Baseball stadium named for Citigroup faces scrutiny

This year New Yorkers have watched as one of their city's vital industries, the financial services, crumbled. But when baseball season opens this spring, they may have to watch their beloved ball games at a stadium named for a financial giant at the centre of the collapse.

Days after the US government pledged billions to prop up Citigroup, critics in the media and the US Congress question whether the financial conglomerate should go forward with a 20-year, $400m marketing deal to slap its name on a new baseball stadium in Queens, New York.

The new home of the New York Mets baseball team, called Citi Field, is set to open this April. The naming arrangement was inked two years ago, when New York-based Citigroup was making $21bn a year in profit. The old stadium was named for attorney William Shea, who helped bring the team to the city.

On Sunday, the US treasury department extended $306bn to insure loans and asset-backed securities held by Citigroup.

Critics of the naming deal say the US government should not subsidise the faltering bank's marketing arrangement, considering the company is set to lay off 52,000 workers by the end of the year and Americans who cannot afford their mortgages are losing their homes.

"They get very concerned about saving their own butts and making sure Shea Stadium is in good shape," Maryland congressman Elijah Cummings said today on MSNBC, referring to the name of the old stadium, which saw its last pitch in the autumn. "I say to Citigroup: Scrap the deal with the stadium and make sure you take care of these folks who have mortgages."

Some point to the former Enron Field, home of the Houston Astros baseball club that was in 2002 renamed Minute Maid Park after the energy company collapsed in scandal.

New Yorkers jeered the naming deal from the beginning, accusing the Mets of selling out more than a century and a half of sports tradition to make a fast buck by harnessing itself to a corporate brand.

The New York Post wrote the team passed up an opportunity to name the stadium for New York baseball legend Jackie Robinson, the first African-American to play professional baseball.