179167122 Kabam Field at Memorial Stadium. Photo: Getty Images.

When the ruins of our civilisation are picked over by some future archaeologist, they’ll surely look at the shrines to sporting prowess we left behind, and ask themselves: “Did the ancients call this Telstra or ANZ?”

It’s the scourge of the age. Every year, it seems like a host of stadiums, arenas, fields and grounds are going by a new name, forgoing any sense of identity to make some cash off one its most fundamental attributes. It’s fortunate that the Romans didn’t sell naming rights, lest the Colosseum may have ended up being called the Stadio Temple Money Changers.

It takes a rather attuned fan (or an inveterate gambler) to stay abreast of the changes these days. Do you know where Cbus Super Stadium is? And how is the stadium so super? Answer one: Robina. Answer two: with apologies to Gold Coast Titans fans, it isn’t super – the new sponsor is the big industry super fund for building and construction workers, which prompted the change from another of the more specious stadium names you’ll ever come across, Skilled Park.

In one sense, maybe all of this nomenclature will be of use to our far-off archaeologist. It’s kind of like when a cricket match from the ’80s is re-aired and the first thing you notice is the cigarette advertising around the boundary – these rights-held stadium names surely tell us something about our times, with the preponderance of banking, insurance and financial services companies that spend the money to get their name above the turnstiles.

It may seem grubby and corporate to fans, but it’s probably what we deserve. Venues are cashing in because they have to, under pressure from spectators to supply an ever-greater level of amenity when they come to watch. There’s been plenty of commentary about “gameday experience” recently, particularly in connection to the rather subdued season-opening crowd numbers in the NRL and AFL, as well as the deluxe-treatment visit of Major League Baseball to Sydney. Spectators are consumers, with options, and sports – leagues and venues both – have to make a convincing case for them to part with their money.

The downside of all this is the idea that sports grounds are no longer being built to last. Buildings now become obsolete in a couple of decades, needing to be replaced by something new to meet the needs of demanding fans, or are at least in a constant state of renovation (check out how many of the nation’s cricket grounds have undergone works in recent years). In this context, the stadiums themselves are barely more permanent than the names they adopt.

Perhaps the ultimate sign that naming rights have truly become pervasive was the draw for the Asian Cup football last March. The venues for the competition were referred to in the most prosaic way: Brisbane Stadium, Canberra Stadium, the blast-from-past Stadium Australia and the wonderfully descriptive Melbourne Rectangular Stadium.

It looked altogether weird, and in its ultra-bureaucratic way, calculated to avoid possible sponsorship conflicts, was its own kind of spooky. It’s probably a vain hope, but we forlornly wait for the next classic sports stadium, with the next classic stadium name, to come along.

STADIUM NAMING RIGHTS FOLLIES

1. Etihad Westpac Allianz AAMI Stadium: Examples of dreaded duplications. There’s an Etihad in Melbourne and Manchester, a Westpac in Wellington and Melbourne, an Allianz in Sydney and Munich, and an AAMI in Adelaide and Melbourne. And none of them incorporate any kind of place name.

2. Kabam Field at Memorial Stadium: US universities are invariably funding-hungry – one Florida school tried to do a deal with a private prison firm. UC Berkeley sold the rights to its football field to games developer Kabam, but to be fair, Kabam’s chief executive is a graduate.

3. Enron Field: This was a classic. The energy giant/giant fraud put up a 30-year, $100 million deal for the kitschy baseball field in its home town of Houston. It lasted one, as the company went bankrupt in 2001. It’s now called Minute Maid Park.

4. Fukuoka Yahoo! Dome: All bets are off in Japan, which has a bunch of stadium names as weird as their TV game shows (the best: the former Kleenex Stadium Miyagi). Like the KFC Yum! Center in Kentucky, any stadium with an exclamation mark has issues.

5. The Kia Oval: It’s appalling to think that if the birthplace of the Ashes can get a corporate tag, why not eventually the MCG or SCG? Note to the marketers: calling it “the historic Kia Oval” is a contradiction in terms.