Concert History | iPayOne Center — A Naming-Rights Vote Rebranded the Tour Opener

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When U2 opened the Vertigo Tour in San Diego on 28 March 2005, the arena had just acquired a contractual name that much of the concert business was not yet using. Fourteen days earlier, the San Diego City Council had adopted Resolution R-300235, approving the renaming of the city-owned San Diego Sports Arena as ipayOne Center, the identification signs, and the underlying naming-rights agreement.

The council record shows how the name worked as venue finance rather than decoration. Arena Group 2000 operated the building under a city sublease and contracted with I Pay One, Inc., a real-estate brokerage. The sponsor was to pay the operator $200,000 in the first agreement year, rising in later years; the city was entitled to 10 percent of gross naming-rights revenue. The approved arrangement also put the sponsor's name and logo throughout the arena and its parking-lot signage.
https://www.sandiego.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/citycouncil/committees/geo/pdf/reportgeo.pdf

The concert makes the transition unusually visible. U2's own dated report and a contemporaneous Billboard account both called the building the San Diego Sports Arena, even though the council had already approved ipayOne Center. Billboard reported on 29 March that U2 had opened the tour there the previous night. The two names are not competing locations: they are evidence that a municipal resolution, a sponsor identity, ticketing and publicity did not all change vocabulary at once.
https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/u2-opens-vertigo-tour-in-san-diego-63507/
https://www.u2.com/blogs/vertigo-leg-1-2005-us/3339

The exact session was the tour's first public arena show. Kings of Leon opened, and U2's report described the newly deployed ellipse-shaped catwalk and curtain of lights. Those production details identify this as the 28 March performance, but the place-based historical mechanism lies outside the set: a city asset, a private operator, a sponsor and a touring act could give one room different names during the same transition. The performance occupied a newly branded municipal asset while the legacy name remained legible in national and artist publicity.

The same 1966 building operates as Pechanga Arena San Diego as of 9 September 2026. Its official site gives the address as 3500 Sports Arena Boulevard and identifies San Diego Sports Arena as the original name.
https://pechangaarenasd.com/about/
https://pechangaarenasd.com/plan-your-visit/directions-parking/

Coordinate method: the pin at 32.755278, -117.212222 reconciles the Wikidata point for Pechanga Arena with OpenStreetMap way 121777136, which traces the arena building. The official venue address confirms that both records identify the same structure. A 120-metre precision radius covers the arena footprint; the point represents the building centre, not the 2005 stage or ellipse.
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3106621
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/121777136

Cover: Nehrams2020 photographed the San Diego Sports Arena exterior on 25 November 2007 and released the image under CC BY-SA 3.0. The photograph honestly shows the venue and its legacy exterior sign, not U2's performance or the 2005 ipayOne branding.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:San_Diego_Sports_Arena.jpg
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Caption: San Diego Sports Arena exterior in November 2007; this image shows the same building after the 2005 concert and does not depict U2 or the Vertigo Tour.