Gamesmanship

There is no denying that football is a sport full of cash. Vast amounts of money are sunk into teams by success-hungry billionaires and TV companies, who promptly spend it on wages and transfer fees to hunt for players.

The pursuit of money therefore requires teams further income to fuel this alongside the revenue sources that wealthy backers and the television people give, and there are three main avenues for this - tickets (VIP or otherwise), merchandise and sponsorship.

Sponsorship of football clubs is a delicate issue - the image of the sponsor is transferred to the club and the club is associated with them. This can be trouble in a way depending on who you ally yourself with.

As a result, Wonga.com's £24M deal with Newcastle United is pretty syptomatic of the league.

I personally am not impressed by this deal. Wonga.com's wealth comes from exploitation - its 4214% loans ensuring the company's coffers are lined up very well with the money of those who find it hard to repay, and their debt collection practices are also highly immoral. It also reflects poorly on us. By association it can be seen that having their company's logo emblazoned on our replica shirts, training ground and other associated things helps to legitimaise their brand.

But at the same time, it seems that the owners are playing a game in the same way the rest of the league are.

All it needs is a look around. The league itself is sponsored by Barclays, who got in big trouble earlier this year for LIBOR interest rate fixing and have historically been in trouble for a manner of business practices. It doesn't get much better looking down, with the Football League sponsored by NPower and their annual extortionate energy prices rises, while the FA Cup is sponsored by alcohol company Budweiser.

Premier League clubs also have their own share of dodgy sponsorship deals. Gambling companies in particular are the main promoters of immorailty adorning shirts. Stoke, Swansea, West Ham and Wigan are all sponsored by online gambling sites, while Chinese casino operators Genting have their logo on Aston Villa shirts.

Alcohol also has its presence, although its more limited to billboard space with just Everton shirts emblazoned with the name of a booze corporation. It's certainly a long way from the 1990s, where Blackburn, Ipswich, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle and Spurs wore alcohol companies on their shirts at various stages in the FA Carling Premiership.

Not that finance in football is limited to the obvious amoral duo of gambling and alcohol companies. Sunderland are indirectly sponsored by Tullow Oil under their front investment charity Invest In Africa, and the reputation of oil corporations is not exactly strong.

This is before the deals of the champions. Manchester City are sponsored by Etihad Airways in a deal that seems designed to circumvent the UEFA Financial Fairplay regulations.

The two big fish in the shirt-selling stakes are also adorned with slightly dodgy deals. United are sponsored by insurance company AON, who have been fined for breaching US insurance selling regulations. Not quite the same league as AIG, whose balls-out financial failures cost the American taxpayer $100billion in bailout money, but still not exactly rosy. As for Liverpool, they wear the name of Standard Chartered, who are currently in trouble for laundering Iranian terrorist money, having previously had alcohol company Carlsberg on their shirts.

Wonga.com are also about in football teams anyway. Championship outfit Blackpool and Scottish side Hearts also have the blue speech bubble on their shirts. Certainly, there was no hysteria surrounding this deal when Ian Holloway's side played in the Premier League.

I am not saying of course that Wonga.com is what I want to see on the front of our shirts. But regardless of my personal opinion, the leagues have always been full of this sort of thing since football started taking shirt sponsorship.

This is, of course, before the other hysteria surrounding ownership and television rights is thrown into the potent mix. It basically shows the bombastic levels of financial antics that carry on in football and the corporations involved in the sport means we cannot simply pick and choose sponsors along moral lines.