Derek Llambias: The PR offensive continues.As Mike Ashley’s current PR offensive continues apace, Newcastle United’s managing director, Derek Llambias, claimed that the club have had some “nibbles” from “tyre kickers” expressing interest in the club’s stadium naming rights offer.
In the latest chapter of the offensive, planned on the back of an announcement of reduced losses in the club’s annual accounts after the sale of Andy Carroll, he claimed to “sympathise” with fans concerned over the stadium’s latest name change. I’m flattered to say that he also took a swipe at my own hypothesis as outlined in several previous stories on this blog. My hypothesis being that the sponsorship offer, including the highly questionable “showcase” idea, has broken so many rules of the golden rules of sponsorship, and is so overpriced in comparison to similar sponsorship deals (with one rather dubious exception in the North West), that it seems to be a ruse, something which has been planned to fail from the start, as it has for well over two years so far to Sports Direct’s benefit. (more…)
...and this is the clubs justification.Today we have a rather startling and a little bit of a confusing decision made by the club. In order to go to away games, you must be a club member or a season ticket holder.
The justification for all of this is the events that took place at the Darlington friendly which we can all agree made a mockery of our club and it’s fans. It was quite simply disgraceful to see the events unfold and even worse to see fans saying “they hope it happens again” – if that’s what you go to a football game for, do something else with your time instead of ruining it for the rest of us.
That, of course, is exactly what has happened today. The minority has ruined it for the majority and if you want to go to an away game, you had better fork out £20-£25 a year for membership or upwards of £300 for a season ticket.
A club statement today had this to say:
In order to combat any possible trouble at future away fixtures, a new policy will be implemented by the club which will see ticket sales restricted to Season Ticket Holders and Members only. (more…)
