Why the Same Stadium Can Have Several Names: Naming Rights, UEFA and FIFA Tournament Names, Official Names and How to Read Venue Data on RubiScore

A football stadium can carry several correct names at the same time: a sponsor's name, an official or historic name, a nickname and a neutral name used in UEFA or FIFA competitions. The ground stays the same; only the label changes. Stadium and match pages on RubiScore record where each game was played.

This explainer sets out why venue names change or multiply: naming-rights deals, competition rules from UEFA and FIFA, official names that differ from popular ones, renamings in honour of people, and clubs that move to a new ground. Fixtures, results, match pages and stadium pages can be followed at https://rubiscore.com, where the venue appears alongside each result.

Why Does One Stadium Have Several Names?

Most well-known grounds carry names from up to five layers:

Commercial name: the name a sponsor pays for, such as Emirates Stadium or Allianz Arena.
Official name: the name used by the owner, which can differ from the commercial one. Manchester City's ground is still formally the City of Manchester Stadium.
Competition name: a neutral name used when UEFA or FIFA runs the event.
Popular name: what supporters and media say, often older than any sponsor.
Historic name: what the ground was called when an old match was played.

None of these is wrong. A venue name is a label attached to a physical ground for a period of time, and the same ground can appear under different labels in a league fixture list, a European draw and a World Cup schedule. Stadium pages on RubiScore and the venue shown on match pages identify the ground; when that name differs from the one in a news report or on a ticket, the ground behind it is usually the same.

The practical question for anyone reading match data on RubiScore, or in any other source, is therefore not only what a venue was called, but which ground it was.

Naming Rights: The Commercial Layer

Selling a stadium's name is a standard source of club revenue, and many grounds have carried more than one sponsor's name.

Emirates Stadium. Arsenal's ground opened in 2006 under a deal the airline signed with the club in October 2004, which also covered shirt sponsorship.
Etihad Stadium. Built for the 2002 Commonwealth Games as the City of Manchester Stadium, it became Manchester City's home in 2003 and was renamed in July 2011 under an agreement with Etihad Airways.
Signal Iduna Park. Borussia Dortmund's Westfalenstadion, opened in 1974, has carried the insurer's name since 1 December 2005, and the deal was extended in 2022 to run until 2031.
Metropolitano. Atlético Madrid's ground opened as the Wanda Metropolitano in 2017, became the Cívitas Metropolitano in 2022 and has been the Riyadh Air Metropolitano since October 2024: three sponsor names in seven years.
Spotify Camp Nou. Barcelona's stadium added the streaming company's name from 2022.
Estadio Banorte. Mexico City's Estadio Azteca took a bank's name in 2025, although Azteca remains the name most people use.

A sponsor name usually lasts only as long as the contract. For data, that means one ground can produce match records under several commercial names within a few seasons.

Why Do UEFA Matches Use Different Names?

UEFA controls the commercial rights at its competitions. Its Champions League regulations make any stadium naming rights granted by a club subject to a commercial exclusive zone, in which no branding of the stadium sponsor may be visible. The exceptions are narrow: the sponsor's name may appear on pre-printed material such as tickets, in public-address announcements made for safety reasons and on existing permanent signage outside the building.

The result is a parallel set of names on UEFA match material:

Emirates Stadium becomes Arsenal Stadium.
Etihad Stadium becomes City of Manchester Stadium, its original name.
Signal Iduna Park becomes BVB Stadion Dortmund.
Allianz Arena becomes Munich Football Arena, or Fußball Arena München in German.
Riyadh Air Metropolitano becomes Estadio Metropolitano.

The same logic applies at UEFA's national-team tournaments. At EURO 2024, the grounds in Munich and Dortmund appeared as Munich Football Arena and BVB Stadion Dortmund.

One trap stands out. Arsenal Stadium was also the official name of Highbury, Arsenal's home from 1913 to 2006. A European match listed at "Arsenal Stadium" before 2006 and one listed there afterwards were played on two different grounds.

How Does FIFA Name World Cup Venues?

