Is it any wonder that we are still seeing silly transfer deals going through, with sums changing hands more than the total GDP in some countries when cash is flowing into the game in other areas. We recently looked at commercial deals in general on the blog (see post from July here) but we now want to look at Shirt Sponsorship again after World Soccer Magazine published its findings.
As of the start of 2010/11 season, the traditional Top 4 in the English Premier League will be earning close to £58m PER ANNUM just for selling the space on their shirts. Leading the silly money stakes are surprisingly in times of banking crisis, a bank. Not just any old bank but one that has run into major issues with the sub-prime market in the US. Step forward Standard Chartered Bank who are taking over the shirt sponsorship from Carlsberg at Anfield. They feel that an investment of £20.25 million per annum on a four year contract is worthwhile. And we wonder why we are still in the deepest financial crisis in history.
The top 25 deals in the World in 2009/10 equate to over £225million per annum flowing into football. If we look at which leagues get the share it looks like:-
English Premier League – £75m (flowing to just 7 clubs)
German Bundesliga – £90m (10 clubs)
Spanish La Liga – £16.7m( only 1 club in the top 25 and that is Real Madrid)
Italy’s Serie A – £31m (4 clubs)
France’s Ligue – £14m (3 clubs)
The Spanish situation is the most surprising – only Real Madrid attract a sponsorship deal worth more than £2.5m per annum. The other surprise is the mix of clubs from England. In the top 25 we only have 7 clubs – aside from the “Top 4″ there is Man City, Spurs and Fulham. No Aston Villa, Newcastle United, West Ham United, Everton or Sunderland. Could that be because they are still in their old deals? Not in the case of West Ham or Sunderland that is for sure.
Surely the one sector that needs to take a long hard look at itself is the Online Gambling one….BWin, the Austrian gaming company weren’t satisfied with one top European side to sponsor so they signed up 3! Real Madrid (£16.7m for 3 years), Bayern Munich (£16.6m for a further 2 years) and AC Milan (£10m pa for 2 years) have all been sporting their logo recently – but surely one online company cannot produce revenues that justify a commitment of over £100m in the next three years. Emirates aren’t exactly far behind either spending £5.5m per annum until 2012 with Hamburg, £5m with Arsenal and £3.6m for another 5 years with Paris Saint-Germain – meaning a commitment of over £60m.
Madness, sheer madness…..and as a final point and WITHOUT cheating by using Uncle Google can you name the sponsors of the following 5 clubs all of whom appear in the top 25 AND the 5 clubs from the sponsors name? Answers on a postcard of course or by clicking here…
Sponsors Name…
1. Juventus are sponsored by this company for another season for £10.1m. Clue – It’s not Old Dutch
2. Schalke have already spent their £16.6m this season they get from this company. Clue – Paul Gascoigne’s graduation party?
3. Inter Milan are years into this £5.5m per annum deal. Clue – I bet they get as many calendars as they want
4. Werder Bremen have been passing go and collecting £7.3m for the past few seasons. Clue – You can’t miss their building if you fly into City Airport.
5. Man Utd will get £20m per season until 2013 for this new deal. Clue – A is not off
Easy eh? So how about these?
1. Evonik pay £7m per season to sponsor which German team? Clue – they have a real Kop
2. Volkswagon like to keep it close by sponsoring this team who debuted in the Champions League this year? – Clue – Lupo
3. Wind are a big noise in Italy but who do they spend £5.5m per annum on? Clue – Eternally yours
4. Etihad are an airline but who did they fly into sponsor this season contributing £5m per season in the process? Clue – like they really need the cash!
5. Fraport is one of the biggest transport hubs in the world so why do they need to spend £5m per annum advertising the fact? Clue – Hot dogs all round
If you can answer these without cheating and get more than 5 then you are an expert or a sucker for sponsorship. But there are the good guys. Those clubs who want to put things back into the local community or a charity. These are very rare these days but there are two notable examples – FC Barcelona who still pay to have the Unicef logo on their shirts, and Aston Villa who sport the logo to Acorns, a local hospice.. I am still not convinced.
Thanks to World Soccer Magazine for providing the above financial information and Colours of Football for the graphics.
When I talk of beards, I mean at least 2 inches of growth. Stubble is a whole different ball game and entirely acceptable. Step up
And whilst we are on the subject of Chelsea players, lets have a look at the most polar opposed couple in England – Ashley and Cheryl Cole. Google ‘Ashley Cole hate’ and you get some interesting YouTube videos along with headlines of him being voted Britain’s most hated celebrity, that’s not to mention all the groups voicing their dislike on Facebook. Speak to football fans across the country and you will hear a fairly similar response, he is one of the least popular players around – in fact he became the first player to be roundly booed by his own fans last year when England played Kazakhstan (see I do know a thing or two about the game!)
