Lincoln City thanked LNER for their support over the last few years, as briefly, Sincil Bank becomes Sincil Bank again, albeit days before our new partnership is announced.
LNER bought the naming rights to Sincil Bank back in 2019, and ever since, we have officially played at the LNER Stadium. It wasn’t the first stadium name change; we had the 12th Imp Sincil Bank Stadium during the 2012/13 season, when the fans’ group won a raffle to bag the naming rights.
In 2013/14, Gelder Group became the first company to have its name on the stadium, the first proper commercial partner to rename the stadium. LNER were a little later, but was the first to officially remove Sincil Bank, settling purely on the LNER Stadium. Of course, it will always be Sincil Bank, but these commercial deals are huge.
Now we’re a Championship club, and we expect a new partner imminently. It’s not a huge secret, images of the works have been leaked over the last 24 hours, showing the name of the company that is going to be our new partner. The length of the deal is to be announced, and there is likely to be a big unveiling, which, purely out of respect for the company, means I’m not going to drop them all over this article. Suffice it to say, searching social media will give you an idea of what Sincil Bank will be referred to for the next few seasons.
They’re not a betting company; they have a good local presence, and looking at their revenue, we’re talking about a significant global organisation. You may not be aware, but they have also sponsored part of the ground over the last 18 months or so as well, so it’s not even a brand new partner.
It would be easy to be all hipster and start saying we don’t need corporate names and it’ll always be Sincil Bank, etc, but the truth is, these deals are now part of football. Some call it selling your soul, but it is part and parcel of the game. I guess when the first shirt sponsors came in, some luddite eighties traditionalists claimed soccer (because that is what we called it back then, by the way) was selling out. It wasn’t.
What was happening was that clubs became aware of their value. Lincoln City is valuable. Fifteen years ago, you could probably have bought the club and ground for a pound if you’d shown you’d got funds to keep it afloat. Now, how many would you need? Eight figures? Almost certainly. With that value comes so much more, and Championship football has lifted Lincoln City into the big leagues.
That’s why Sincil Bank will be known as something different, and even as a staunch traditionalist, who laments the loss of the programme and pay on the gate matches, I can see what it offers. As the Cranberries said, Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? We can, and yet it feels like we’re still doing it the right way. No Betway Stadium for us, no fast-buck crypto collapse company edging its way in. We feel like we still want to do things the right way. Seeing the huge ‘W’ on the Stacey West Stand shows that while there may be a commercial sponsor on there, it will still be branded the Stacey West Stand.
That’s so important to me, and while I’ll always refer to Sincil Bank as Sincil Bank, if it has a glossy new name for the Championship era, then cool. I might even slip it in every so often just as a thank you to yet another big company taking some of their profits, not to sportswash, not to promote a shady industry feeding from addiction, but simply to promote a company with a local footprint, employing local people and yet with international spending power.
In a world of bad stadium names, dodgy commercial partnerships and unethical companies trying to appear legit through football, I strongly believe Lincoln City, once again, gets it right.
Comments Welcome!