Amanda Staveley reveals she was 'p***ed off' by Premier League rivals

Newcastle co-owner Amanda Staveley admits she was ‘p****d off’ with Premier League clubs when they made move to change sponsorship rules… but insists clubs were motivated by fear

  • Amanda Staveley brokered Newcastle’s £305million takeover back in 2021
  • Sources insist that a deal with Sela was only ever going to be agreed at a fair rate
  • Sean Longstaff insists Amazon filmed the only time Eddie Howe swore all season 

Newcastle co-owner Amanda Staveley says she was ‘p***ed off’ with the club’s Premier League rivals when they changed the rules on sponsorship deals, claiming they were motivated by fear.

The financier brokered Newcastle’s £305million takeover in 2021, with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund taking a majority stake. Shortly after, 18 top-flight rivals voted in new rules on related-party transactions, intended to prevent Newcastle agreeing lucrative commercial deals with Saudi firms.

Under the rules, their recent front-of-shirt sponsorship agreement with Saudi events company Sela – valued at £25m per season – needed to be signed off by the Premier League as fair market value.

Sources insist the club was only ever going to be able to agree such deals at a fair rate, but Staveley has revealed how ‘angry’ the opposition to their arrival in the league made her feel.

Asked if other clubs saw Newcastle as a ‘threat’, she said: ‘Yes. But I was shocked that we could buy a club, pay a full price and then rules just change. I think that’s what p***ed me off, because we had so little revenue anyway, that if you’re just going to ban everything… We were 20th, we had nothing. I was angry then, yes.

Newcastle co-owner Amanda Staveley admitted she was ‘p***ed off’ by Premier League rivals

The club’s front-of-shirt sponsor Sela needed to be signed off by the league as fair market value

Staveley was speaking on Amazon’s new four-part documentary ‘This is Newcastle United’, which airs on Friday

‘You’ve got to remember that nobody likes competition. The Champions League places are tight, there’s only four. Other clubs do everything they can to make sure those places are available to as few people as possible. Because of the wealth of PIF, obviously there was a lot of push-back from other clubs. I think there was a fear that we’d have an unfair advantage.’

Staveley was speaking on Amazon’s new four-part documentary ‘This is Newcastle United’, which airs on Friday.

She also addressed the controversy surrounding the Saudi-led takeover, and said: ‘In the beginning, the big issue was that they said PIF was the Saudi state, which was absolute rubbish.

‘We had push-back obviously from Amnesty International. Everybody wanted to talk about human rights and they didn’t want to discuss anything else. So, we worked really hard to address concerns that people have.’ 

We Are Newcastle United launches on Prime Video with the first episode on Friday August 11, followed by new episodes every Friday through to September 1. 

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