Virgin Money Boss Disagrees With Stadium Name Change
By Tyne-Talk
November 20 2011
When Mike Ashley and Derek Llambais announced two weeks ago that the club’s stadium would no longer be named St James’ Park and would be re-named the Sports Direct Arena it sparked a backlash from the fans and former players alike. It also coincided conveniently with the announcement that Northern Rock were withdrawing their sponsorship early, as they have done with various other sponsorship deals that they previously had.
This week Northern Rock was bought by Virgin Money for just £747million and now their Chief Executive, Jayne-Anne Gadhia has backed those who disagreed with the name change.
She told the Sunday Telegraph;
“To be honest, I think it should be called St James’ Park. I don’t think that would be right for Newcastle.
St James’ Park is part of the heritage of Newcastle and it’s important to local people, so for me it should be called St James’ Park.”
She also implied that Virgin Money would be looking at the situation once the Northern Rock deal has ended.
it just shows how bad the original story was, making out that northern rock had withdrawn their sponsorship because of the stadium name change!
They have obviously declined to extend the sponsorship once it runs out at the end of the year or whenever it is!
If they had withdrawn it with immediate effect we would have either had a blank shirt, a charity or the sports direct logo on the shirts (i know which one it would have been and it wasn't the first 2 options)!
mentalman it just shows how bad the original story was, making out that northern rock had withdrawn their sponsorship because of the stadium name change!
They have obviously declined to extend the sponsorship once it runs out at the end of the year or whenever it is!
If they had withdrawn it with immediate effect we would have either had a blank shirt, a charity or the sports direct logo on the shirts (i know which one it would have been and it wasn't the first 2 options)!
Northern Rock's sponsorship is supposed to prematurely end in January. It had nothing to do with the name change, but rather than Virgin was about to buy it out so the government pulled out of their sponsorships with all clubs, not just NUFC.
Sorry, only registered users may post in this forum.
We record all IP addresses on the Sportnetwork message boards which may be required by the authorities in case of defamatory or abusive comment.
We seek to monitor the Message Boards at regular intervals.
We do not associate Sportnetwork with any of the comments and do not take responsibility for any statements or opinions expressed on the Message Boards.
If you have any cause for concern over any material posted here please let us know as soon as possible by e-mailing
abuse@sportnetwork.net