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What Will The MCI Center Be Called Now?

With the planned merger of MCI with British Telecom, what happens to the name for the Bullets new arena? In case you haven't heard, MCI and British Telecom are planning a merger to become a true international telecommunications carrier, under the name Concert PLC. By most indications I've seen to date, the merger will more than likely be approved by the appropriate regulators.

What will the new name be? Concert Center? Concert Hall? Neither seem to have the panache that MCI Center has (which I like). I don't think anyone has thought about this yet. In the meantime, it will continue to be known as the MCI Center, and I'd be pretty sure that MCI/Concert will continue its sponsorship of the new arena.

There are precedents for renaming the arena. For example, the arena the replaced the Boston Garden last year was originally to be named the Shawmut Center. When Shawmut National Corp. was acquired by Fleet Financial Corp. during the arena's construction, the arena was renamed to FleetCenter.

What happens next? No one is saying. Until the merger is approved, which could take months, it will continue to be known as MCI Center. After the merger is approved, who knows. Stay tuned.

wtf 10 November 1996

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