Joe Ellis is closing in on 20 seasons in the Broncos’ front office, but each season-opener makes his as nervous and giddy as the last.

“Especially home games,” Ellis, the team’s president and CEO, said in an interview with The Denver Post on Saturday. “You want to win so bad for your fans and season-ticket holders.”

It’s those fans Ellis says he has in mind as he continues to search for a new naming-rights partner for the team’s stadium.

Last August the Broncos severed their sponsorship agreement with Sports Authority that was valued at $55.3 million, and they assumed the rest of Metropolitan Football Stadium District’s naming rights contract with the company. The now-bankrupt Sports Authority owed nearly $20 million over the last five years of its naming rights deal.

The Broncos assumed the remainder of the contract to gain control over the process of finding a new sponsor, and last year employed marketing agency WME-IMG to secure a new naming rights partner.

“There’s a sense of urgency and we as a staff and our agency are working hard to get the right company in at the right deal,” Ellis said. “We’ve got big obligations to try to sustain and maintain and improve the stadium, and the naming rights component is a key component in terms of funding.

“We feel we’re moving closer, but we don’t believe we’re to the point where we can start to get excited. We’re still talking to a lot of people. But I’m optimistic.”

Last year, Ellis had hoped a new brand — the third since the stadium opened in 2001 — would be on the face of the Broncos’ stadium for the start of the 2017 stadium, for both optics and financial reasons. According to Ellis, the most recent analysis has raised the projected cost to maintain and continuously upgrade the stadium to $650 million over 20 years.

“I think switching names on a building every five years or something like that is just not the right optic,” Ellis said. “So we’re trying to find the right partner that will be with us for a while. Whether that’s 10 years or 15 years, I don’t have the answer to that.”

In the meantime, the Sports Authority branding remains plastered to the stadium to avoid a temporary name change and additional expenses in removing the signage. And the team has moved forward with plans for a proposed entertainment district around the stadium. Related Articles September 19, 2020 Jackson: Silence at empty Broncos, NFL stadiums never sounded so terrible

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“If we’re going to have to raise $650 million collectively with the district to maintain and improve the stadium and keep it up to a standard that the NFL and our fans will require, we’re going to have to have some creative financing solutions and this development plan or concept is a way we can possibly do that. It won’t fulfill all of our financial needs, but it’s a component, just like naming rights would be.

“It’s a mixed-use proposal of retail and housing of all different varieties as well as maybe office and hotel. There are a lot of different components that go into the concept, some park space we might be able to utilize for events outside the building, things along those lines. It’s still in the conceptual phase, but I think you’ll start to hear more and more about it in the next 12 months.”