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Newcastle United owners considering St James’ Park stadium partner

1 year ago
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A St James’ Park stadium partner is being considered by the Newcastle United owners.

As we come up to the one year anniversary of the new / current ownership, every angle looked at to increase the revenues coming into the club.

Rather than full on naming rights, a stadium partner could see something along the lines of ‘St James’ Park powered by…’ in the near future.

This news has been broken by The Athletic, via sources inside the club.

However, they report that the Newcastle United owners understand that anything like this would need to be handled sensitively and Newcastle supporters will be consulted before any decision is made

This is a very different scenario to what Mike Ashley did.

Maybe an all-time low for the then owner when he renamed St James’ Park using his sports shop branding AND refused to allow a single penny to be paid into the football club in return. Quite incredible, something never seen before (as far as I’m aware), of a Premier League club owner using his football club in such a way to benefit his other business for free.

Though we had all come to know this wasn’t exactly out of character, considering that for years Mike Ashley had also giving his sporting brands absolutely free advertising both via countless hoardings at St James’ Park, as well as at the training ground and across the club’s official social media, plus at all pre and post-match press conferences and whenever player signings were made.

The building up of commercial revenues is understandably high on the agenda of the Newcastle United owners but as The Athletic point out, they are effectively starting from scratch.

Whilst the biggest clubs in the Premier League employ as many as 250 people driving commercial revenue, they reveal that at Newcastle United under Mike Ashley the commercial department numbered four (FOUR!) people. However, if you only want to promote the rest of your business empire for free, rather than doing everything you can to drive money into the football club, why would you need to employ many staff in the commercial department…?

The Athletic also report that they have learnt ‘There are wider infrastructure plans for the city and the club will press the Government to bring their “levelling-up” agenda to Newcastle.’

This fits in with various past reporting around the takeover, when it was claimed that the investment wouldn’t be just on / in Newcastle United, but in the wider city / region. This of course very much potentially explaining the presence of the Reuben family in the consortium, the richest family in the UK and much of that wealth built on development projects, including many interests they already have in Newcastle Upon Tyne and the region in general.

The Reuben family also owning Newcastle racecourse amongst their investments / assets in the region.

The report also reveals that Newcastle United are in discussions with documentary makers, with potentially one season, or multi-season, access to be given.

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