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Wembley Stadium sells naming rights to mobile phone network


The_Rev

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Yep, in the week that the FA celebrate their 150th anniversary they have also decided to announce that they have sold the naming rights to Wembley Stadium. (link: Torygraph)

I cant be alone in being slightly annoyed by this, can I? I've not got a huge problem with the national stadium being in Wembley, but all of the emotional arguments that the FA used to build it there instead of somewhere more suitable geographically ("but it's the home of football!") kinda fall flat now they have sold the name of the place. The bastards.

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That is annoying. Funnily enough I wouldn't mind it quite so much from a club perspective. Although I'd prefer to keep Villa Park, "Villa Park in association with Something Somewhere" at least leaves the fans alone to some extent. It'd still be Villa Park.

Something really ticks me off about it as an England fan though. Not sure why.

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With club football you can forgive it a bit more because more money = better players = better team. The FA don't have to pay huge transfer fees for England players. They dont need to pay the players they do have £5m+ a year either. It just strikes me as cynical, especially the timing of the announcement being during a week where they are supposed to be celebrating the tradition of the oldest football association in the world.

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Eugh. Opportunistic capitalism at it's worst: making money for the sake of making money. It would be okay if that money was going to be pumped into grassroots schemes but it's clearly not. What on earth do the FA need to do this for?

Same reason they're devaluing the last two rounds of the FA Cup: Wembley cost them a fortune.

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Same reason they're devaluing the last two rounds of the FA Cup: Wembley cost them a fortune.

We were quite good, as a nation, at cocking up massive building projects at that point weren't we? I mean, Wales managed to build their impressive Millenium Stadium on time and on budget. And it's more impressive. Meanwhile, England were struggling with this and the less said about Scotland's Parliament building the better.

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it's quite disgusting really , it was bad enough that they had to go cap in hand to Ticketmaster / Club Wembley in order to get Wembley finished resulting in empty seats at every match with people on Corporate jolly ups with zero interest in the event itself

another nail in the coffin of football

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Wales managed to build their impressive Millenium Stadium on time and on budget

thats a myth

the company that built the stadium was laing, one of the country's biggest and oldest construction companies at the time, by the end of the project they were in so much debt that they were bought by o'roukes for £1, it was built on budget largely because they took a £40m hit on it! it wasnt designed very well and they royally **** the tender up, not only in price but in agreeing that all of the risks were theirs rather than the designers, pretty much the opposite of wembley where the designers took on the risk

iirc it was the stadium on the side that casued the problems

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It's not like it's the real Wembley Stadium. In my mind, there is only one Wembley, and they tore it down 12 years ago.

It's like Boston Garden. There was only one, and it's long gone now.

Edited by maqroll
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