The FA Cup "is in danger of going an entire season without a lead sponsor after it emerged that a potential backer had pulled out of putting its name to the competition," according to Ben Rumsby of the London TELEGRAPH. The FA "failed to secure a frontline partner for the world’s biggest domestic cup in time for its all-important third-round stage despite having had one lined up towards the end of last year." It "was not clear" why talks had broken down with the unnamed company, although it is understood that the FA "had been determined in October to extract the maximum possible value" from any deal, having previously netted around £8M ($12M) a year from Budweiser. FA Commercial Dir Stuart Turner was said "to have been confident of concluding negotiations as recently as last month but may now be forced to write off the 2014-15 competition." Synergy Sponsorship CEO Tim Crow said, “In my opinion, this season’s gone. If a brand was to say to us, ‘Should we jump in now or wait and have a full run of it next season,’ we would absolutely say unless there was some factor about the brand -- a new product or something like that -- that it would be very difficult to justify coming in from the fourth round onwards. It would just look very odd" (TELEGRAPH, 1/5).
