It looks like Newcastle will have a new main shirt sponsor from next season after the club negotiated an early release from their long-term deal with Chinese betting company, Fun88.
Ever-reliable journalist, George Caulkin of The Athletic has reported that the 2022/23 season will be the last with Fun88 on the front of the Newcastle kits despite the fact the club signed a new long-term deal with the company in 2020 which was set to run to 2026.
This leaves Newcastle open to pursuing more lucrative deals in order to increase their revenue and thus loosen the purse strings which are currently restricted by FFP. The current deal is worth £9m a season, whereas the newly agreed deal with sleeve sponsor, Noon, is worth £7.5m. For comparison, it’s believed that Manchester City’s deal with Etihad Airways is around £67.5m a year. Whether Newcastle will be able to come close to that kind of figure without renaming St James’ Park (something the new owners are dead against) remains to be seen.
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People are of course expecting the new shirt sponsor to be a Saudi-based company such as Aramco, however, Amanda Staveley has previously said that the club will be looking at all avenues to increase revenue. Although, a few weeks after saying that they announced the deal with the Saudi online store, Noon as the sleeve sponsor, so it does seem likely that a Saudi-based company will be the front-runner, which would make sense from a commercial point of view as it will help to sell the shirts in the PIF’s home-nation.
I wonder if Amanda Staveley can now get us out of whatever deal we have with Castore. Their kits may look nice, but their service has been nothing short of dire.
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