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It’s on again at Newcastle United. Hope could only spring so long on Tyneside, before the stable and prosperous abdicated to the bizarre. Ownerships protests, relegation and near destruction financially have made Newcastle the Premier League’s favourite soap opera.
Yet this season they have defied all that, consigned it to the past and played like a team full of confidence, belief and plenty of quality. A United Newcastle, indeed.
However just as Newcastle’s works appear to be at their most functional, owner Mike Ashley has hurled in a spanner.
Mr Ashley and his managing director Derek Llambias have decided that St James Park, which has been so named for 119 of the 131 years it has been home to the Magpies, will be henceforth known as Sports Direct Arena.
Sports Direct is a chain of sports stores owned by Mr Ashley, and his thinking is that the name change will place the stadium in the shop window for a future, more lucrative naming rights deal with another sponsor.
And there’s a blue in the offing as a result.
Just as they are known for the intensity of their support, Newcastle fans are notoriously combustible when they don’t like what’s going on. They’re protesting.
Upsetting Newcastle fans is a dangerous game, and one Mr Ashley has played several times already in his reign, not least back in 2009 when renaming the stadium was first proposed.
Back then, the fans reacted by making so much noise that a motion was put to the national Parliament seeking intervention. Back then only a partial renaming was proposed.
Now they’re proposing to extinguish the name ‘St. James’ altogether from the name, so its little wonder all hell looks likely to break loose.
Stadium naming rights is a far more recent phenomenon in the English Premier League than it is in Australian sport.
In the Premier League Bolton’s Reebok Stadium, Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium, Stoke’s Brittania Stadium, Wigan’s DW Stadium and very recently Etihad Stadium, home of Manchester City have fallen to it.
It is being investigated as a possibility by Chelsea at the moment, who have, like the Geordies, expressed their distaste at the prospect(if not with quite such ferocity).
In Australia our stadia are almost exclusively named by sponsors.
Look at those in the A-League: nib Stadium (Perth), Ausgrid Stadium (Newcastle), Skilled Stadium (Gold Coast), Suncorp Stadium (Brisbane), Etihad Stadium (Melbourne Victory), AAMI Park (Melbourne Heart), Bluetongue Stadium (Central Coast), Westpac Stadium (Wellington). Adelaide and Sydney stand out as the exceptions to the rule.
The issue here is that original names bring a sense of heritage and continuity to the game. We in football, and sport more broadly, have compromised so much to commercialism in recent years.
But the stadium is the home of a club’s history. In renting out these names we not only rent out a stadium’s identity, but also a part of its soul.
It is far more difficult to build an intimidating atmosphere and an aura around a ground when the name changes every five years at the expiration of the latest sponsorship deal.
Old Trafford is a fortress not just because of its size, but because when you visit the ground you feel the presence of everything and everyone that has gone before.
The same must be said of Anfield. The same used to be said of Highbury, another fortress with an atmosphere shrouded in heritage and history.
St James Park, by virtue of its design, size and raucous fans will always be a magnificent arena.
However by making it the Sports Direct Arena, Newcastle United will pick further away at the sentiment and history which separates football, and particularly English football from other leagues and sports around the world.
Those things are of greater value than could be measured by an accountant or a marketing manager.
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