Wigan Athletic, in seventh place in English soccer's Second Division, is a modest British professional sports club. Yet when the team's new stadium opens in August, it will bear the name of the country's top sporting goods retail chain, JJB Sports.
JJB Stadium, also to be the home of the popular Wigan rugby league team, is only the fourth professional soccer stadium in England to be named after a naming-rights sponsor. Both teams that will play there are owned by JJB's chairman, David Whelan.
The Wigan deal underlines that the trend of naming rights, gathering steam in Britain, if not the rest of Europe, is a smaller-club phenomenon rather than something the giants are leaping into.
Of the three existing named facilities among the stadiums hosting England's 92 professional soccer teams, only one is home to a club in the top-level Premier League, Cellnet Riverside Stadium in Middlesbrough. The others are Reebok Stadium in Bolton, home of a First Division team, and Alfred McAlpine Stadium in Huddersfield, also home of a First Division team as well as a local rugby club.
It appears, however, to be only the start. "The growth of naming rights in Europe is inevitable, no question," said Rob Tilliss, vice president of the Global Sports Advisory and Finance Group at Chase Securities, which advises several European soccer clients.
The push toward naming rights in Britain is logical because clubs tend to own their stadiums and are thus the direct recipients of additional revenues. With financial pressure growing as player costs escalate, the sale of naming rights is becoming an important option.
"Because of tradition, the big clubs probably won't be the leaders," Tilliss said. "It is likely to be a bottom-up phenomenon, pushed by the smaller clubs, because they need the money. When big clubs see the benefits, they may follow suit."
London club Chelsea is looking for a naming-rights partner for its rebuilt stadium (known as Stamford Bridge for decades) and hotel complex. It would be the first of the Premier League's half-dozen most recognizable clubs to sell naming rights.
As in the United States, naming-rights deals tend to be long term — for example, 10 years for Huddersfield's McAlpine Stadium — the idea being that the name will become associated with the facility in perpetuity, even after the contract ends.
McAlpine Stadium is named after the construction company that built the facility. The deal was signed during construction, with the naming-rights cost being knocked off the final bill. It is now universally known as McAlpine Stadium, including when TV announcers refer to it or newspapers report on it.
"The trick is getting in first," said Martin Perry, director of business development for Alfred McAlpine Special Projects. (Perry is also a director of Third Division team Brighton & Hove Albion, which is planning a new stadium and seeking a major sponsor for its name.)
In Middlesbrough, the local club's stadium was known as Riverside Stadium before a naming-rights deal with mobile phone company Cellnet. There is a good chance it will continue to be known as Riverside, even during the Cellnet deal, Perry said.
"Manchester United's stadium will probably always be known as Old Trafford, no matter what," Perry said. "It would be practically impossible to rename in the public's mind."
One of Britain's top indoor facilities also is named for a sponsor. MEN (Manchester Evening News) Arena in Manchester was Nynex Arena when it opened in 1995, but the naming rights changed late last year after only three years of the original deal.
Across Europe, a soccer club's traditional No. 1 source of sponsorship money has been selling the front of the uniform shirt to a club sponsor, but "shirt sponsorship tends to depend on how good the club is or well it's doing," Perry said. When you're at the top of the Premier League, shirt sponsorships can prove lucrative (league leader Arsenal's new deal with Sega is thought to be worth $6 million a year). But if you're in the Third Division, like Brighton & Hove Albion, it's a tougher sell.
Turning to naming rights, therefore, can open up sponsorship possibilities for clubs that might otherwise have trouble attracting money.
For both Bolton and Middlesbrough, the stadium naming-rights deal is an extension of the shirt sponsor relationship. Reebok and Cellnet both appear on the teams' jerseys.
Because stadiums outside Britain tend to be owned by local governments or cities, the naming-rights market has not yet opened up, but this is likely to happen as new private facilities emerge.
In Greece, the Olympiakos club, which during the past three years has climbed to the top of the Greek soccer market in ticket sales and total revenue, is looking to build a new stadium to solidify its position.
Olympiakos plays in the Olympic Stadium of Athens, which holds 75,000 but has no services at all. Attendance for league and European games averages 25,000. The team wants to build a new stadium with 35,000 seats. It owns the land already and is examining the financial options, including borrowing the money and selling naming rights.
"We want to avoid the entanglement of a partnership with any public body, such as the Greek Olympic Committee. The possibility of selling naming rights makes this more feasible," said club executive director Petros Kokkalis.
One thing that might limit the sale of naming rights is the nationalistic fervor that surrounds some of the teams that play in the stadiums. Naming-rights partners may have to come from within the national markets rather than multinational brands.
"People tell me that nobody will ever put a name on Old Trafford, the home of Manchester United," said Tilliss of Chase Securities. "We'll see. If the club sees it can earn $5 million a year for a name, tradition can change."
Jay Stuart is editorial director of SporTVision magazine and Sports TV Report and Sports Investor newsletters.
