Newcastle United CEO reveals what St James' Park 'might' be called as sponsors lined up after £25m deal

Newcastle United are looking to bring in a new training kit sponsor for the start of the 2024-25 season.

Newcastle have agreed a five-year kit manufacturing deal with Adidas starting next season and are looking at all avenues to generate income after publishing losses of £73.4million for the 2022-23 season. Despite the losses, Newcastle's revenue streams have increased significantly since the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund's takeover with revenue rising from £180million to £250.3million between the 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons.

"40% year-on-year growth since the takeover, it’s vast year-on-year growth," Newcastle chief executive officer Darren Eales said.

"We have got the positive tailwinds of Sela front of shirt (worth £25million per-season), Champions League money, Adidas coming in June which will be a big jump for us as we can control our own retail and merchandise which hasn’t been the case before.

"The reality is that with the performances we have had on the pitch and the buzz around the club we are seeing more and more commercial partners wanting to become part of this journey. It’s a snowball going down a hill. As we are doing better on the pitch it is helping us with commercial partnerships."

Eales revealed the club had invested over £10million to upgrade the club's Darsley Park training ground. And the club are openly looking for potential training sponsors.

But the potential re-naming of St James' Park for sponsorship purposes is a notable area of contention, particularly after it was briefly re-named the Sports Direct Arena by former owner Mike Ashley.

"Training kit is [a sponsor] we’re looking to bring in," Eales revealed. "Wherever we’ve got assets that are available, it’s something we’ll look to do."

On St James' Park, he added: "Stadium is a different one, we’d have to talk to supporters and we’re very sensitive in respect to that. It’s something we’d need more dialogue with our supporters on, we’d be open and transparent on that if there’s a chance of revenue but if we did that it might have to be ‘St James’ Park powered by a company’.

"That one I wouldn’t say is front of mind but certainly training ground, training kit is something we’d look at in the future to try and develop those commercial partnerships."