Avaya Stadium: San Jose Earthquakes Announce Naming Deal as Cost of New Venue Skyrockets

What's in a name? How about $20 million over the next 10 years? That's how much a Santa Clara-based company is paying for the naming rights to the new San Jose Earthquakes stadium in San Jose.

The new venue will be called Avaya Stadium.

The venue will be the first "cloud-enabled stadium" in Major League Soccer, and the sky's the limit in terms of cost. The Quakes' new home-of-their-very-own near San Jose International Airport has all the latest bells and whistles, including some tech gadgetry befitting its location in Silicon Valley.

It's also costing almost twice as much as initially thought, with the bill – all to be paid from private funds – climbing up from $60 million to about $100 million, according to the San Jose Mercury News.

The newspaper says that that's "the average" for a new MLS stadium, which in San Jose's case has room for 18,000 fans as well as the "largest outdoor bar in North America."

Avaya is a “global firm that provides tech service to other companies," the newspaper explained.

The new stadium is set to open in March 2015. 

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