FA Cup name change: Emirates' millions or not, this famous old competition will still be the FA Cup

COMMENT: Naming rights to competition could be sold

Arsenal face Hull in a repeat of last season's final (GETTY IMAGES)

Selling naming rights to the FA Cup would be, opined former sports minister Richard Caborn yesterday, “commercialisation gone mad”.

Actually, it is the logical extension of a trend that began with cricket’s Gillette Cup in 1963 and now proliferates to the extent a fan can go to a game at a sponsored ground in a sponsored shirt having paid for the ticket with a sponsored credit card.

In London, they can even travel by sponsored bicycle. The only surprise is that the FA Cup has not been flogged off already. Except it has, since 1994, when Littlewoods put their name to it. It is just the phrasing that is new.

The world did not end when it was “The FA Cup sponsored by E.ON”, “The Axa-sponsored FA Cup” or “The FA Cup in association with Budweiser”. “The Emirates FA Cup” is a step further, but if Caborn and his predecessors and successors had been able to persuade governments of all hues that sport was worth serious funding, the Football Association would not need to re-brand its most prestigious property. That battle has long been lost, thus the FA’s discussions with Emirates with a view to a £30m, three-year deal.

It needs to be remembered that the FA is a not-for-profit body whose remit is to encourage and organise the playing of football in England. One might quibble at some of the executive salaries paid in recent years, the excessive expenditure on the national team and the overly-generous FA Cup prize money that usually fills the already overflowing coffers of Premier League clubs, but an increasing part of its income is finally spent where it matters: at the grassroots and on coaching education. The £30m will go a long way to ensuring the football hubs brainchild of chairman Greg Dyke actually gets built.

The sponsorship is, at least, relatively benign. Other parts of the FA’s operation have been funded by junk food companies seeking, through a link with sport, to pretend their products are healthy. The FA also has an official betting partner.

Emirates is the state-owned airline of Dubai, part of the United Arab Emirates, whose other flag-carrier is Abu Dhabi-owned Etihad, who have naming rights to Manchester City’s stadium. While there are concerns about human rights in Dubai, it is a popular tourist destination with many business links to England, so the FA is hardly going out on a limb. Emirates also sponsors Arsenal, Real Madrid, Milan, Paris St-Germain, Olympiakos and Hamburg.

How many people would actually call the new competition “the Emirates FA Cup” is a moot point. The Gillette Cup worked so well the company eventually pulled out as its name was being associated with cricket rather than shaving products, but do cricket fans ever talk of going to the Kia Oval, or just The Oval?

Sports sponsorships are less effective when they are a re-brand. Naming Arsenal’s new ground the Emirates Stadium worked as there was nothing else to call it (Ashburton Grove never really caught on). Re-naming St James’ Park the Sports Direct Arena did not – and not just because Newcastle United fans hate Mike Ashley. Broadcasters will be contracted to namecheck the airline, but most people will simply continue to call it the FA Cup.