Naming rights sponsorship in Europe: Fan reactions to stadium renamings in Premier League, Bundesliga and Ligue 1

Abstract

Football stadiums have traditionally been named after local sites (e.g. Goodison Park (Everton FC) or regions (Ruhrstadion (VfL Bochum)). As big business takes increasing precedence in decision making in football at large (e.g. associations and leagues, regarding fixtures, media coverage, kick-off times, player transfers, etc.) and within individual football clubs (e.g. regarding kits and sponsorship), such toponyms are increasingly being replaced by company or product names (e.g. bet365 Stadium (Stoke City)). In this paper, we will consider corporate renamings from German Bundesliga, English Premier League and French Ligue 1 and particularly fan reactions to controversial, badly received corporate renamings. As revealed by earlier studies, in our data here we also find the discourse and practices of the fans celebrating local identification with their city or region, often with the stadiums constituting the homestead of a tradition. Where corporate stadium renamings are badly received, this discourse clashes with the discourse of big business and thus a number of tensions are revealed. More specifically, in fans’ reactions to controversial corporate stadium renamings we find a number of recurrent themes – for example, concerning consequences to fans' identity to the club; in managing (anticipated) humourous retorts from rivals consequent from the stadium renaming; in resisting, but also feeling resigned to, financial pressures in selling the stadium name; etc. – some of them across our three national contexts and other specific to one national context.