If you’ve gotten used to calling the English Premier League as the Barclays Premier League, you may have to get used to calling it a different name soon.
Maybe the William Hill English Premier League? Or the Bwin Premier League?
That could well be the future of the biggest and most popular football league in the world after word came out that Barclays is giving serious thought to end its sponsorship of the Premier League when its current contract expires in 2015.
It’s a surprising turn of events for the lender, which has been the official sponsor of the Premier League for the past 13 years. With the current economic climate, the prices for sponsorships like this have skyrocketed, culminating with a £120 million payment Barclays had to fork over when it made its last renewal in 2012.
When 2015 hits, that figure is more than likely to go up again with initial estimates projecting that a one-year sponsorship of the Premier League could cost up £70 million. That’s an amount that even Barclays would have to stop and talk about among themselves…and that could potentially pave the way for other companies to come into the picture and swoop the sponsorship away.
That could even include some of the biggest and richest gambling companies in the UK. Of course, other companies without any gambling ties could also put in bids, particularly those that have had long associations with football sponsorship.
All this, of course, is subject to Barclays walking away from its next re-up negotiations with the league. It’s going to be hard to do it given that it’s been the only sponsor of the league since the new millennium.
But economics is always a trump card, however you want to slice it. If Barclays decides to pull out of the next round of bidding in 2015, the English Premier League will have no shortage of suiters from companies lining up to be the next name sponsor of the richest and most prestigious football league in the world.
It’s definitely a fascinating story to keep track of leading up to what Barclays ends up doing.
To stay…or to walk away. That is the question Barclays will have to answer soon.
