Stadium sponsorship

[ltSaint91]

As always we want big name/fee signings and success on the pitch, but will moan like hell at selling the Stadiums name, ticket prices, car parking etc.

 

Considering how we almost learnt the harshest lesson about spending more than you earn, I personally hope we never put our club at risk again. If it means changing St. Mary’s name to something corporate or charging us 50p to take a wizz, so be it.

 

I know there are some fans out there who will say they prefer to keep the club traditional in style and it’s not all about big transfers and success (and credit to you for that), but unfortunately I believe you are in a small minority.

 

Most fans want to watch their team play with great footballers and win, the rest is secondary.

 

It's the fact that we have to do all this stuff in order to compete in the first place that annoys me. How did we make big signings in the 80s? We had Keegan, Shilton, Ball etc., but the Dell never got renamed The Co-operative Banking Corporation Arena or whatever horrible name St. Mary's will get in the future. Fans didn't have to pay £50 a ticket, which is what it will be when we get promoted. Fans didn't have to pay to take a ****. A pint didn't cost £3.70. We competed perfectly well whilst maintaining affordable prices and a community atmosphere.

 

But it's this "I don't care about the club, I just want trophies" attitude that's led to football clubs becoming soulless corporate businesses willing to fleece fans, or 'consumers', for as much cash as they can get their hands on, and as long as fans continue taking your attitude it will only get worse. How long will it be before clubs are renamed to 'Tesco FC' or 'Asda Athletic', with their colours changed to company colours, and ticket prices pushed to £100+ to keep the peasants out?

[Flyer]

The value of sponsorship at both St James Park and SMS have been hugely devalued. Everyone will still call the stadiums by their old name.

 

Saints missed a trick and they should have gone for a very long deal of 10+ years when it was built and then they have got more money as the ground would have been known by that name, eg everyone calls Arsenal the emirates now.

 

Only new stadiums have a sponsored name that sticks, can anyone think of a single old stadium thats referred to by its sponsored name?

[Thorpe-le-Saint]

I remember when we went through a stage of calling it "the new dell". Unfortuantely, money these days speaks louder than tradition etc.

[The Kraken]

The value of sponsorship at both St James Park and SMS have been hugely devalued. Everyone will still call the stadiums by their old name.

 

Saints missed a trick and they should have gone for a very long deal of 10+ years when it was built and then they have got more money as the ground would have been known by that name, eg everyone calls Arsenal the emirates now.

 

Only new stadiums have a sponsored name that sticks, can anyone think of a single old stadium thats referred to by its sponsored name?

 

The "mistake" with Saints was that the owners backed down from calling it the "Friends Provident Stadium" and, amongst massive fan backlash, relented and called it the "Friends Provident St. Mary's Stadium". Which, rather obviously, just became St. Mary's Stadium. The BBC and even Sky Sports tending to drop the sponsor's name clearly was massively detrimental to the effect of the sponsorship. But in any case, there was a huge feeling amongst the city that the club was moving back to it's St. Mary's roots, which is where of course our nickname was derived from, so the ground was always going to be referred to as it currently is.

 

But in answer to your question; the Reebok is still going strong; helped by the fact it's obviously the original name, but also that Reebok are integral to Bolton in that their HQ is based there. Andon other stadiums with a name; maybe I'm a bit slow but my first thought of Huddersfield's is to call it the Mc Alpine. It's only new days, but Wigan's for quite some time will be, to me at least, the JJB.

 

But I think the point has been made; new stadiums that are first only named by a sponsor can quite easily move to another sponsor name later on, without massive fan backlash. But trying to deny 120 years of a ground being called St. James Park by suddenly renaming it with a chavvy sports brand name just won't work. Especially with a hugely reactive support base as the geordies are. Everyone inside and outside of Newcastle will forever refer to it as SJP, and rightly so.

[um pahars]

But it's this "I don't care about the club, I just want trophies" attitude that's led to football clubs becoming soulless corporate businesses willing to fleece fans, or 'consumers', for as much cash as they can get their hands on, and as long as fans continue taking your attitude it will only get worse. How long will it be before clubs are renamed to 'Tesco FC' or 'Asda Athletic', with their colours changed to company colours, and ticket prices pushed to £100+ to keep the peasants out?

 

I was thinking along the same lines when I first thought about this issue, in that I wonder just how far we are willing to go to chase the money.

 

Personally, I think it's sad that the game is more than happy to sell its history under the mantra of " well you have to compete", when in reality most of that money is going in to the pockets of journeymen mercenaries who are already very well paid. But then again am I just being an a bit of an old fogey.

 

Was there the same sort of furore when Saints became one of the first (if not the first?) sponsored teams with Rank Xerox? Propbably not, but then again I think the addition of a brand name to a teams kit wasn't deemed that intrusive.

 

Prefixing or suffixing the stadium for us would be acceptable, whilst I wouldn't be happy with only a corporate corporate brand, but I can also see the arguments relating to new grounds without an identity. I felt St Mary's was different as although new, St Mary's was already sysnonymous with the Saints.

 

But if we are happy with a solely corporate stadium where would we draw the line in bringing in money in order to compete??

 

Would we be happy to down the equestrian route of a few decades ago (i.e. horses named Sanyo Music Centre) and rename or suffix the team, The IBM Saints, Southampton Sony FC, Portsmuff Pounds Scrapyard FC?????

[Flyer]

Sponsorship can get you £10m in the prem, if thats the difference between getting relegated with your own name or staying up with the Air Asia Arena then I know what Id want. Saints would have never entered admin with a proper naming deal either.

 

You have to get the name to stick in your mind, I wont refer to any newly sponsored stadium by its correct name but will a new stadium as theres nothing else to call it.

 

As for renaming clubs, red bull are already doing that and we have a couple of non league clubs with corporate names.

[theyin]

It'll be the B&Q Depot Stadium ... I know this