Five years after it last tried, consulting firm Kroll has published a study trying to convince football club owners of the financial sense of selling naming rights to their stadiums. But the renaming of football stadiums to cash in on corporate sponsors remains a contentious issue, and while it could enable clubs to post improved revenues, it still risks alienating the hordes of fans football relies upon to attract sponsors in the first place.

While discussion around selling naming rights of a football stadium to a corporate sponsor is inevitably centred on the sport’s top table – from Arsenal’s Emirates to Manchester City’s Etihad – most of the world’s clubs do not exist in that stratosphere. Indeed, the clubs who might actually countenance the extra funds against the loss of respectability such a move brings are often at risk of getting a much worse deal.

Arguably, the most emblematic club of the alleged rewards and risks open to teams who jettison their history for a financial shot in the arm is Bolton Wanderers. They might currently playing in the third-tier of English football, but when they opened their new stadium in 1997, the club was embarking on its first year back in the promised land of the Premier League.

Source: Kroll

Looking to open up income streams to help maintain top-flight status, Bolton agreed to a deal that would see it adopt its now-iconic Reebok Stadium name. But the windfall did not ultimately help the club to dodge relegation that same season – and while Bolton did flirt with Premier League status several more times over the years, the naming rights did not stop the club sliding back down the footballing pyramid.

Further naming rights deals also failed to offset a financial crisis along the way. With its home having been known as the Macron Stadium and then the University of Bolton Stadium, the club went into administration – and sank into League Two. Three years later, with the club seemingly stable and on the way to promotion back to League One, the club risked it all, infuriating fans with a new sponsorship deal that would see the ground known officially as the Toughsheet Community Stadium.

While the five-year naming rights deal with Toughsheet did help promote a local business – a building product company with links to the town – the move wrote its own jokes. Each time Wanderers face defeat at their stadium now, opponents and media organisations alike remind them that if they are having a bad time, it’s just Toughsheet.

Source: Kroll

New research from Kroll– which previously published similar findings under its former Duff & Phelps branding in 2019 – extolls the virtues of naming deals for some of Europe’s top clubs. Pointing to 10 leading clubs in particular, the firm suggests the likes of Real Madrid could bring in an extra €30 million in revenues per season. Barcelona, which officially calls its stadium the Spotify Nou Camp (though its fans certainly don’t), is meanwhile attributed a €20 million value for its naming rights by the researchers.

This could be attractive to other clubs in that upper-echelon, which can command a princely sum for their stadiums, and can pick and choose a fitting brand. But the reality is that beyond the elite superclubs, that value drops hard and fast – and will include much more ‘meme-able’ sponsors. Only 13 clubs would command more than €10 million per season – the last of those being Newcastle United, whose Saudi owners might easily find an inflated sponsor for anyway. But in the top 25, that sum falls to €3.6 million for four-time European champion Ajax. Even further down the pecking order, R.C. Lens could likely only expect €1.6 million.

Those are not ‘small’ clubs, either. They are top-tier in their respective countries, and several with serious historical pedigree. Outside the top-flight, it is likely that figure tumbles drastically, and that even while clubs like Bolton might technically have secured their “largest sponsorship deal” in their history, that will still probably not muster half as much as the likes of Lens – while also resulting in a far less enjoyable home for their fans to fill each week. Whether owners, keen to shore up revenues after the pandemic, decide that regardless of their customers’ feelings, it’s Toughsheet for fans, remains to be seen.