Chicago is considering selling sponsorships and naming rights at O’Hare International and Midway airports, the city’s Department of Aviation announced in a news release Wednesday.
The city is inviting potential sponsors to describe their interest in sponsoring a range of airport assets, including parking lots, elevators, family restrooms and airport shuttle buses and stops.
The Aviation Department announced a request for information Wednesday. No contracts will be issued as a result of the RFI process, which is designed to evaluate the feasibility and potential value of a sponsorship program, the department said.
“The CDA is committed to thinking commercially and leveraging every opportunity to strengthen airport revenue in ways that support our airline partners and the traveling public,” Aviation Department Commissioner Michael McMurray said in a statement.
Department spokesperson Kevin Bargnes said the department did not yet have a “specific dollar figure in mind” in terms of how much revenue it thought a sponsorship program could generate.
“One of the key objectives of issuing the RFI is to better understand market interest and the potential financial opportunity,” Bargnes said in an email to the Tribune.
Airport sponsorships could be appealing to marketers because airports hold a captive audience of relatively high-income consumers, said Joseph Schwieterman, director of the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development at DePaul.
“Air travelers have more spending power than the typical consumer,” Schwieterman said.
If the city pursues the strategy, he said, it would be important to set limits on what assets are available for sponsorship and keep signage “small and subtle” to prevent the city’s airports from becoming “akin to a large billboard.”
The sponsorship idea, first reported by Crain’s Chicago Business, comes in the midst of a long-awaited $8.2 billion redevelopment at O’Hare.
The airport saw its busiest summer in history last year with 24.3 million passengers traveling through it in June, July and August, according to the Aviation Department.