FIFA applies the same principle with neutral, place-based names. At the 2006 World Cup, the Allianz Arena and the Westfalenstadion were called FIFA World Cup Stadium Munich and FIFA World Cup Stadium Dortmund. For the 2026 tournament in Canada, Mexico and the United States, stadiums had to remove existing branding and use city or regional names:

MetLife Stadium became New York New Jersey Stadium, venue of the final on 19 July 2026.
AT&T Stadium became Dallas Stadium.
SoFi Stadium became Los Angeles Stadium.

These names refer to the host city or region, not always to the municipality. Dallas Stadium is in Arlington, Texas; Los Angeles Stadium is in Inglewood, California; and New York New Jersey Stadium is in East Rutherford, New Jersey. A search by town can therefore miss a venue whose tournament name points to a neighbouring city.

Official Names, Popular Names and Renamings

Some differences have nothing to do with sponsors.

San Siro. Milan's stadium was renamed Stadio Giuseppe Meazza on 3 March 1980, after the two-time World Cup winner who played for both Inter and Milan. The district name, San Siro, remains the one most widely used.
Stadio Diego Armando Maradona. Napoli's ground was the Stadio San Paolo from 1963 until December 2020, when the Naples city council voted to rename it nine days after Maradona's death.
La Peineta. Before Atlético rebuilt it, the Metropolitano site was the Estadio de la Comunidad de Madrid, an athletics venue nicknamed La Peineta, "the comb", after the shape of its main stand.

Popular names travel well in conversation, but a database search may need the formal name, and the reverse is also true.

Renamed or Relocated?

A rename and a move can look identical in a fixture list, but only one changes the ground.

A rename keeps the pitch, the stands and the location. Manchester City's home matches before and after July 2011 were played at the same ground.
A relocation creates a new venue. Arsenal left Highbury for the Emirates Stadium in 2006, Bayern Munich left the Olympic Stadium for the Allianz Arena in 2005, Manchester City left Maine Road in 2003 and Atlético Madrid left the Vicente Calderón in 2017.
A temporary move splits a club's home record. Barcelona played at the Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys on Montjuïc while Camp Nou was rebuilt, returning to Spotify Camp Nou for a league match against Athletic Club on 22 November 2025.

Names can also be recycled. Atlético's current stadium is called Metropolitano after the club's home from 1923 to 1966, a different venue, so "Metropolitano" in a pre-1966 record and in a post-2017 one does not mean the same place.

What Venue Names Mean for Football Data

Venue names affect several kinds of analysis:

One identity across names. Records should follow the ground, not the label. Emirates Stadium, Arsenal Stadium in UEFA matches and any future sponsor name all describe one venue; Highbury does not.
Attendance and capacity. The same ground can have different capacities by competition. The Allianz Arena holds 75,000 for domestic matches and 70,000 for international and European fixtures, so crowd figures from the two contexts are not directly comparable.
Home advantage and venue splits. A club's home results can include seasons at temporary or former grounds, such as Barcelona's spell at Montjuïc, which belong to a different venue from Camp Nou.
Neutral venues and finals. Finals are often staged at a club's ground under a neutral name. The 2019 Champions League final was played at the Metropolitano, then commercially the Wanda Metropolitano, under UEFA's name Estadio Metropolitano. The 2025 final was held at the Munich Football Arena, Bayern's home, with neither finalist playing there as hosts.
Searching by old and new names. One ground may need to be looked up under its sponsor name, its UEFA or FIFA name, its official name and its nickname.

When two sources name a ground differently, the venue on a RubiScore match page and the matching stadium page are useful reference points to compare against the date and competition.

How to Read a Venue Name

Identify the layer. Decide whether the name is commercial, official, competition-specific, popular or historic.
Check the date. Sponsor names have start and end dates, so matches at the same ground a few seasons apart can carry different names.
Check the competition. UEFA and FIFA matches use neutral names; domestic matches usually use the sponsor's.
Separate a rename from a move. Confirm whether the club actually changed grounds before comparing home records across seasons.
Watch for recycled names. Arsenal Stadium and Metropolitano have each referred to two different grounds.
Match the location, not just the label. A city-based tournament name can point to a stadium in a neighbouring municipality.

A stadium name is a time-stamped label, not a fixed identity. Read with the date and the competition in mind, venue names on RubiScore and elsewhere become easier to reconcile: the label changes, but the ground and the matches played on it stay the same.

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