The city has rerouted back to the naming rights committee to find a naming rights sponsor for Mosaic Place instead of hiring a third-party professional.

This all started back in early 2021 when Mosaic Company notified the City of Moose Jaw that they weren’t planning to renew the naming rights agreement.

An internal naming rights committee was made within the council to find local naming rights sponsors for Mosaic Place. Unfortunately, the committee felt that they exhausted their local options, so a decision was made by council to hire a third-party company to locate and negotiate a new naming rights agreement. 

The city then contracted Performance Sponsorship Group at a quoted cost of $29,000 and a one-time commission of 20 per cent. 

A day after that contract was approved to be signed by city council in the previous meeting on June 13th, a number of inquiries were submitted to the city from the public wanting to assist with the naming rights campaign; to avoid putting money into a third-party contract.  

“They (members of the local community) called and they said ‘are you sure, do we have to give a share of this money to a professional for the naming rights? Maybe we could help’ so we called a separate meeting and brought them in and asked them what their ideas were, they looked at our hitlist of people we approached and they provided some ideas. So, we said let’s take another run at this,” says Mayor Clive Tolley. “Before we sign this contract and give away a percentage of the income that would come with the naming rights contract, let’s maybe see if we can have another run at this. So, the committee with a couple of people assisting are going to try and do that.” 

With that being the case, Performance Sponsorship Group agreed to postpone the contract until the community members could meet with the city council committee to make those efforts.  

The first meeting was held on June 21st and suggestions were made to allow the group to approach different local companies and boards for the remainder of time left before the naming rights agreement with Mosaic Company comes to the end of its term in August.  

“Of course, if we can get the naming rights by ourselves with the use of this committee, we won’t be paying a company 20 per cent commission that they would require,” says Tolley. 

As of the city council meeting on June 27th, Tolley says that he’s approached multiple local companies about becoming naming rights sponsors but states that currently there’s nothing concrete to report on the matter.  

City manager Jim Puffalt stated that an update on progress with the committee will be given at the end of the summer and a decision to continue with the committee or sign the contract with Performance Sponsorship Group will be made at that point.  

“I would like to thank the citizens who did step forward regarding this because instead of just being unhappy with the decision of council, they came forward and offered a solution and offered to help. They could have taken a different direction and I appreciate that they came back in play and wanted to help out again,” says Councilor Heather Eby.  

Eby moved the motion to postpone the contract with Performance Sponsorship Group to allow the committee to continue to look for local naming right sponsors and the motion was carried with all councilors in favor.