Keep St James’ Park as St James’ Park

It's already got a name

Copy of an email sent to the following addresses:

info@ampersand.uk.com
Deborah.Grocock@sportsdirect.com
info@sports-world.com

[Ampersand are the company who will be looking to find a sponsor for the whole rebranding mess surrounding Mike Ashley's attempts to sell a part of Newcastle's heritage in exchange for some money. Money he lost by being a complete idiot when it came to running a football club.]

Along with tens of thousands of others, let me assure you that any company paying towards the rebranding of St James’ Park with from that day forth receive no money whatsoever from my pocket. If you’re looking for a way to get the name of a company out there on a wave of bad publicity then you’re going the right way about it.

Not just Newcastle fans, but fans of many other clubs are up in arms over the horrendous way in which our history and part of our identity are being ridden over roughshod by a man who has no shame, no knowledge of the footballing world and no idea of the amount of ire he’s capable of dragging up.

Whereas sponsoring one half of a rivalry could result in the other half boycotting your products, the rebranding of St James’ Park has had a negative response across the board – irrespective of the clubs supported. I even know of Sunderland fans who regard it as an insult. Believe me, for those people down the road to side with us against anyone shows the depth of loathing for Mr Ashley throughout the footballing world.

Do yourselves a favour and distance yourselves from him and his companies as best you can. Sure, you stand to make a fast buck (in the case of Ampersand) but whoever ends up with their name on our stadium – should this lunatic plan go ahead – will rapidly find themselves out of favour with a huge number of footballing fans. Already many sections of the media have pledges never to use the “new” name when reporting on the games so surely it’s just money down the toilet. Or into Mr Ashley’s pockets.

The Keep St James’ Park as St James’ Park by Iain Purdie, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.