Ashley told The News of The World he accepted his bad reception. He said: “I will be retired in five or six years and then the people who hate me can move on to someone else.” And maybe even Cheryl is embarrassed about the reception her husband receives as rumour has it she won’t be attending the 2010 World Cup in South Africa as she’ll be much too busy with her solo career and work on The X Factor. Although some argue that Ashley is the best left-back that England have his talent is hugely over-shadowed by his behaviour. It’s easy to dislike someone who gets bad press over his social life, and is a good footballer but he seems to never come up smelling of roses. Cheryl on the other hand not only smells of flowers but is fast becoming the quintessential English Rose, even with her barbed wire tattoo around her thigh!”
Tuesday started with a trip to Stuttgart. Armed with the best of European stadium literature (
A reasonably early start was needed on Wed am as we had a train to catch to Wolfsburg for our 2nd game, VFL Wolfsburg v Besiktas. German trains are superb but they are not cheap, this journey took 3 ½ hours (1 change) and cost £60 single. On arriving in Wolfsburg, there appeared to be a vast number of Besiktas fans displaying their colours proudly. A quiet afternoon in the bars kept us out of the dropping temperatures. In one bar, we got talking with a couple of locals who couldn’t quite believe what we were doing there and were even more surprised when I told them that European football travelling is popular in the UK and people go to more obscure games than I had chosen. These gents showed us where to get the bus to the ground from, although the ground was only a 20 min walk from the train station.
Thursday, it was back on the train to Berlin for a couple of days. Hertha Berlin were at home to Heerenveen in the Europa League. Berlin was an excellent venue, easy to get around and obviously plenty of history to keep you busy, the Olympic site itself was enough to take up the best part of a day, I’d recommend a visit up the Bell Tower. Berlin has a vibrant nightlife in the East and you are never going to be short of a midnight kebab. It was really, really cold though. Tickets for this game were easy to come by on Hertha’s official website although they would not send tickets to the UK so we had to collect them on the match day.









Carlsberg….one of the best words ever invented by man. Living in Copenhagen gives you a certain amount of pride of their most famous contribution to world culture. In fact us Brits have been raised on adverts such as “If Carlsberg did Holidays/Football/Flats/Girlfriends etc” or The Danes hate to see it leave which are completely alien to the Danes who have not got a clue when I start going on about “If Carlsberg did football blogs…..”
1. The Swastika – An Indian peace symbol. Long before the rise of the Nazi party in post First World War Germany the Swastika was known as a symbol of peace in many Indian cultures. Carlsberg adopted the symbol during the 19th century and had it carved into their Elephant Gates at the turn of the century. During the 1930’s they actually started legal proceedings against the Nazi party to stop them essentially infringing their copyright. Guess who won???
3. Special Brew – In 1950 the then master brewer Thomas Marfleet brewed a new beer to commemorate the visit to Copenhagen of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Churchill loved it and Carlsberg produced two crates especially for Winnie. It then went on sale under the name “Easter Brew” before becoming Special Brew in 1951.
8. 18,242 unopened bottles – Carlsberg own the largest collection of unopened beer bottles in the world. Some years ago they were approached by an individual who had over 10,000 DIFFERENT bottles in his possession but his wife wanted to use his beer room as a nursery (priorities!) and so they donated his collection to the brewery. The collection includes a bottle from every brewery in the world as well as some special limited edition ones such as the Red labelled Carlsberg (see left) produced to commemorate the Danes reaching the 1986 World Cup finals (the bottle was a flop unlike the football team), a tetra-pack carton of beer, the original Winston Churchill produced Special Brew and the last ever bottle (end one on the right) produced at the brewery in December 2008. Prior to this Carlsberg produced over 4 million bottles A DAY! They still produce the very limited edition Jacobsen beer which sells for over 2000 Danish Kroner a bottle (the 2008 edition sells for 2008DKR, this years will be 2009DKR etc) – probably the most expensive beer in the world
10. Carlsberg and Football – “Carlsberg don’t sponsor football teams, but if they did they would probably be the best teams in the world”….Well actually they do sponsor four football teams at the moment and none of them are world beaters! They have been the main sponsors of FCK (FC Copenhagen – see 

















































