Football Shirt Sponsorship

Sat. 13th saw West Ham play West Bromwich Albion with neither team showing a sponsor on their team shirts a throwback to a bygone era and something I guess we’ll not see again for awhile and could well feature in a sports quiz question in the future. West Ham’s lack of sponsor was due to the recent demise of XL holidays who during the week went into administration, the shirts have been removed from sale and the team took to the pitch with hastily patched up replacements (literally).

By contrast, last season T-Mobile were West Broms' shirt sponsors and they remain one of the clubs sponsors. Various companies have been mooted in the local press/media as sponsors for this season, LDV/Ladbrokes and Carlsberg (another of the clubs' sponsors).As I understand the amount of income from shirt sponsorship offered by the names mentioned would be in the region of £600K - £800k.It would appear that WBA are holding out for a more lucrative deal which is understandable now that they are playing top-flight football again. However if you ask the Albion fans, most appear to be happy to be sponsor-free. Replica shirts are selling like hot-cakes in the club shop who are selling them blank with the promise of being able to return them at a later date to get the sponsors name added should they so wish. It will be interesting to see how many bother especially if the club does opt for an alcohol or betting company. When you consider how many of these shirts are worn by kids, some parents would rather they wore un-branded replica tops however when a friend of mine who’s club was sponsored by a well known lager company enquired whether he could purchase an un-branded child’s shirt he was told no.

The very first club to use a shirt sponsor in the English game was Liverpool in 1979 who were sponsored by Hitachi and the rest have all since followed. Barcelona have famously resisted a shit sponsor for over a hundred years and even now instead of cashing in are advertising Unicef the children’s charity and also donate a further million pounds to Unicef projects. As a West Ham fan I would love to see the club go down this road ( if we can’t leave them blank). The XL deal was worth about 2.5m a year and although there does seem to be some serious cost cutting being carried out over the summer, 2.5m would only cover about one first team player’s wages if we’re to believe all the stories and any loss might be reduced by an increase in sales if left blank ( i.e. West Brom.)

Discussing this with other fans over the weekend, a lot of fans would like to see a blank shirt, one that does not carry any embarrassment advertising a company you either don’t like or have never even heard of. One idea to come up was the Bobby Moore Charity Fund with a small % from each shirt going to the charity, a shirt that all fans would be proud to wear. The club have recently retired the no.6 shirt to mark the 50th anniversary since his debut so this would be the year to do it and given the current circumstances the ideal opportunity, so let’s see how serious they are......