Cover not available
Article published In:
AILA Review
Vol. 34:2 (2021) ► pp.212–239

Naming rights sponsorship in Europe

Fan reactions to stadium renamings in the Premier League, Bundesliga and Ligue 1

| Saarland University
| University of Gothenburg
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 more and more being replaced by company or product names (e.g. bet365 Stadium, Stoke City). In this paper, we will consider corporate renamings from the German Bundesliga, the English Premier League and the 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) humorous 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 others specific to one national context.
Keywords: renaming, name, stadiums, football, fan reactions
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Research on stadium renamings
  • 3.Methodology
  • 4.Overview of stadium renamings in Germany, England, and France
    • 4.1The situation in Germany
    • 4.2The situation in England
    • 4.3The situation in France
  • 5.Trends in fan protests to stadium renamings
    • 5.1Linguistic considerations by fans
      • 5.1.1Irrelevance of official denominations in everyday speech
      • 5.1.2Inappropriateness of referent
      • 5.1.3Inappropriateness of name and exploitation of this for humorous purposes
    • 5.2Stadium names as part of regional identity
      • 5.2.1Club owners perceived as outsiders
    • 5.3Economic considerations by fans
      • 5.3.1Resistance to financial considerations in selling the stadium name
      • 5.3.2Resignation and acceptance of financial pressures
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 31 January 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/aila.21005.ger
References (32)
References
Becker-Olsen, K. (2003). Questioning the name game: An event study analysis of stadium naming rights sponsorship announcements. International Journal of Sports Marketing & Sponsorship, 5 (3), 9–20. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bering, D. (2007). Die Kommerzialisierung der Namenwelt: Beispiel: Fussballstadien. Zeitschrift für germanistische Linguistik, 35 (3), 434–465. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, D., & Conrad, S. (2019). Register, genre, and style (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Boyd, J. (2000). Selling home: Corporate stadium names and the destruction of commemoration. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 28 (4), 330–346. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brophy, A. L. (2010). The law and morality of building renaming. South Texas Law Review, 52 1, 37–68.Google Scholar
Calderón, M. (2008). Kaká, Gallinas, gent blaugrana and other soccer-related onymic phenomena in the teaching of onomastics. In E. Lavric, G. Pisek, A. Skinner, & W. Stadler (Eds.), The linguistics of football (Language in Performance 38) (pp. 157–169). Gunter Narr.Google Scholar
Caldwell, D., Walsh, J., Vine, E. W., & Jureidini, J. (2016). Chapter 1: Discourse, linguistics, sport and the academy. In D. Caldwell, J. Walsh, E. W. Vine, & J. Jureidini (Eds.), The discourse of sport: Analyses from social linguistics (pp. 1–12). Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chen, K. K., & Zhang, J. J. (2011). Review Examining consumer attributes associated with collegiate athletic facility naming rights sponsorship: Development of a theoretical framework. Sport Management Review, 14 1, 103–116. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, J. M., Cornwell, T. B., & Pruitt, S. W. (2002). Corporate stadium sponsorships, signaling theory, agency conflicts, and shareholder wealth. Journal of Advertising Research, 42 (6), 16–32. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Council of Europe. (2020). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment – Companion volume. Council of Europe Publishing.Google Scholar
Crompton, J., & Howard, D. (2003). The American experience with facility naming rights: Opportunities for English professional football teams. Managing Leisure, 8 (4), 212–226. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Duckert, A. R. (1973). Place nicknames. Names, 21 (3), 153–160. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Duff, P., & Phelps, M. (2019). Champions league stadium naming rights study: Are football stadium naming rights undervalued? A European analysis. Retrieved on 6 April 2021 from [URL]
Eddy, T. (2013). Measuring effects of naming-rights sponsorships on college football fans’ purchasing intentions. Sport Management Review, 17 (3), 362–375. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Edensor, T., & Millington, S. (2008). ‘This is our city’: Branding football and local embeddedness. Global Networks, 8 (2), 172–193. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
