Commercial gain? Feck you!
 

Apart from the Spanish football team Barcelona, Aston Villa ( my team) are one of a select few to disband shirt sponsorship and actually PAY an organisation to have their logo on their shirts. YES you hear that top 4? PAY. A deal has been struck to advertise Acorns which is a local charity for children, to be the official sponsor of AVFC which also benefits financially from this. Before all the bleating that sponsorship saves teams financially, I would like to point out that the top 4 can survive perfectly well financially whilst providing financial help by proxy easily and efficiently.

It is only a small triumph, yet it is worthwhile. Up the Villa.

BBC SPORT | Football | My Club | Aston Villa | Villa unveil charity sponsorship

i'm no sports fan by any stretch of the imagination but that's pretty damn cool.

By proxy?
Nah...do it direct.
Manchester United Official Web Site

Seriously...nice one Villa. :thumb:

Even if I was'nt a Villa fan, I would still big this up. A nice gesture both monetary and communally. It is good to honour the community from where you are based. I would love to see other teams follow suit.

I'm not sure I even understand what jackhammer is talking about in his OP, but I hope it's still relevent in some way. Does anyone have strong opinions or annecdotes about sponsership ? Now's a chance to share them.

(... and this is why I'm bumping a thread I have no opinion about:- http://www.musicbanter.com/games-lis...litz-game.html )

Incidentally, what happened to jackhammer and right track ? they never formally left, did they? Just lost interest an drifted away I guess.

sure monkey will join me on this one when i say the game is going mad with kit sponsors.

there was always a limit to one small sponsor logo, but it seems the rules are constantly being re-wrote and stretched to generate more money for the clubs. it's not a huge deal for me but i just think it looks very silly and there's a certain bit of integrity being thrown away when you send your team out there to play wearing a billboard.

what's up with all the footy fans on this board being Villa or United fans :cool: good taste for all the lads.

I can't believe all the ads those lads wear. What a ludicrous display.

Jackhammer lost his wife a bit before I joined I guess and hasn't been nearly as active since due to having to take care of his kids. Now his wee ones are the beneficiaries of all his grindcore knowledge.

Long and boring post alert.

Football teams are paid money to carry the logo of companies on the front of their shirts. The front of the shirt is a great advertising space and companies will pay big money to have their logo on it. Man United's deal with Chevrolet is one of if not the biggest deals at the moment and worth £47m per year. Usually these deals are in instalments over a period of years. It started in the late 70s and has increased since then. Here is one of the earliest examples of shirt sponsorship:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b1/b3...0468e9c7b5.jpg

Over the years it's become more common because the financial gain is important if you want to compete with other clubs. By the 90s it was incredibly rare to find a single team in any top division that didn't have a sponsor's logo on the front of their shirt.

Barcelona were famed and respected for waiving these sponsorship deals on their shirts as they were an anomaly in the modern game. They continued to ignore sponsorship until the late 00s when they carried Unicef's logo on the front of their shirt. They weren't paid for this but it was the gateway to full sponsorship, they had a Qatar Foundation logo on the back of the shirt to start off with and they have now been sponsored by Qatar Airways on the front of their shirts since about 2012/13.

2005/6, no shirt sponsorship:

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/ee/e0/d5/e...onel-messi.jpg

2008/9, Unicef deal:

http://www.whoateallthepies.tv/wp-co...PA-7361405.jpg

2012/13, full sponsorship with Qatar Foundation which they've had ever since (its now Qatar Airways):

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/bf/a9...7a5373462a.jpg

Jackhammer posted this thread because under the ownership of Randy Lerner from 2006-2016, Aston Villa paid a local charity to carry their logo on the front of the kits instead of cashing in on sponsorship with a betting company or whatever. The deal lasted two years and the charity is called Acorns and it provides specialist services for local children in the Birmingham and West Midlands area with serious illnesses. If you saw Moin Younis at the Pride of Britain awards, he has been helped by this charity.

I have this shirt:

http://worldsoccertalk.com/wp-conten...ome-jersey.jpg

Villa still do work with Acorns and children's replica kits have the Acorns logo on. Probably because our current sponsorship is with a betting company tbh.

Most fans don't like shirt sponsorship because it spoils kit design and you have pretty much no chance of buying a shirt without the ugly logo splashed all over the front. I don't want to wear a shirt with Bet 365 or Wonga on it. And it is only getting worse, as teams have moved on to sleeve sponsors in the Premier league and sponsorship on the back of the shirts in the lower leagues and abroad (this is in addition to the main deal on the front of the shirt).

At present, international football hasn't been affected by this but it's surely only a matter of time.

Me and Jackhammer are Brummies and Trollheart started following the Villa in the 90s when we had a lot of Irish players (Townsend, McGrath, Staunton and maybe Ray Houghton if he was following then).