Sporting Kansas City again teams up with a non-profit partner. From January Sporting Park will officially be known as Children’s Mercy Park, honouring local pediatric hospital.

Though it’s still officially called Sporting Park, we decided to already switch to its new name: Children’s Mercy Park. The home of Sporting Kansas City will officially change name on January 1, 2016, but since the deal was made public on Thursday most media outlets seem to have used the upcoming name.

It’s the first case we know of that sees a hospital buy naming rights from a football club. An interesting example that will see the healthcare facility pay undisclosed fees for 10 years. One can expect these would not be high amounts since the hospital is a not-for-profit facility.

Part of the contract includes a new branch of the hospital to be incorporated into the National Training Center, expected to be ready in 2017. The Children’s Mercy branch of the NTC will offer a broad range of sports medicine services for youth athletes of all sports.

The rehabilitation wing has been designed to include therapy pools, basketball goals, batting cages, a turf field and a gait analysis laboratory. In the research space, Children’s Mercy doctors will work to identify young athletes who are more likely to sustain injuries and create various training programs to prevent them.

It’s not the first time Sporting Kansas City teamed up with a non-profit organization. Previous naming rights deal with Livestrong foundation was seen as great publicity boost until Lance’s Armstrong image issues. That partnership only lasted until 2013 as a result.

© Brent Flanders (cc: by-nc-nd)