Oh dear, it seems that in football club boardrooms up and down the country reduced numbers of commercial staff are talking about increasing problems with the shirts on our backs.
Shirt sponsorship as an issue has enjoyed larger than average dollops of media attention so far this season. Disappearing sponsors are a Euro-wide problem, long-standing relationships are ending in tears and it’s not all down to the current financial climate.
The most recent highlight was the meeting of West Ham and West Brom in a shirt sponsorless fixture caused by the collapse of XL and the end of a deal with T-Mobile, respectively. Interestingly, sponsorless Baggies shirts have proved extremely popular perhaps because supporters like myself, who doggedly refuse to change their shirt annually, have pounced on the chance to buy a pure and virginal home shirt without the name of some naff financial company, estate agent or online gambling franchise crassly plastered across the front. How anglo-Roma fans manage to hold their heads high walking down the local high street with the word WIND across the front beats me but it’s not the worst example. Arsenal’s Sega sponsorship and West Ham’s Pony shirts are now woven into the rich tapestry of football shirt lore for various reasons you’re already aware of (and let’s not forget Brighton & Nobo... – juvenile ed.).
Then my own Blades hit the headlines this season when they had to reprint home shirts because the current sponsor’s name ‘visitmalta.com’ was not thought visible enough. Even someone with pervy, milk-bottle-bottomed glasses could have told them that at the start of the season but the club even went to the trouble of offering a new-for-old shirt swap, such was the trouble they went to on behalf of the sponsor and the deal.
Then there was the rash of so-called credit crunch-related shirt sponsorship disasters including Northern Rock and Newcastle, the US Treasury bailout of Manchester United’s AIG (the largest shirt sponsorship deal ever). And finally there’s the whole Bwin furore between offshore internet gambling groups and European regulatory authorities.
Companies going bust and leaving clubs with egg on their faces and liquidated names on their shirts is nothing new but it is becoming increasingly evident during these troubled times. Though the value of shirt sponsorship in the Premiership was last quoted as being around the £70million mark, the truth is that only the wealthy clubs can really command the cash and that the difference between top Premiership and relegation zone can be the difference between £20 million plus and £200,000.
The height of the dumb deals, money-no-object sponsorship led to a number of questionable decisions and the greed was not exclusive to football. The Australian cricket team’s abandonment of their traditional baggy green caps for alternatives bearing their brewery sponsor’s name during the current tour of India would make Richie Benaud turn in his grave, if he were dead.
Two years ago a UK woman attracted a well-known pizza outlet to sponsor part of her wedding day with her guests served a pasta entrée in recognition of the deal. No doubt it was accompanied by a flaccid salad in a kidney-shaped dish washed down with a red wine tasting like chip shop vinegar.
But the FC (Football Crunch) has already put an end to such flights of corporate sponsorship fancy except for the privileged few, more so if the economy spends the best part of the next decade in a zombied slumber.
But every cloud has a proverbial silver lining and perhaps lower sponsorship prices offer opportunities for those who can’t normally sit at the top table. Step forward Hooters, Bernard Matthews’ Turkey Twizzlers, Cillit Bang, Cif, Jif, Daz and Mr Kipling. Better still, perhaps we’re going to see more ‘local sponsorship for local teams’, more akin to football Leagues One and Two, like the kind of crackly static photo ads you can still see at some cinemas before the main attraction.
Perhaps one Monday morning the Guardian sports pages will be dominated by a photo of Wayne Rooney saluting the Stretford End, arms outstretched in a quasi-religious celebration of sublime skills which have transcended mortal ambition – wearing a shirt emblazoned with “Ted’s Snax – last stop before the M62”. Or perhaps Match of the Day cameras will catch Djibril Cisse as he turns from the crowd’s adoring screams to salute his advancing team mates wearing a cheeky smile and the motif across his chest “Hair by Pauline”. Maybe Premiership shirts will carry the cheesy ad slogans of local roof tilers, plumbers, sparkies, plasterers, pest controllers and French polishers up and down the country.
Is this not the time then for a sea change in thinking, is this not a chance for football to scrape the mud off and discover a moral and ethical blood stream lurking beneath it’s layers of corpulent, corporate fat. Well, some of the early signs are encouraging in this respect and a few lone and brave soles are reconnoitring the path.
Early pioneers of course were Barcelona and their UNICEF shirts. The move is still applauded worldwide although cynics have suggested the loss of cash is a drop in their ocean and has been more than made up by increased sales on the back of a slick piece of marketing. What better way to get a rival or neutral supporter to buy your own club shirt?
Nevertheless, Aston Villa stepped up to the mark this season with their Acorns Children’s Hospice sponsors. Questionable how much the deal is worth but again you can’t fail but applaud the idea. However, in terms of interest, the charity shirt may already have had its day and may see diminishing returns if it becomes the norm. Of much more interest for me was the recent decision by the Clydesdale Bank Premier League to wear special Remembrance Weekend shirts. Some clubs like Hearts had a shirt with an embroidered poppy and the names of former players who lost their lives fighting for their country.
When football doffs its cap to higher cultural events and concepts it can only benefit the game and its reputation as a whole. In just the same way a crowd encourages, nurtures and later idolises a local lad from a local school, who came through the academy and whose mum still shops at Tesco’s, crowds have taken shirts with local sponsors or campaigns to their hearts. None more so than at Brighton, where supporters enjoyed one of the longest-running and most closely affiliated shirt sponsorship deals with the Skint logo of Norman Cook’s record label. The irony was lost on no-one and supporters felt united in a backs-against-the-wall fight to keep the club spirit alive.
It’s no coincidence that my three favourite Blades shirts are the sponsorless 1970s ‘my era’ Currie and Woodward shirt, followed by the ones sponsored by Wards Brewery and Arnold Laver. Listen up football club chairmen and women –I chose to renew my shirt specifically because of the local sponsor on those shirts! Supporters supped the beer before, during and after the match and the brewery represented all that was unique and distinctive about my team. Arnold Laver is a bit more esoteric but anyone who walked to Bramall Lane over the last 30 years cannot fail to have noticed local lad Arnold’s cavernous timber yards on the way to the ground. Therefore, seeing his name on the shirt was like a home coming, a salute and a tribute as well as a company ad.
So if we are to persevere with shirt sponsors I’d like to see something more creative. Emblems. motifs, logos and slogans, one-offs, charitable ideas (please no Pudsey shirts though), thought provoking messages, statements of intent, fun-poking digs, retro memorials, sponsorship steeped in the local community and representing its spirit, its diversity, its hopes and aspirations. If your football club really is part of your community then make it put its money where its mouth is. I dare them to be bold. If not then Leave it Blank (sounds like the start of a campaign). Of course there’s about as much chance of this happening as there is of a Hammers fan becoming President of the United States of America. . . .
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