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As the Vikings near the expected closing on their financing deal for a new stadium, the Pioneer Press's Charley Walters is reporting they booked a naming rights consultant:

That's the final piece to the $988 million stadium financing puzzle.

The state has offered $348 million and the city of Minneapolis is chipping in $150 million, for a total of $498 million. As of right now, the Vikings have pledged a maximum of $490 million. (All those numbers are in present value and do not include financing costs.)

Here's how the Vikings financing breaks down, according to publicly disclosed figures and 

MPR research into the value of naming rights

. The Vikings have said privately that naming rights may not reach the league average, which includes $400 million deals in New Jersey and San Francisco.

That could plausibly have the Vikings coming up with $100 million of their own money to fund their pledge toward the $988 million stadium. We may not know for years what their actual funding looks like, because NFL teams don't always disclose the details of their naming rights deals, and the value is sometimes only revealed in securities filings of the sponsoring companies.

UPDATE: The Vikings say they've actually been dealing with Van Wagner since last November, and are working with them on naming rights. But team spokesman Jeff Anderson says he can't talk about who or when a deal might be inked: "There's no timeline on that right now," he said.

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Stadium Watch Blog

Tim Nelson

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Naming rights, the final piece to the $988 million Vikings stadium financing puzzle, may be near a deal.

Report: Vikings moving toward stadium naming rights deal

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