Athletic Bilbao to sign Petronor sponsorship deal
Until now, that is.
Sports daily Marca reported on Saturday that Bilbao have signed a lucrative contract with Basque oil refinery Petronor to carry their shirt publicity for the next three seasons.
The deal is to be made official on Tuesday evening, when the club will show off its shirts for next season. The famous red-and-white stripes will continue, but now with Petronor written across them.
Marca said that the shirt deal will earn the famous "Basque Lions" around 1,5 million euros per season.
This is one of the ideas of new club president Fernando Garcia Macua to increase revenue and he seems to have the approval, albeit reluctant, of most club members.
Supporters of Los Leones will be split, because they recognise that €1.5m-per-season will help ensure that the team can be strengthened, while traditionalists will ask why things have had to change now.
The Basque Country club have always been proud of the fact that they have never carried a company name on their jerseys and even now manufacture their own kit.
But economic constraints have made the introduction of a sponsor a must and a deal with local company Petronor has been agreed and signed.
Spanish energy giants Repsol, are the parent company to Petronor and their president, Antoni Brufau, is expected to attend the official announcement on Tuesday.
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Comments
Up The Blades, Fail The Owls
I belive that trying to earn money is not as bad as some traditionalist would think, as long as the Club chooses very carefully the sponsor they are asociating whit, in this case Atleti is teaming up whit a prestigious company from el País Vasco and to me it\'s a good choice because it shows that Atelti cares about preserving traditions. A Bilbao tradition that I as a fan would not like to see broken it\'s the one that alouds the team to field only players that where born in el País Vasco, that\'s the most important asset that the team has, that it still belongs to the Vascos.
By the way, it\'s true that A. de Bilbao is the last of the spanish teams that for so long resisted the temptation of having a $hirt $ponsor, but as praiseworthy as it is, to me it\'s more important what Barcelona did by showing UNICEF logo in their for ever sponsor free jerseys. Not only Barcelona is not recivieng money for doing it, they contribute with money to this organization!!!
As a memeber of FC Barcelona organization I feel very proud of it!
They have had some stupid offers in the past (coca-cola offered them over $100m a few years ago) and have now given it away for free.
Kudos to Aston Villa also, on a slightly smaller scale but still the same thing.
When you compare this to Arsenals deal with Emirates, Chelsea and Samsung and so on its even more impressive. And Barca are still paying top dollar for players.....
Athletic de Bilbao, why?????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
As for Barca... unicef is not do bad...and i\'d rather have that than \'bwin\' or something else.
Difference between barca and real: barca - helping children, real - \'BET!BET!BET!!!!\'; talk about yin and yang...
Think this way:
Point 1:
Barcelona says that he\'s not being paid, it\'s just a charity thing. The fans think that it\'s not a common sponsorship, and as it\'s for an ONG, they accept it.
Point 2:
Unicef says that he\'s not spending money of the contributors on a football club sponsorship, and he gets the publicity for free.
Barça gets money, Unicef publicity, everybody thinks that this is a fairy tale and all are happy thinking on how good Barcelona is with the children