Cod Almighty | Diary
What's in a name?
4 June 2025
Despite being today's View From the Findus (VFTF) diarist, I am not always faithful to the club's most imposing stand. In fact, I managed to sit in all four of Blundell Park's stands last season with mixed results both on and off the pitch.
It is interesting to check out the views and the vibes in different parts of the ground but, like my fellow VFTF movers and shakers, "The Upper Findus" is my preferred option. It really is a great place to be when Town are playing well, the Humber's shipping lanes are busy and the crowd is rocking. However, it is clearly showing its age along with the rest of the stadium and simple things like getting a drink, going to the loo or exiting the stadium still feel annoyingly difficult for the price of the ticket.
Interestingly, despite most fans still calling it "the Findus", you may be surprised to know that the sections of the stands are officially called the rather simplistic and utilitarian Upper Stand and Lower Stand. All four stands at Blundell Park are available for sponsorship if you fancy it? The football purist in me enjoys the fact that our club is almost unique in not having the name of either their ground or even any of their stands sold off to the highest bidder. However, I do wonder if we should be trying a bit harder to sell some naming rights or perhaps consider lowering the prices (as something is better than nothing when it comes to commercial income). Now that our financial situation is so precarious that we thought it necessary to try and charge £29 per adult to watch fourth division football it would seem this is vital income we are missing out on.
Yeah, yeah, I know modern football is rubbish and we don't want to sell our souls (there's enough of them in the ground already) but getting some big money for an administrative name change seems something our business-savvy leaders would be all over. I am surprised that our income for stadium and stand sponsorship is currently £0 and has been since 2023 when Young's Seafood ended their sponsorship of "the Findus" (if you know what I mean?!). Now that we have an official back of shirt sponsor, and an official shorts sponsor sorted, I suspect this may be one to keep an eye on over the summer as there doesn't appear to be much room left on the kit to monetise.
A quick trawl through other teams in our league suggests we are very much an outlier in having zero naming rights income. I tried to find out what sort of money we are missing out on, but obviously this sort of thing is commercially sensitive and differs wildly from club to club. Looking around League Two I found that Trade Recruitment signed a five-year naming deal with Cambridge United for a total fee of £250,000 all the way back in 2008. More recently in 2021 Crewe Alexandra agreed a £500,000 deal with Mornflake to rename their ground for three years. Throughout this time, I don't remember anyone saying Cambridge United played anywhere other than the Abbey Stadium or that Crewe Alexandra played anywhere other than Gresty Road. I have no idea what sort of money naming rights for one of our stands or stadium would bring in, but it seems our financial starting position is a long way back from many clubs around us.
Should we continue to hold on to the traditional and evocative names of the past? Or should we accept the inevitable and flog everything we can to improve our financial position and prospects on the pitch? Personally, I would be fine with us being crowned champions in return for a company having their name attached to our stadium or stands. I'm not so sure some others would take this trade though.
Shortly after finishing my first draft of the above no-news-space-filling ramble, some actual proper Mariners news predictably dropped. To the delight of Beck pun fans, Justin Amaluzor has joined on a two-year deal after leaving Altrincham. Fingers crossed he has more self-confidence than his name suggests.
A quick google suggests he is a different type of signing to that we have come to expect. However, as has been proven time and time again, a player's past is not always the best indicator of their future. A big, fast, powerful impact player is something we lacked last season, so he sounds like a useful addition.
Welcome aboard Justin and well done to the Commercial Team for getting him an official sponsor sorted in time for his announcement! To misquote the philosopher Des'ree "Money don't make the world go round, but it might pay for improvements to your ground."