Spirit Communications Park will be part of The Commons at BullStreet in Columbia, S.C.
The minor league Columbia Fireflies merely had to look down the street to find a naming rights partner to welcome baseball back to South Carolina for the first time in more than a decade as Spirit Communications secured a 10-year, $3.5-million deal for the new $37-million Spirit Communications Park. The city is funding $30 million, while $7 million comes from ownership group Hardball Capital.
Spirit was born and raised in Columbia and is one of the 25 largest privately held firms in the state of South Carolina. Spirit was formed in 1984 by 11 independent telephone companies and cooperatives across the state and saw this as a proposition too good to pass up.
“When this opportunity came along, our president and CEO Bob Keane knew immediately that we were the right company for the venue rights, the best fit for it and obviously we weren’t going to lose it to anybody else, be it a competitor or someone else,” said Roddy Broadnax, director of marketing for Spirit Communications.
The stadium will seat 8,000 that can go up to 10,000 seats.
The Fireflies participate in the South Atlantic League as a Class A affiliate of the New York Mets and begin their home schedule on April 14 in their 8,000-seat stadium that can go up to 10,000 with lawn seating and concourse passes.
Broadnax said he went to Fort Wayne, Ind., to see the local minor league TinCaps, another Hardball Capital team, and upon returning to Columbia reported that, “Hey, we need to make this investment.”
“Again, Bob Keane had the vision of how we can make this not only for naming rights for a baseball stadium but can make it a tech village,” Broadnax said. “We are going to have the most technology-advanced baseball stadium in the country and plan to make this a big gigabit speed community to attract to the area small businesses and large businesses in health care, finance and education.”
The deal makes just as much sense for the team, said Abby Naas, vice president of marketing and public relations for the Fireflies.
“We wanted to tie in to the community as much as possible,” Naas said. “We tried to do that from the get-go and are doing that now. This was a great way to help kick that off and we were lucky enough to find Spirit Communications which is obviously headquartered here in Columbia and was willing to work with us on this.
“They are a great company and the fact they were willing to go with us on this project after seeing some of the work that Hardball Capital has done with other venues around the country speaks volumes. It was important for us to go in with someone who is strong in this community and also around the Carolinas.”
Naas said that Spirit Communications will have their logo splashed inside and outside the stadium and that all communications will refer to the venue as Spirit Communications Park.
“They have use of the facility and as a communications company they also get to show off what they can do at the venue. The whole site we’re building the ballpark on is going to be a gigabit community. There will be quite a bit of not just Wi-Fi going in but the speed of everything, not just at the ballpark but everything that is being built around the ballpark. It’s going to be pretty phenomenal.”
As a city facility, the ballpark will be open all the time, save for when there is a ticketed event.
“People can come over and use it all the time,” Naas said. “We’ll open as soon as the sun comes up and when the sun goes down we’ll close. People can come and walk laps around the concourse, run laps, bring over a bag lunch and sit in our picnic area and enjoy the facility. That is one of our unique features.”
Other highlights include a kids’ zone area and indoor batting cages that are on the street level, which gives fans walking into the stadium an opportunity to see the team taking their batting practice before the game and to interact with players. Right field was pushed out so the stadium can accommodate a full-size soccer and football field going down the right field line. The upstairs club lounges include 7,000 square feet of open event space for luncheons, dinners, wedding receptions and more.
In short, there is a lot to sell, which pleases Broadnax.
“As the marketing guy this is by far the biggest thing in South Carolina’s history for our company,” Broadnax said. “Everybody uses their wireless phones and devices at every game. Social media is at an all-time high. People want to check in, take pictures and be able to talk, so one of the things we’re making sure is the user experience at Spirit Communications Park will be second to none.”
As for the interesting team name, Naas said there really is a local connection.
“We held a "name the team" contest, got over 1,500 submissions and six people actually chose the name Fireflies,” she said. “There is a phenomenon that happens about 20 miles from downtown Columbia in Hopkins at Congaree National Park. It is one of only six places in the world where for two weeks every year fireflies come together and synchronize their glow so it is like a natural strobe light in the forest. It’s pretty incredible and definitely unique for the community.
“When we named our team we wanted to be unique and we are the only team to ever name themselves Fireflies. We wanted local and obviously this ties-in to the local community with the forest down south. We also wanted fun and our own field can glow in the dark. You can’t get more fun than that.”
Interviewed for this story: Roddy Broadnax, (803) 726-7013; Abby Naas, (803) 888-3007