Statement of Purpose

Matt Bannister (left), executive vice president
of Corporate Responsibility and Sponsorships for PeoplesBank, and Ben Weiss, general manager of PeoplesBank Arena.

Brian Canina says the lengthy process that ended with PeoplesBank acquiring the naming rights to what was the XL Center in Hartford actually began with talk of putting the institution’s brand on another Connecticut arena.

Indeed, a firm selling the naming rights for Mohegan Sun Arena approached the bank in late 2023, said Canina, the institution’s president and chief operating officer. And while the bank’s leaders kicked the tires on the concept, as a way to make a name for itself in the Connecticut market, they ultimately decided the casino’s broad regional, national, and even international client mix was not exactly the strong local audience it was seeking.

“It would have been dollars that weren’t necessarily working as hard as they could for us,” he said, adding, however, that the many potential benefits of putting the bank’s name on an arena became more apparent through that exercise. And when the bank’s leaders saw a small news item detailing how the naming rights for the XL Center would be coming up for bid, they eagerly entered that fray.

Eventually, PeoplesBank bank entered into a nine-month negotiating process that ended with acquiring the naming rights to the arena in downtown Hartford in a 10-year deal for $20 million, with an average annual payment of $2 million, according to the Hartford Business Journal. The deal comes with two five-year options for renewal, said Matt Bannister, executive vice president of Corporate Responsibility and Sponsorships for PeoplesBank, so it could run until 2046 if all options are exercised.

As he talked about return on investment from the naming rights, Canina said there are several ways to measure it — everything from deposits to new commercial loans to overall market share in the Connecticut region, where the bank has been making a strong push since establishing a retail presence with the acquisition of First National Bank of Suffield in 2018. But perhaps the biggest is the opportunity to firmly differentiate the institution from the former People’s United Bank, formerly known as … People’s Bank.

Indeed, it’s been more than three years since that institution merged with M&T Bank and became fully integrated into M&T, but confusion lingers, especially in Connecticut, where People’s United had a strong presence, having started as Bridgeport Savings Bank in 1842, said Canina, adding that the PeoplesBank Arena should help put some of that confusion to rest.

“We’ve had a lot of challenges with our brand because of the confusion with People’s United Bank,” he explained. “The people of Connecticut know People’s United Bank as People’s Bank, so when they see our PeoplesBank signs, it’s hard to differentiate.”

The acquisition of the naming rights to the arena comes as it is undergoing more than $145 million in renovations that include everything from new seats in the lower bowl to creation of additional loge seating; from the addition of several ‘bunker suites’ (boxes that sit under the concourse and feature a walkway up to floor-level seats) to a new, 750-seat PeoplesBank Event Level Club to which memberships are currently being sold.

The work is expected to be done by October, said Ben Weiss, general manager of PeoplesBank Arena as well as other facilities managed by the Oak View Group, adding that the renovations are being undertaken with the goal of attracting more events, and especially more concerts, such as one featuring Stevie Nicks on Oct. 25.

The facility competes with Mohegan Sun Arena for such concerts, he noted, adding that most shows will make just one stop in Connecticut. The PeoplesBank Arena is much larger, he said, and with the renovations, it has more of the amenities that artists are demanding.

“The spirit of this renovation is to attract more events,” Weiss explained, adding that the venue has averaged around 105 to 110 events a year and needs that number to be 125 to 135. “And we really want to host more concerts. This renovation makes us more competitive — we have a larger capacity than Mohegan, and now we’ll have more amenities.”

Meanwhile, the plot continues to thicken concerning the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun and a possible move from the Mohegan Sun Arena to Hartford, Boston, Houston, or somewhere else. Many analysts say Boston has an edge over Hartford in this competition (if it comes down to those two) because it already hosts an NBA franchise, and most other WNBA teams are in NBA cities, but Weiss said Hartford, especially with the renovations to its arena, is an attractive option.

Meanwhile, just the ongoing speculation about a move to the PeoplesBank Arena brings some exposure for the bank, Bannister said.

The WNBA is white hot, and both Canina and Bannister say a team playing in PeoplesBank Arena would only make the bank’s investment in the naming rights more fruitful. But with or without a WNBA team, they consider this a sound strategic initiative.

For this issue and its focus on banking and financial services, we’ll take an in-depth look at how it came about and why, and how success will be measured.

What’s in a Name?

As they detailed all that comes with the naming rights, Canina and Bannister said it’s a lengthy list.

It includes several different signs inside and outside the venue, especially the marquee on Trumbull Street, as well as roughly 40 signs around the city, such as those alerting motorists which exit to take for the PeoplesBank Arena, for example. There’s also a 15-seat luxury box, one of those 18-seat bunker suites, and two four-seat loge boxes, adding up to 41 tickets for every event at the arena.

