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Sponsorship in Sport: A Waste of Space?

Do any football clubs choose not to have a shirt sponsorship deal?

In the rich list of football clubs, 'Football Money League 2005', produced by Deloitte, the one club that didn't raise funds by selling the space on their shirt fronts to sponsors was Barcelona FC (commonly known as 'Barça'). Even Barça, who for years were the only major football club which refused to carry shirt sponsorship, appeared at the start of 2005 to be on the verge of embracing the multi-million euro boost that selling this space could bring. In February 2005, the club was reported to have been considering offers from a betting firm, Betandwin, and Hitachi, both of which were believed to be in the region of 10 million euro per year. The deal would leave Athletico Bilbao, though not part of the rich list, as the sole Spanish club to be voluntarily without a shirt sponsorship deal. Copies of the report 'Football Money League 2005' are available via free registration from the Deloitte Web site.

The Barça shirt deal is a highly emotive issue for the club's fans. Emotions are never far from the surface for a club whose motto is 'mas que un club' which means 'more than a club'. Their 120,000 membership scheme contrasts strongly with the single owner model of football club ownership in England (more on this topic can be read in the Biz/ed 'At your Leisure' feature No Way to Run a Business?).

In Catalonia, a fiercely independent region of Spain, Barça are regarded by many as the true 'national' team. In fact, Barça's kit is already sponsored in that most top clubs have both a kit supplier as well as a shirt sponsor. What marks Barcelona out as being different is that their kit supplier, Nike and its globally-recognised 'tick' have no other sponsor competing for exposure on the Barcelona shirt.

A good comparison can be drawn with Chelsea, whose current kit sponsors, Umbro, were recently 'dumped' by the club. The Umbro deal was supposed to run for a further five years, so Chelsea agreed to pay £24.5 million compensation to the firm for terminating the contract. Chelsea's new kit sponsors will be Adidas, who will pay the club £12 million for each year of an 8 year contract, starting from the 2006-07 season. But this kit deal is different from the club's shirt sponsorship deal.

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