Do any football clubs choose not to have a shirt sponsorship deal?
In the rich list of football clubs, ‘Football Money League 2005’, produced by Deloitte, the one club that didn’t raise funds by selling the space on their shirt fronts to sponsors was Barcelona FC (commonly known as ‘Barça’). Even Barça, who for years were the only major football club which refused to carry shirt sponsorship, appeared at the start of 2005 to be on the verge of embracing the multi-million euro boost that selling this space could bring. In February 2005, the club was reported to have been considering offers from a betting firm, Betandwin, and Hitachi, both of which were believed to be in the region of 10 million euro per year. The deal would leave Athletico Bilbao, though not part of the rich list, as the sole Spanish club to be voluntarily without a shirt sponsorship deal. Copies of the report ‘Football Money League 2005’ are available via free registration from the Deloitte Web site. The Barça shirt deal is a highly emotive issue for the club’s fans. Emotions are never
