As an Arizona fan, Alkeme CEO aimed to respect Pop McKale in arena name change

Having been an Arizona student celebrating when the Wildcats won the 1997 national championship game, and being an alum with a “heart ripped out” when they didn’t in 2001, Curtis Barton knew he was walking a tightrope.

How do you put your company’s name on the Wildcats’ iconic arena, in such a way as to maximize exposure for your young company without alienating Arizona basketball fans?

For maximum exposure, there was no doubt: The building would have been called Alkeme Arena, period.

“I fought our investors about that,” Barton said, “and I had to make a business case for it.”

From an outside perspective, the logic was obvious: Why pay nearly $28 million to add your name to a building in such a way that it can be simply lopped off in casual references, so everyone can just keep calling it McKale Center, the way they have since the building opened in 1973?

Barton basically said he couldn’t go there.

During and after a news conference in which UA formally named the building "McKale Center at Alkeme Arena," Barton spoke of how legendary athletic director and coach J.F. “Pop” McKale grew the Wildcats program from its earliest stages over a century ago, and how Lute Olson turned it into a men’s basketball powerhouse.

History mattered, the way Barton put it.

“If I had my way, and it could be Alkeme Arena, yes, of course,” Barton said. “But I also have the ability to look back and understand. I read the (fan message) boards, and I have respect for for the traditions from Lute Olson and Pop McKale.”

Saying he was also in discussions about the naming rights to Arizona Stadium, which ultimately went to the Pasqua Yaqui Tribe and Casino Del Sol, Barton said he knew “exactly what (McKale) means to the university and we don’t want to take away from that.”

But despite keeping McKale in the building's name, immediate reaction to UA’s official announcement on social media was predictably negative Friday. Many posters said they still won't ever call it anything but McKale.

When Barton and Arizona athletic director Desireé Reed-Francois were asked during Friday’s formal news conference if they expected any pushback from adding anything to the McKale name, Barton answered instantly.

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“Of course,” he said. “I think there's always going to be that. The world's shifting, and pushback is natural, and you have two choices. You can either lean in or you can lean back. I think you have to be respectful of the past, but be thoughtful of the future.

“We build our company to meet the future. I think Desireé is building the athletics department and team to meet the future of athletics. We understand that it's complex for people to wrap their head around that sometimes.”

Over the course of 15 years, Alkeme is contracted to pay the school an average of $1.85 million a year. Reed-Francois declined to disclose the first-year payment but said it would start below that average and the amounts would escalate through the end of the plan.

Annual average proceeds from the deal will equal about 1.3% of Arizona's athletic expenses of $139 million in 2023-24, the last publicly available numbers reported to the U.S. Department of Education — though that was before UA also began paying its players a collective $20.5 million this year.

Reed-Francois said the naming rights deal has a five-year “look in” for both sides but, when asked if that meant either side could end the deal after five years, said it "wasn't that easy."

“We're looking at the deliverables," she said of a future review. "We're looking at, 'Hey, this isn't working. This has changed.' As you know, the world is changing so incredibly rapidly, and we just want to make sure that we're meeting both sides' expectations.”

The deal also includes Alkeme outreach to UA’s Eller College of Management, where several Alkeme executives graduated from, though Barton said he was actually a political science major at UA after transferring from Colorado as a member of its ski team.

Wearing an Arizona Wildcats hoodie to Friday's news conference rather than a business suit, Barton said he thought he would become a lawyer before building his own insurance brokerage, eventually aiming to merge together a group of agencies.

Hence, the word Alkeme, a phonetic spelling of the word for transforming matter into something greater. Barton founded the firm in 2020, basing it in Southern California but with offices in 22 states; he said 80% of Alkeme's partnerships are located within 50 miles of a Big 12 school, making the sponsorship more fitting.

As he built his business, Barton also raised two children, including a daughter, Charlotte, who has become a UA freshman this year.

Not surprisingly, she's grown up learning about all that UA athletic history, too, even Button Salmon and the whole Bear Down story.

“I used to read them a little of Lute Olson's book when they’d go to bed,” said Barton. “I can tell you some funny stuff. My dog’s been known to wear football jerseys from time to time during games. So I'm an avid fan, too. Not a fan boy, but a fan.”