Newcastle consider naming rights for St James' Park for Saudi sponsor

Newcastle consider naming rights for St James’ Park and will use Saudi sponsors to help boost revenues in their quest for Champions League football

  • Newcastle look to Saudi Arabian injection to help Champions League chase
  • The club could offer naming rights to their St James’ Park to Saudi sponsors 
  • Chief Executive Darren Eales says he’ll use the club owners to ‘open doors’ 
  • The Magpies are sixth in the Premier League and only lost once all season 

Newcastle United are looking to Saudi Arabian sponsors to help accelerate their journey towards the Champions League and will consider naming rights for St James’ Park.

Chief executive Darren Eales has revealed they will use Saudi’s Public Investment Fund – the club’s majority owners – to ‘open doors’ to commercial partners in the Gulf state and beyond.

Rival Premier League clubs were panicked by Newcastle’s takeover last year and a temporary ban on related-party sponsors was immediately introduced.

Newcastle could consider offering naming rights to St James’ Park using Saudi sponsors 

However, that was later lifted, with the caveat that any deals involving companies associated with the owners must represent ‘fair market value’.

MailOnline revealed on Wednesday that Peter Silverstone, formerly of Arsenal, will arrive in the newly created position of chief commercial officer, and the club are exploring every avenue in their bid to increase revenues and push back the boundaries of Financial Fair Play.

When asked about Saudi sponsorship, Eales said: ‘Absolutely. It would make sense in terms of some of the doors that could be opened by PIF. They invest in a number of countries globally.

‘I also think when you look at a country like Saudi Arabia with a young population – 36million and growing – football is the No1 sport and there is some natural affinity there in terms of the commercial value of having an association with Newcastle.’

Darren Eales (right) has said he’ll owners – to ‘open doors’ to commercial partners in the Gulf state and beyond. 

He added: ‘The (Premier League) rules are there for fair market value (not to prevent related-party deals).’

The prospect of a Saudi-related sponsor of St James’ would only be pursued with the blessing of supporters, as Eales said: ‘As we think about anything to do with the stadium, we’ll talk to the supporters because, ultimately, it would be crazy to try and do something if all the supporters are against it. Bad business. It doesn’t matter what revenue you’re getting from that, it just doesn’t work.’

He has also insisted that the owners do not want to build a new stadium and will instead look to expand St James’.

‘This is the place we want to be,’ he said. ‘We have to look at, “Can we expand it in anyway?”. It’s champagne problems, though, that’s the beauty of it. Hopefully it’s going to be a conundrum that is going to get harder and harder because we want to be growing the club, we want to be growing the fanbase.’

The investment has allowed Newcastle to bring players like Bruno Guimaraes to the club 

He added: ‘Our vision is a stable, top-six club competing for trophies consistently. We have to find our way to get there through FFP and its challenges. We want to be quick. The ownership is keen to get there, but it has to be sustainable.

‘If we want to get there as quickly as we’d like to, we have to get every single transfer right and every decision right. That is the tricky thing compared to a previous time (pre FFP) where you could sign a number of players and, if a couple didn’t work out, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. We can’t afford that.

‘The reality is we aren’t like Manchester City when they had the takeover. We haven’t got a blank sheet of paper where you can just spend what you want. There are regulations in place, so we have to get from A to B in a smart way.

‘If the commercial team can bring in those extra deals – and I joke and laugh about this with Eddie (Howe) – we might have to go to Australia this year, but that means you can get the back-up left back you want or the central midfielder.

‘The Premier League is the No1 league in the world in all sports. It’s just incredible, its reach. That is a great advantage when you’re talking to brands. When you layer on top of that the exciting journey we’re on with Newcastle – the history, heritage, passion of fanbase, it really does give us some great opportunities.’

The club want to bring sponsors on board in a bit to fuel their quest for a Champions League place and European football 




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