Liverpool is more open to the prospect of leaving Anfield for a new state-of-the-art arena in nearby Stanley Park, but face a race against time to find a lucrative naming rights partner to help offset the cost of the project.
Club officials have acquired a three-month extension from Liverpool City Council on whether to take up the 999-year lease on the site, which is in the shadow of the current ground.
Moving to a new stadium is now the preferred option of Liverpool’s owners, Fenway Sports Group, and planning permission is in place for two designs.
Building a new 60,000 capacity ground would cost around £300million and FSG want to secure a deal with a naming rights partner to share the financial burden before taking the final step of progressing with the Stanley Park blueprint.
If a suitable naming rights package cannot be secured, there remains the prospect of refurbishing the existing site, which is why Liverpool will leave their options open.
The search for a partner comes with Manchester City’s tie-up with Etihad and is being headed by FSG’s Boston think-tank, which also secured the prospective £25m-a-year kit deal with Warrior which is in line to replace adidas from the 2012-2013 season.
Sam Kennedy, president of FSG, confirmed recently they were “combing the earth” looking for a tie up with a blue chip company. “If we were able to get a naming rights partner that would certainly factor into our analysis and will help as we look to make a decision on a refurb [of Anfield] versus a new build,” he said in May.
“That process has just gotten under way and we are out there talking to folks around the world.”
The total sponsorship package at Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium, understood to include both stadium naming rights for 15 years and shirt sponsorship for eight years, it is worth around £100m.
Galatasaray’s new Turk Telekom Arena attracted naming rights worth around £7m-a-year and Liverpool will get to see at first hand the spectacular stadium after arranging to go to Istanbul, the scene of their 2005 European Cup triumph, for a friendly on Thursday, July 28. Liverpool would ideally seek around £100m for naming rights alone, but are aware the financial climate and time factors are against them.
It is understood Liverpool asked for a longer extension, but the City Council were only prepared to grant three months given the years of delays, under different owners and regimes.
Even Housing Minister Grant Shapps has weighed into the issue by calling on the club to make a decision because of the implication it has on the regeneration of north Liverpool area. “There’s a really urgent decision to be made there, and in fact if that decision’s not made, it holds back regeneration,” said Shapps. “But it’s not about has the government got hundreds of millions of pounds to put into this.”
FSG asked a group of Boston architects to do a study into revamping Anfield, but it was not the same team that worked successfully on refurbishing Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox baseball team it also owns.
Leaving Anfield, the club’s home since 1892, would not be taken lightly, but renovation would mean closing down a stand during a Premier League season and there would be a huge amount of lost income associated with a project that could take four years.
If they abort the Stanley Park project, Liverpool would also have to pay back £8.2m in European funding. Planning permission is in place for two designs. One from Manchester-based architects AFL, who have done work on Old Trafford and Stamford Bridge and also Dallas-based HKS, appointed by former co-owner Tom Hicks.
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