“That won’t be nearly enough to meet demand for the Stevie Nicks show,” Bannister joked, adding that the deal also comes with a $10,000 ticket credit per year, parking spaces within the arena, a season-ticket package to UConn football at nearby Pratt & Whitney Field, and even a PeoplesBank dedicated entrance, at which PeoplesBank customers can show their debit card and get in more quickly than at the other entrances.

“We think that’s a nice perk,” said Bannister, adding that the luxury and bunker boxes and 41 total seats will be parceled out to customers, prospects, employees, and nonprofits, which could then auction them off at fundraisers, generating value in many ways.

But while all those sweeteners are good, the real drivers of this deal, Canina said, were the opportunity to quell the confusion with People’s United and the opportunity to gain greater visibility in an area where the bank is trying to grow market share.

“Now that People’s United has become M&T Bank, we were hoping that the confusion would go away, but it really hasn’t — we continue to be challenged,” he told BusinessWest. “We’ve been looking for ways that we could really stand out and emphasize that PeoplesBank is not People’s United Bank, and we thought this was a great avenue to do it.”

This avenue, he added, does not connote any type of movement away from the bank’s roots in Western Mass., which were planted in Holyoke in 1885, with silk mill owner William Skinner serving as its first president.

“Hartford and Springfield are not very far apart,” he noted. “They’re one conglomerate city in some way, shape, or form; we share an airport; and so many people from Western Mass. go down to the now-named PeoplesBank Arena for events. We felt that this wasn’t so much abandoning roots, but more expanding roots.”

As for the bank’s push into Connecticut, it now has eight locations in the state, with the latest additions — banking centers in Avon and Glastonbury — having opened earlier this year. A new banking center, with accompanying space for backroom operations, is being created in CityPlace II, adjacent to PeoplesBank Arena, and is expected to open in the first quarter of 2026.

Overall, growth in the Connecticut market has been steady, Canina noted, adding that PeoplesBank’s strong commercial presence in the state eventually drove its retail expansion there.

That push started with the acquisition (the first in its history) of First National Bank of Suffield in 2018. That institution had four locations in Suffield, West Suffield, Windsor, and East Granby, which were renamed to First Suffield Bank, a division of PeoplesBank, and then subsequently converted to the PeoplesBank name.

PeoplesBank added a location in West Hartford in 2020, followed by South Windsor in 2023 and then Avon and Glastonbury, said Canina, adding that future plans include new locations in Bloomfield, projected for the fourth quarter of 2026, and New Britain, for the second quarter of 2027.

“We believe in the economic rebirth of Hartford, and we thought this [purchase of the naming rights] could be part of that rebirth,” he went on. “We thought it was important to make a statement that we believe in Hartford.”

Banking on It

Getting back to the decision to take this aggressive step and what it means for the bank, Canina said it obviously reallocates some marketing dollars spent in the Connecticut market and puts them to work in a way that is expected to generate more value.

“We hired an outside firm to evaluate the value of the contract and what we would get for it,” he noted. “It was a good analysis for us; we were able to compare it to what our internal spend was on other things in order to determine if we could get more value and if we should move forward with this — and we concluded that we can.”

One of the many specific line items in the contract that the bank was able to negotiate is an escalating cost for the naming rights.

“It’s not a flat X number of dollars per year for X number of years,” he explained. “In part because of the construction this year, the disruption, and not having as many events — and with the notion that they will be bringing in more events — we agreed that we would pay more in future years.

“The anticipation is that our brand awareness in the market will increase,” he went on, referring to the naming rights and their bottom-line impact. “We’re going to be aligning this with expansion of our geographic footprint in terms of banking centers; the two strategies hand-in-hand should increase our financial performance overall, which will enable us to absorb the increase in the contract price.”

Meanwhile, the naming rights contract is not expected to significantly increase the overall marketing budget beyond what it would normally be or impact any aspects of the bank’s operation to foot that bill, Canina continued.

“As a community bank, our focus is on customers, community, and our associates. We’re not going to lower our deposit rates or increase our loan rates to pay for this, our employees will not be impacted, and we will contribute more than any other mutual bank or any other financial institution in our geographic footprint. We’ll manage this through what our normal marketing spend would be.”

Meanwhile, value is the driving force behind each aspect of the contract, said Bannister, noting that one of the items promoted by those selling the rights was the impact from national broadcasts of UConn men’s and women’s basketball games (each team plays half its home games in the arena). “But the national exposure to us isn’t as valuable as the local exposure, because we’re in the three counties, so we dialed down some of the assets that would have national visibility and replaced them with things that had local visibility, because that was more important to us.”

As for the arena, and its prospects for attracting more events, as he offered BusinessWest a tour of the arena, Weiss pointed to several improvements, all of them designed to modernize the facility, provide more amenities to visitors and performers alike, and, overall, make the venue more competitive with others in the region.

“Right now, we do eight to 10 concerts a year; post-renovation, we should be doing 25-plus as we ramp back up,” he said, adding that the venue continues to ink new shows, such as Pentatonix. “It’s not going to happen overnight, but that’s where we need to be, and we’ll get there.”