Reliant Stadium may be getting a new name

A Houston Texans flag flies under an American flag outside Reliant Stadium before an NFL football game against the Indianapolis Colts at Reliant Stadium, Sunday, Nov. 3, 2013, in Houston. (Cody Duty / Houston Chronicle) less A Houston Texans flag flies under an American flag outside Reliant Stadium before an NFL football game against the Indianapolis Colts at Reliant Stadium, Sunday, Nov. 3, 2013, in Houston. (Cody Duty / Houston ... more Photo: Cody Duty, Houston Chronicle Photo: Cody Duty, Houston Chronicle Image 1 of / 20 Caption Close Reliant Stadium may be getting a new name 1 / 20 Back to Gallery

Texans fans on Wednesday largely shrugged off the news Reliant Stadium may have a new name, saying what happens on the field is what matters most.

NRG Energy, the parent company of Reliant Energy and the state's largest electricity retailer, confirmed it hopes to rebrand the South Loop sports complex as NRG Park, with every facility dropping the Reliant name for NRG, as in NRG Stadium, NRG Arena and NRG Center.

Surprise at the news of the proposed name change quickly gave way to jokes questioning whether the new moniker would improve the luck for the team with the worst record in the NFL last season.

"NRG Stadium? Not Really Good Stadium is overdoing it. Texans will turn it around," one fan tweeted.

NRG, which acquired Reliant's retail operations in 2009 and is dual-headquartered in New Jersey and Houston, said it will swap out every sign bearing the Reliant name at the Harris County-owned park before the football season begins this fall. The board of the Harris County Sports and Convention Corp. must approve the deal before work can begin, but company officials said they have been working closely with the agency that runs the park, as well as the Texans and Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo, and are hopeful the plan will be approved.

The sports corporation issued a statement confirming the item would appear on its March 19 board agenda, but did not say what decision, if any, staff would recommend.

Reliant bought the naming rights for the Texans' stadium and surrounding buildings in 2002 for $300 million, the most lucrative deal of its kind at the time.

The 32-year agreement required Reliant to pay about $10 million a year, with 75 percent going to the Texans, 15 percent to the Livestock Show & Rodeo and 10 percent to Harris County. Those terms will remain the same, company officials said Wednesday.

Expansion mode

NRG Texas Retail and Reliant President Elizabeth Killinger said Wednesday the company "felt like now was the right time to really move to the family name so that as we bring more products and services to market, people will realize the relationship between the different companies."

The green-energy-focused company, currently peddling new products at the rodeo, is in expansion mode, having announced the acquisition of another retail electric business just this week.

Killinger declined to give an exact price tag for the cost to rebrand the Reliant complex, but confirmed it would be more than $100,000, and stressed that the company would be picking up the entire tab. She said it also plans to ask the county for permission sometime this springto outfit complex facilities with "sustainable energy enhancements" such as solar panels.

The Texans and rodeo deferred to NRG for comment on Wednesday.

The rebranding could mean costs outside the park, as well. While changing the name of a rail station requires the approval of the Metropolitan Transit Authority board, all of the maps and signs for Metro's train routes that reflect a stop at 'Reliant Park,' as do the automated announcements on the trains.

A smart move

Marketing experts said the Texans and rodeo do not have much to worry about, in terms of harm to their brand, and that NRG has everything to gain with the change.

Betsy Gelb, a marketing professor at the University of Houston's C.T. Bauer College of Business, said it is a smart move by a company whose name recognition in Houston is non-existent.

"If you want people to like you - and what corporation doesn't? - the first thing is, they have to know you exist," Gelb said. "One thing that NRG is trying to do here is to say: 'We're proud of being associated with Houston and this is a big-time way to do that.' "

NRG added its name to Reliant in 2010, the year after the acquisition, giving it a new logo and the tag line "An NRG Company," but has kept the Reliant name around. The new rebranding would eliminate the Reliant name from the complex altogether.

"Historically it has been a more difficult transition for professional teams when they have switched their stadium's naming rights from one brand to a different one that is completely unrelated," Rice University sports management professor Clark Haptonstall wrote in an email. "It will be an expensive transition for NRG to change all of the logos throughout the stadium and inside of the park itself, but they'll know how to do it."

Kirk Wakefield, executive director of Sports Sponsorship and Sales at Baylor University's Hankamer School of Business, said "it only makes sense to have a unified branding strategy."

"I'm a little surprised it took this long," he said, saying the move is "part of a long-term strategy with the goal of increasing brand health for NRG on a national basis."

'Married to the Texans'

The last time a Houston stadium was renamed was in 2002, the same year Reliant inked its naming rights deal, when Enron Field became Minute Maid Park, a change that was met with skepticism and orange juice-related jokes ("Beat them to a pulp").

Huffington Post blogger Susan Whitbourne, a psychology professor at UMass Amherst with an interest in sports fan behavior, said it can be "really tough" for fans to swallow stadium name changes. "There needs to be a lot of work done by a company, if they're going to be doing this, to build fan loyalty and not just take it as a given that everyone will be OK with it," she said.

NRG should not have a problem winning over diehard Texans fans.

"I'm not married to them," said a fan who calls himself Joe Texan. "I'm married to the Texans."

Dug Begley contributed to this report.