Clubs sponsors strip their names off shirts

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Jonathan Green celebrates scoring for West Brom, who have played without a shirt sponsor this season

As many as 20 clubs in the top two divisions are said to be chasing new shirt sponsors and experts believe that they could face a financial reality check as they attempt to clinch deals over the next two weeks. Some are in a frantic race in the next few days to find sponsors willing to sign up to lucrative shirt deals worth an estimated £100 million a year to English football.

The big hitters in the Barclays Premier League are likely to achieve the sort of spectacular numbers that have turned England’s top tier into the richest league in the world. But not all clubs will convince sponsors to part with huge cheques on the scale seen over the past few years when credit was easy.

Clubs in the Coca-Cola Championship could be the most vulnerable, struggling to find companies with enough excess cash to put their brand on a football shirt. But time is running out because clubs will need to have tied up their deals within days so that replica shirts, complete with the new sponsors’ names, can be manufactured ready for the start of next season.

“This really is crunch time for many clubs,” Dominic Curran, a director at Synergy, one of Britain’s leading sponsorship agencies, warned last night. “There is a lot of activity out there with clubs trying to find companies to back them but this is a very tough time in the economy.

“Football has been saying that it is robust enough to survive the recession but this is the first proper test of that statement. What happens in the next few days will show us whether football remains a proposition too attractive for sponsors to resist or whether football, like every other business, is going to have to tighten its belt.”

Manchester United are the biggest name on offer, having lost AIG, the struggling US insurance giant, which is pulling out next year. However, they are expected to pull in a sponsor willing to pay close to the club’s asking price of £20 million a year.

United’s neighbours, Manchester City, also lose their £1 million contract with Thomas Cook, the travel company, at the end of this season, but the club’s new Arab owners should have enough clout to attract a sponsor from the Middle East. The prospects for the rest, though, are at best patchy with a host of deals ready to expire and no ready replacements in the wings.

Portsmouth are looking for a new deal and West Bromwich Albion have played this season without a sponsor. Relegation would not make the job any easier, while Middlesbrough, also on the brink of the drop to the Championship, are scheduled to lose Garmin, the satellite navigation company.

Wigan Athletic need a replacement for the struggling JJB sportswear company, with both the team shirts and the stadium naming rights thought to be up for grabs. Hull City are expected to lose Karoo, an internet company hit by the recession.

In the Championship, many clubs have been limited to single-year deals that are coming up for renewal. Reading have to find a replacement for Waitrose, the supermarket chain, while Cardiff signed a one-year contract worth £250,000 with a van sales business that expires at the end of the season. Many clubs are looking for extensions from their present sponsors, but will find some hard bargaining ahead.

For every club desperately seeking a sponsor, there is another who will be looking anxiously around for potential replacements over the coming months, particularly those with sponsors in the financial and retail sectors, such as Newcastle United, whose estimated £5 million-a-year deal with Northern Rock comes to an end next year.

But the concentration of power and attention at the top of the Premier League is hurting the rest of football, according to Phil Gartside, chairman of Bolton Wanderers. His club are sponsored by Reebok until 2016, but it is thought that the sportswear company would be happy to move aside if a replacement could be found. Gartside believes that would be tricky with live television exposure limited for less successful teams.

“It is damaging our ability to attract sponsors who want to get exposure on live television,” he said. “There are several Premier League teams looking for shirt sponsors next year and the competition is intense in a diminishing market due to the financial crisis.”