Looking for a sign

With Bank of America Corp. giving up on putting its name on the home of the Boston Celtics and Boston Bruins, how would Liberty Center or CVS Forum sound?

Boston insurer Liberty Mutual Group and CVS Corp., the pharmacy chain based in Rhode Island, are two of the many possibilities that keep coming up when marketing specialists discuss companies that could be interested in bidding for naming rights to what is still anachronistically called the FleetCenter.

Sovereign Bancorp, Banknorth Group, Citizens Financial Group, and Reebok International would also be good candidates, said Diane Brickley, a partner in Moulter/Brickley Associates, a sports and entertainment consulting firm. Still, the cost for any company is likely to be high.

"It's a considerable investment," she said. "The market will sift itself out."

The list of potential parties also includes big retailers and telecommunications companies.

A spokesman for CVS said the company is "possibly" interested in naming rights to the FleetCenter, while a Sovereign Bancorp spokesman declined to say whether the bank would be interested but described the arena as a "real jewel in the community."

Bank of America completed its acquisition of Fleet last spring, and it recently has been negotiating to get out of Fleet's 15-year contract. To undo that, Bank of America would have to pay millions more to rename the building Bank of America Center. Bank of America would have to pay a fee to leave the $2 million-per-year FleetCenter contract, which is slated to end in 2010. But if the two parties agree, the arena's new owner, Delaware North Cos., then can offer naming rights to others.

Several of the region's likely candidates to replace Fleet -- including Citizens, Gillette, and Staples -- already have their names on other sports venues. A Citizens spokeswoman declined to comment; Staples said it has no plans to name the building; and a Gillette spokesman said the company is "extremely pleased" with having its name on Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots, and would have to weigh carefully any future naming rights deals.

Other companies that have the money for the deal, such as Fidelity Investments and New Balance, say they have no interest in naming the center. "If you look around town there are not a lot of buildings with our name on it," said Anne Crowley, a Fidelity spokeswoman. "We don't typically do that type of naming of buildings."

The cost could hinder some interested parties. Banknorth's Massachusetts president, Chris Bramley, said renaming the FleetCenter would likely be too expensive for the bank.

A spokeswoman said Reebok has no plans to pursue a FleetCenter deal.

During its negotiations with FleetCenter's owner, Bank of America briefly floated an idea to rename the center the Boston Garden, the name of the now-demolished arena that the FleetCenter replaced in the 1990s. That idea now appears to be off the table.

Representatives of Bank of America and the FleetCenter declined to comment.

Under Fleet's current contract for naming rights at the FleetCenter, negotiated in the mid-1990s, the bank was allowed to change the center's name once for free. But that happened when Fleet bought Shawmut National Corp., which had signed an agreement to name the building the Shawmut Center.

Executives at the FleetCenter and Bank of America spent months negotiating a new contract, but the bank ultimately balked on the price. Naming rights for similar venues can run about $6 million per year, far more than the $2 million Fleet had been paying.

The company that ends up renaming the FleetCenter could come from out of the region. Though companies tend to name sports arenas near their headquarters, some, such as Staples and Citizens, name venues elsewhere to increase their name recognition.

Naming rights deals continue to be extremely popular, though their benefit is difficult to measure, said William Chipps, a senior editor at IEG Sponsorship Report, a Chicago newsletter that tracks corporate sponsorships. "For a lot of these deals, it's real ego-driven from the CEO," he said. "A lot of these companies could get a better return on their investments from other types of sponsorships."

Sasha Talcott can be reached at stalcott@globe.com.