File, K. (2015). The strategic enactment of a media identity by professional team sports players. Discourse & Communication, 9 (4), 441–464. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Garfinkel, H. (1984). Studies in ethnomethodology. Polity.Google Scholar
Gillooly, L., & Medway, D. (2019). 16: Sponsorships, stadia, and naming rights. In S. Chadwick, D. Parnell, P. Widdop, & C. Anagnostopoulos (Eds.), Routledge handbook of football business and management (pp. 199–208). Routledge.Google Scholar
Giulianotti, R. (1999). Football: A sociology of the global game. Polity.Google Scholar
Haan, P., & Shank, M. (2004). Consumers’ perceptions of NFL stadium naming rights. International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship, 5 (4), 25–37. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kim, D., Shin, S. H., Walker, M., & Koo, G.-Y. (2017). Examining the effects of corporate renaming of a historic college football stadium. In J. J. Zhang & B. G. Pitts (Eds.), Contemporary sport marketing: Global perspectives (pp. 244–258). Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Knab, J. (1995). Falsche Glorie: Das Traditionsverständnis der Bundeswehr. Links.Google Scholar
KPMG. (2020). Stadium sponsorship – An unexploited field of play. Football Benchmark, 29 September 2020 Retrieved on 6 April 2021 from [URL]
Lavric, E., Skinner, A., & Stadler, W. (Eds.) (2008). The linguistics of football. Narr.Google Scholar
Lötscher, A. (1995). Der Name als lexikalische Einheit: Denotation und Konnotation. In E. Eichler, G. Hilty, H. Löffler, H. Steger, & L. Zgusta (Eds.), Namenforschung. Ein internationales Handbuch zur Onomastik (pp. 448–457). De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Meân, L., & Halone, K. K. (2010). Sport, language, and culture: Issues and intersections. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 29 (3), 253–260. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Medway, D., Warnaby, G., Gillooly, L., & Millington, S. (2019). Scalar tensions in urban toponymic inscription: The corporate (re)naming of football stadia. Urban Geography, 40 (6), 784–804. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nakazawa, M., Yoshida, M., & Gordon, B. S. (2016). Antecedents and consequences of sponsor-stadium fit: Empirical evidence from a non-historic stadium context in Japan. Sport, Business and Management, 6 (4), 407–423. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reysen, S., Snider, J. S., & Branscombe, N. R. (2012). Corporate renaming of stadiums, team identification, and threat to distinctiveness. Journal of Sport Management, 26 (4), 350–357. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Woisetschläger, D. M., Eiting, A., Haselhoff, V. J., & Michaelis, M. (2010). Determinants and consequences of sponsorship fit: A study of fan perceptions. Journal of Sponsorship, 3 (2), 169–180.Google Scholar
Woisetschläger, D. M. & Haselhoff, V. J. (2009). The name remains the same for fans: Why fans oppose naming right sponsorships. Advances in Consumer Research, 361, 775-776.Google Scholar
Woisetschläger, D. M., Haselhoff, V. J., & Backhaus, C. (2014). Fans’ resistance to naming right sponsorships – Why stadium names remain the same for fans. European Journal of Marketing, 48 (7–8), 1487–1510. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

Lyu, Dongye, Luis Mañas-Viniegra & Ziyuan Xu
2024. Visual attention differences toward football stadium’s naming rights: an eye tracking study. Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics DOI logo
Renfree, Gillian, Richard Avery & Paul Blakey
2024. Commercial challenges of clubs in the English Football League Championship: the supporters’ view. Managing Sport and Leisure ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Centracchio, Brett, Nels Popp & Jonathan A. Jensen
2023. Examining valuation of corporate naming rights partnerships in collegiate sports and their impact on consumer behavior. International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship 24:5 ► pp. 871 ff. DOI logo
Graf, Eva-Maria, Marcus Callies & Melanie Fleischhacker
2023. The language and discourse(s) of football. Interdisciplinary and cross-modal perspectives: introduction to the thematic issue. Soccer & Society 24:7 ► pp. 921 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 9 october 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.