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Bill's Take: What Does The iPro Situation Say About DCFC?
Thursday, 1st Dec 2016 13:46 by Bill Riordan

Back in November 2013, the Rams sold the naming rights to the Pride Park Stadium to a new sports drink company called iPro, in a ten year deal said to be worth £7 million.

At the time, I was not especially bothered one way or the other about this event but I do not think that any of us are particularly fond of the sale of stadium naming rights to commercial enterprises.

In saying that, cash is hugely important to any club looking to reach the Premier League, and this was quite a chunk of change. Besides, I myself had railed against the Pride Park name not long before the change.

My main argument was that for over one hundred years the Rams had played at the Baseball Ground; a name with a quirky authenticity about it, and one of the great ground names in English football. Now we had the anodyne nothingness of Pride Park.

From the start I had a nagging doubt about the iPro sponsorship, and it concerned the possible longevity of iPro as a brand.

The sugary drinks business is intensely competitive, and iPro was going up against two behemoth adversaries in Coca-cola and Pepsi who both offer market leading sports drinks, and both have the resources and marketing savvy to scare off would-be competitors.

Still, the Rams had done their homework, and with an inoffensive new stadium name and lots of cash in the bank, what could go wrong for the Rams?

As it happened, quite a bit could go wrong.

It was recently announced that the Rams had terminated the contract, and the stadium would revert to being called Pride Park but besides that, not much else about the situation has been made public to date.

A web search of ‘iPro’ reveals little except that the company has signed lots of partnership agreements with various sports governing bodies and clubs. How much product they have moved, I do not know but it also turns out that iPro, now known as Sports Drinks Ltd is insolvent, and the accountants have been called in to sort out the financial wreckage.

Most interestingly, there is a document going around which appears to be genuine, and shows that the largest creditor of Sports Drinks Ltd is Derby County Football Club, in the amount of slightly over £4.5 million.

This begs two questions, at least. First, how much, if any of the £7 million sponsorship did the Rams ever receive? In a deal such as this, it would make sense that much of the money would be paid up front. If that is the case, then perhaps the rams received about £2.5 million; the contracted amount (£7m), less the amount still outstanding (£4.5m).

It could be just as likely that the Rams never received a penny under the contract, and that the £4.5 million is the total amount accrued to date under the contract.

Since the failure of the iPro contract reflects very poorly on those at Derby who were involved, the second obvious question would be: who at Derby negotiated this disaster? According to comments made to the BBC at the time, the iPro sponsorship was clearly the brainchild of Sam Rush.

One has to wonder whether the lack of public information is due, at least in part, to the club seemingly trying to sweep the whole matter under the carpet as quickly as possible and move on.

There seems to be an unfortunate trend developing at Derby County; a trend that can be seen not only in the iPro sponsorship, but also in some recent appointments of head coaches, managers and the signing of players.

On deals of major significance to the club, excessively long contracts are entered into without and seemingly little thought given to the possible future financial impact on the club.

I have a feeling that we are unlikely to see another stadium naming contract at Pride Park for a while. When we do, I hope that it is with a well established company who offer a long term, stable relationship for the club.

The author would like to thank Richard Pass for his contribution to this article.




Photo: Action Images



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