretty much. A lot of the innovations of our nation, come from that. Things like utes, inflatable escape slides on planes, race cameras, are all "hacks".
But considering you can still see the gold mine which caused the foundation of my town, it isn't that surprising. We might not be the battlers we believe we are, but there's still a history of a people all around us.
Wow, that always confused me since moving here. I thought I didn't know what a Waratah was, but no, it's the logo that's wrong.
Logo is https://www.nsw.gov.au/themes/custom/dcs_theme/favicons/sets... whereas the actual waratah looks like https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=waratah
And they just flat out told everyone who pointed it out -- nope, you're looking at it wrong; and anyway we already paid those consultants so we'd better use it, what?
Right there with the Milwaukee Marathon misspelling “Marathon” on their medals this year.
https://marathonhandbook.com/milwaukee-marathon-handed-out-4...
Someone vibed the medal design
Model bias towards northern hemisphere
You can tell it's an Aussie medal because all landmarks are depicted upside-down.
AI slop all the way up to the physical world :D
Actually AI would have probably gotten it right.
The more likely explanation is that the person manually googled all the landmarks of Sydney to get some vector images to cut and paste into a CAD program to extrude, and accidentally got the wrong one.
Allianz Marketing Head: My son's new favorite website is "Hackernews". They do not run ads, so how can we get the attention of their audience?
TCS. Say. no. more.