Monday, November 09, 2009
Considering Stadium Name Changes
-
The Times/ Patrick Barclay
November 09, 2009
Debate: Would you be happy to have your club’s stadium renamed?
Stadium naming rights are not something we should always froth about. If Arsenal want to move to a new and improved stadium, and, to help with costs, call it the Emirates Stadium rather than New Highbury, well and good. If, on the other hand, Mike Ashley uses naming rights as just another way of tormenting the supporters of Newcastle United, that’s not so good. It depends on the stadium and the people involved.
The announcement that St James’ Park will be renamed the "sportsdirect.com@St James’ Park Stadium” until the end of this season, when an auction will be held in the hope of raising £5 million a year from a company appending its name or slogan to the ground’s time-honoured title, is probably the worst of all the awful things that have befallen Newcastle since Kevin Keegan left in 1997 (the only really good thing was the Indian summer of Sir Bobby Robson). Worse, even, than Ashley’s takeover and the installation of Dennis Wise alongside an unwilling Keegan in his second spell as manager.
St James’ Park is St James’ Park and should be so until the fans say otherwise. Anything else is bad business, quite apart from the insult it delivers to the sensibilities of those who give not just the stadium but the city in which it is near-centrally situated a rare and wonderful form of footballing life. And for the Football League to stand by and say nothing — just as, to be fair, the Premier League would probably have done had Newcastle not been relegated last season — is yet another illustration of how loosely the game is regulated, for all the improvements to which both Leagues justifiably point.
The name of a ground really does matter, as Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur will discover when they tap this source of revenue with which to pay bloated salaries. Chelsea hope to raise at least £10 million a year, which would keep John Terry at the club but not leave enough over to satisfy Salomon Kalou, let alone Didier Drogba. It should, however, be the concern of Chelsea’s supporters, just as it would be a matter for Manchester United supporters if the Glazers decided to rename Old Trafford the AIG Arena or something even more dubious. In San Francisco there is a stadium called Candlestick Park. Nearly 20 years ago I went to the city for a holiday and, because the name was so evocative (“candlestick birds”, a kind of curlew, inhabit that part of the Bay), visited Candlestick Park, barely knowing whether the game would be of baseball or gridiron (it turned out to be the former).
Later the stadium was renamed “3Com Park”. Not only would this put off tourists such as me; the locals scorned it, too, and became even more irritated when it turned into “Monster Park” in honour of Monster Cables, a company that marketed the leads that protrude from electronic equipment. A bylaw was passed to the effect that it reverted to Candlestick Park when the deal expired last year.
If the popular will is good enough for the Americans, it is good enough for English football. The Leagues should react to the news from Newcastle and Chelsea by regulating that any change of a stadium’s name must be endorsed by its users, by means of a poll supervised by trusted experts.
I suspect that, were such a rule in force, Arsenal would have been able to persuade their season ticketholders, many of whom formed a waiting list at Highbury — but that Newcastle’s latest idea would be rejected out of hand.
As I keep saying, football should behave less like a business and more like a sport, because then it would do better business.
Debate: Would you be happy to have your club’s stadium renamed to bring in extra income? The Times
The Times/ Patrick Barclay
November 09, 2009
Debate: Would you be happy to have your club’s stadium renamed?
Stadium naming rights are not something we should always froth about. If Arsenal want to move to a new and improved stadium, and, to help with costs, call it the Emirates Stadium rather than New Highbury, well and good. If, on the other hand, Mike Ashley uses naming rights as just another way of tormenting the supporters of Newcastle United, that’s not so good. It depends on the stadium and the people involved.
The announcement that St James’ Park will be renamed the "sportsdirect.com@St James’ Park Stadium” until the end of this season, when an auction will be held in the hope of raising £5 million a year from a company appending its name or slogan to the ground’s time-honoured title, is probably the worst of all the awful things that have befallen Newcastle since Kevin Keegan left in 1997 (the only really good thing was the Indian summer of Sir Bobby Robson). Worse, even, than Ashley’s takeover and the installation of Dennis Wise alongside an unwilling Keegan in his second spell as manager.
St James’ Park is St James’ Park and should be so until the fans say otherwise. Anything else is bad business, quite apart from the insult it delivers to the sensibilities of those who give not just the stadium but the city in which it is near-centrally situated a rare and wonderful form of footballing life. And for the Football League to stand by and say nothing — just as, to be fair, the Premier League would probably have done had Newcastle not been relegated last season — is yet another illustration of how loosely the game is regulated, for all the improvements to which both Leagues justifiably point.
The name of a ground really does matter, as Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur will discover when they tap this source of revenue with which to pay bloated salaries. Chelsea hope to raise at least £10 million a year, which would keep John Terry at the club but not leave enough over to satisfy Salomon Kalou, let alone Didier Drogba. It should, however, be the concern of Chelsea’s supporters, just as it would be a matter for Manchester United supporters if the Glazers decided to rename Old Trafford the AIG Arena or something even more dubious. In San Francisco there is a stadium called Candlestick Park. Nearly 20 years ago I went to the city for a holiday and, because the name was so evocative (“candlestick birds”, a kind of curlew, inhabit that part of the Bay), visited Candlestick Park, barely knowing whether the game would be of baseball or gridiron (it turned out to be the former).
Later the stadium was renamed “3Com Park”. Not only would this put off tourists such as me; the locals scorned it, too, and became even more irritated when it turned into “Monster Park” in honour of Monster Cables, a company that marketed the leads that protrude from electronic equipment. A bylaw was passed to the effect that it reverted to Candlestick Park when the deal expired last year.
If the popular will is good enough for the Americans, it is good enough for English football. The Leagues should react to the news from Newcastle and Chelsea by regulating that any change of a stadium’s name must be endorsed by its users, by means of a poll supervised by trusted experts.
I suspect that, were such a rule in force, Arsenal would have been able to persuade their season ticketholders, many of whom formed a waiting list at Highbury — but that Newcastle’s latest idea would be rejected out of hand.
As I keep saying, football should behave less like a business and more like a sport, because then it would do better business.
Debate: Would you be happy to have your club’s stadium renamed to bring in extra income? The Times
