You are right that each naming rights deal is of its time. The record naming rights deal stands at $400m. That will be exceeded at some point- those are givens. That’s about it.
The combination of American owners with expertise in the US markets, their knowledge of the players, and a financial interest in exploiting that, an embryonic naming rights market in Europe, and the rapid growth in the Far East where football is very popular (China is poised to overtake the US in economic muscle) is a potent cocktail. Global sporting deals which dwarf American domestic ones will come.
Our ability to exploit that opportunity is in question. We are not in the CL. We limped out abjectly last year. We will do very well to qualify this year, and have a team that requires significant further investment to consolidate a CL position if we get there. If I were a global sponsor I would have my doubts.
The Allianz Arena is scheduled to cost for construction around e340m lifetime including finance (sterling exchange rate at the time around 1.6) about £212m. The value of the naming rights is around £120m, or 57% of construction cost. You describe that as peanuts. I describe it as covering more than half and getting on for two thirds of the financial exposure. I am very happy to let others decide which description they think fits 57% best.
The lifetime cost including finance at the Emirates is estimated at around £470m. But it is really a case study on its own. The naming rights and shirt deal slugged £100m into the pot, around 21% of total projected cost. You describe that as small beer. I describe it as significant.
The Guardian article confirmed the Arsenal figures, as I did. The reason why you cannot separate the shirt deal from the naming rights deal, and vice versa, is that both add value to each other. You would be right to point out that the naming rights deal alone, whatever it is, is significantly less than £100m/21%. But the £470m is also over stated because it allows neither for extraordinary payment of debt out of unused transfer funds ( as Wenger has facilitated!) nor does it allow for the profit from the capital receipts from the disposal of the completed Highbury, which are impossible to predict other than that they will be “ a lot”. So an arguable naming rights figure and an unknown finished project cost means that no conclusion can be drawn - other than they got the job done, which has merit in itself.
In summary, and with particular reference to paras two and three. The naming rights potential is enormous, our ability to exploit it uncertain.
As for ‘givens’, I can say black is a darker version of white - but to state it without justification, it’s meaningless.
The examples, that you gave, are teams that
are in the CL. As you say, we are not in the CL and yes, I would have my doubts of the value too.
€340m does not equal £212m, so I can assume you have confused the US dollars rate but meant to say about £285m or US$455m. It would be possible that that did include finance costs, although I would be surprised as I understand the actual construction cost of the stadium alone was in fact US$360m. Be that as it may, the €340m also quietly ignores the infrastructure costs of €210m, which alone would bump the cost up to €550m or US$746m or £470m. Council may have paid those infrastructure costs but to try to draw a comparison with Liverpool City Council on this basis is pretty wishful thinking. Nevertheless, naming rights at £120m, as a headline figure and as a lump sum is 'only' about 25% of that, albeit entirely theoretical - I’ve not seen any naming rights as lump sums in the deal and I would have thought it pretty risky PR to go that way. If they’d spent half as much on a redevelopment, they wouldn’t need to worry about them and still be quids in. As I have said, there's no point spending more money just so you can get back less as naming rights. Having said that, you could sell naming rights at Anfield but why on earth would you?
As for the Arsenal, you can’t have it both ways. Even accepting your figure of £470m you can’t say it’s overstated on the one hand because it doesn’t include cross-subsidy from another development (or heaven forbid, from the player transfer budget) and compare naming rights as a percentage to the accordingly ‘reduced’ construction cost on the other. Sorry to state the bleedin’ obvious but the construction cost is the construction cost and the value of the naming rights is the value of the naming rights. And for the simple reason that it was not done (perhaps because they were not available as a lump sum), naming rights cannot be compared as a lump sum. As I've also said (often...) they were used as guarantees for the loans and pretty effective at that.
As you can see - really just so much theoretical bollocks. The real world doesn’t work that way. The real world funds a scheme to make it viable at minimum risk. Naming rights can’t contribute a great deal in that context and are just a bit of bunce on top - nice if you can, no train smash if you can’t.
As to the global market, the potential to benefit from a market that might be getting bigger is, to use your own word, uncertain. To base decisions on conjecture of unfulfilled potential of uncertain ‘unfillability’, or just plain wishful thinking, is risky, way too risky - particularly when it is not necessary.
