The future Brooklyn home of the NBA’s Nets will be named Barclays Center, in the most lucrative deal ever for an arena in the United States, The Post has learned.
London-based Barclays Bank has agreed to pay the Nets “hundreds of millions of dollars over the next 20 years” for the naming rights to the planned 18,000-seat arena in Prospect Heights that will house the franchise once it moves from New Jersey to Brooklyn for the 2009-2010 season, sources said.
The slam-dunk agreement is the “most expensive arena deal” in the country, exceeding the $9.3 million-a-year over 20 years that Royal Philips Electronics is paying to name Atlanta’s Philips Arena, one source said. The exact dollar amount could not be learned last night.
The Nets and Barclays Bank plan to announce the agreement tomorrow during a noon conference at the Brooklyn Museum. The Nets declined comment and Barclays did not return a phone message.
Barclays is the largest bank in the world by total assets and is better known in England than the United States. It is also has operations elsewhere in Europe, and in Asia and Africa.
The Nets deal allows Barclays to put a major flag in the ground in its U.S. operations and could be viewed as part of grand expansion plan.
A confidential December audit conducted by KPMG indicated the Nets estimate earning $31.2 million annually through arena sponsorship and naming rights.
The Nets deal blows away the agreement reached two weeks ago by Prudential Financial to pay $105.3 million over 20 years for the rights to have an 18,500-seat arena in downtown Newark called Prudential Center.
Citigroup Inc. last year agreed to pay the most lucrative deal for naming rights to a stadium.
It will pay the New York Mets $400 million over 20 years to call the team’s new Queens stadium Citi Field.
The $637 million Brooklyn arena is part of Nets owner Bruce Ratner’s $4 billion Atlantic Yards project, which also includes 16 skyscrapers with residential and commercial space.
The Frank Gehry-designed 22-acre project – with its monolithic brick, glass and steel high-rises – will create a new borough skyline and could have a groundbreaking as early as in a few weeks.