Newcastle United fans will be consulted before the club plough forward with any stadium renaming projects - but the club's owners insist any incoming revenue will be invested back on the field.
Incoming Chief Executive Officer Darren Eales has first-hand experience of the situation after being a big part of Atlanta United's MLS development project at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Eales says that communication would be key to St James' Park going in with a commercial partner and that no definitive decisions have been made at this early stage.
United renamed St James' Park 'The Sports Direct Arena' during Mike Ashley's tenure in a move that was never accepted by fans. Eales is now getting his feet under the table at Newcastle and exploring ways of increasing revenue.
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Eales told Chronicle Live: "Obviously I worked in the Premier League and in English football then had the privilege to going out to the US and start up a club from scratch. It was really interesting, we had three key factors as we built Atlanta United.
"First, what happens on the pitch is what people care about. The second was about fan engagement and third was being in the heart of the community because we were a brand new team starting up.
"The reality was, every decision we made to build the club was through the lens of those three. The fan engagement was particularly eye-opening to me because we couldn’t rely on a family of supporters, or a stadium with a massive waiting list. It’s not that you took the fans for granted, it just wasn’t necessarily a hindrance.
"When we were in America, we were building and making decisions through fan engagement. We weren’t doing it to think: ‘OK, how can we have 52,000 average crowds?' Or ‘how can we bring in more commercial revenues that a lot of clubs in Serie A clubs in Italy?’.
"That wasn’t the process, the process was what made sense from the fans from experience. And what you find is you’re able to bring in the revenue because you’ve done those things."
Gaining a commercial partner could be a huge deal for Newcastle. And it isn't unusual for huge clubs to land big sponsors with Barcelona no less going in with Spotify in a £250million deal for a partnership at the Nou Camp.
Eales said: "As we think about our opportunities to work with partners, we have to obviously do that through the lens of the supporters by engaging and communicating with them.
"Clearly, there’s a history (Sports Direct Arena) and it didn’t work for a number of reasons but I think communication was a key one.
"For us, it’s about talking with our supporters and being open by saying: ‘look, we all want to get to this place and to get to this place we need to bring in commercial revenues’.
"There’s always going to be a little bit of a trade-off in certain areas. I’m just being hypothetical here, we would talk and have a dialogue around the stadium and it might be that it’s not a naming right but it’s an association naming rights.
"That might be something that everybody is comfortable with but there has to be dialogue and there has to be an explanation.
"And then, it’s about: ‘OK, this is something we think can help the club and if there is a general consensus that’s a path to go down’. If 99.9% don’t want to do it, then it’d be crazy to do it because it would be a bad decision because it’s not going to add any value to the brand."
Eales is set to meet supporters at some stage this year to discuss ideas and suggestions. There is an open dialogue at Newcastle these days under the Saudi-backed owners.
United CEO Eales said: "My approach on something like this, and we’ll see it as we develop, is firstly not to come in and think I’ve got all the ideas. I want to listen and that’s from our employees, board and people in the region.
"I’ve been trying to have talks with the University, the council, Sir Brendan Foster because he started off the Great North Run. There is so many people in the city and region who have got great ideas.
"But at the end of the day, we’ve got to take all those things back and look to deliver what we can and remember the goal is out there on the pitch. Everything ties back to that.
"We’ve got to explain that, have that dialogue and I think if we’ve got a consensus that we’re going to get there and if everyone appreciates that’s where we are going to get then you’ll usually find consensus because that’s what we all want.
"We want Newcastle United to be competing for trophies and be in the top six consistently and be up there in Europe. If we can find a path that gets us there the quickest way possible then we’re going to bring everyone on the journey."
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