Bristol City chairman Jon Lansdown admits he’s open to the idea of selling naming rights to Ashton Gate following the confirmation of a new multi-team sponsorship agreement with Huboo.
City have signed a multi-year agreement with the Bristol-based logistics company, ending their four-year partnership with gambling firms Dunder and, most recently, MansionBet ensuring a local front-of-shirt sponsor for the first time since Lancer Scott during the 2017/18 season.
The deal, which covers the men’s and women’s teams for City, Bristol Bears plus Bristol Flyers, is understood to be greater in financial value to those previous sponsorship arrangements but, at the same time, Lansdown admits it only “scratches the surface” in terms of addressing the Robins losses and how that chimes with financial fair play.
City are set to fail the EFL’s Profit & Sustainability rules for next season having posted losses of £38.4million for the financial year ending 2021 due to the collapse of the transfer market during the pandemic.
As a result, City need to explore fresh revenue streams and one obvious source could be the selling of naming rights for both the Robins High Performance Centre and, perhaps more controversially, Ashton Gate.
Of the 24 teams in the Championship, eight have a corporate sponsor for their stadium, altering the name of each ground. It’s previously been something City have largely overlooked due to the historical significance and identity of Ashton Gate.
However, speaking in the Heineken Lounge overlooking the pitch at BS3, Lansdown wouldn’t rule it out. Although, in the immediate future, the High Performance Centre appears more likely to be the subject of selling naming rights.
"It's not necessarily an ambition, certainly the High Performance Centre would come ahead of it, but I'm not going to rule it out if the right partner is there," Lansdown said. "Obviously it has to be a good partner for multiple years, with the right association to do that, which you see less and less of nowadays. But if it was right, it's certainly something you would consider.
"We have stadium partners. In terms of the High Performance Centre, it's something we'll definitely look at and consider going forward. This is the platform for all of our next steps. This is a way of showcasing how it can and will work and therefore you will get other businesses that want to get involved on a similar level.
"Obviously you can only have one front-of-shirt partner but then you have things that you can tie together like training wear and the High Performance Centre. So it certainly gives you the platform to go on and do that."
As mentioned, the Huboo relationship represents a switch away from the gambling industry which has been a cause of consternation for City fans since online Swedish casino operator Dunder were brought on board in 2018.
A government white paper is expected to be published in May following a two-year review of the gambling laws in the country and a recommendation for reform is anticipated, including potentially banning betting companies from being front-of-shirt sponsors.
City are one of six clubs in the Championship who bear such sponsors - along with Birmingham, Middlesbrough, Derby, Coventry City and Stoke City - and their decision to move away from the industry could become the first of many.
Although Lansdown, whose personal Twitter account was flooded with messages of protest when the MansionBet deal was announced in 2020, insisted that thinking didn't come directly into the selection of this partnership, with the desire for a local business who were willing to sponsor all five clubs the determining factors.
"We're really proud of the new partnership and the platform it gives us but we also have to be thankful for our sponsors for getting us to this point," Lansdown added. "We can have our personal preferences but it's hard to be master of all of that - in terms of football, we play in the SkyBet Championship.
"We understand where the thoughts and theories come from but we have to be thankful to our partners at this point and excited about what we have now got going forward.
"It didn't (potential gambling reform) come into the thinking of what we're doing here; it was timing and an opportunity and it fits a different narrative. If you have someone who values as much as what you're doing as you, then you have the perfect partnership.
"It's an emotional game, you always want to have that emotional connection. Whether if we're talking about past sponsors or what we have got now, if you have a regional lead sponsor that you can see doing community things and everything else, I wouldn't say it's the sole reason but it's another nice add-on to it.
"We're not tone-deaf (to fan complaints around gambling) but, at the same time, you have phases of your progression where you can't cherry-pick everything that you want, exactly how you want. We're making further progression but they (Dunder and MansionBet) are part of that journey to get there."
City remain in discussion with the EFL over potential reform around Profit & Sustainability rules in the wake of Richard Gould’s declaration in January.
The Robins CEO believes the system is now unfair following the collapse of the transfer market, which was so central to City’s business model as player trading allowed them to break even, and record a profit in the financial year ending 2019.
Gould wants projected transfer earnings to be included alongside the add-backs for lost stadium revenue, after the 2020/21 season was played entirely behind closed doors, which would then allow City to meet the relevant Profit & Sustainability criteria.
If they’re not, then City face the possibility of points deductions next season or beyond. A situation that is likely to affect a number of clubs, albeit with many yet to have published their accounts for the 2020/21 campaign.
Lansdown estimates up to seven clubs in the Championship will face a similar situation to City, which also governs their planning for the summer ahead.
City face the dilemma of potentially having to sell prized assets Han-Noah Massengo, Antoine Semenyo and/or Alex Scott to meet the criteria, considerably hampering their progress on the field, but if the EFL allow for greater financial flexibility in light of the pandemic, in theory, the pressure to raise significant transfer revenue won't be as strong.
"From our point of view, I'd like to think that Bristol City are looked at as a very stable and well-run football club; locally owned with sensible actions," Lansdown said.
"We've all got slightly different models in how we do it but you can see our track record, we used the transfer market to have a slightly higher wage bill that a club of our size would normally have, and that's been a perfectly valid way to operate over a number of years, and we've done it pretty well.
"Part of that has completely dropped off, through no foreseeable fault of our own and if you want to classify that as a mistake, it's certainly an honest one. We can't assume that's going to come back straight away so we have to adapt and change how we do things and improve and make sure we progress that way.
"But it does leave us in a difficult position in the short term because something we've been doing which isn't reckless or underhand has left us in the situation we're in. We have to work through that and work with people to do it.
"I don't think we're in limbo because we've been adjusting. It's not as if we've been splashing cash over the last few windows and that's when I say we'll have to work with people; we want the right to do what we think is right and have control of what we do.
"If we're being realistic, everyone is different so it becomes a case-by-case basis, that's why you're then explaining your situation, why you're in this position and how you're going to get through it. You would have thought that's an acceptable thing to do, it's not going to be someone telling us to sell someone, that's still got to be under our control."
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