Should Football Club Owners really be allowed to change a Clubs Name and/or Crest for Marketing Purposes?

Fast-track back to December 2010, with debts of up to £35million due to the previous seasons relegation from the Premier League, Hull City were on the verge of administration and in need of some serious financial investment.

Up stepped Assem Allam , a local Egyptian businessman worth a reported £150million.

From the get go Allam fully focused his intentions on securing the clubs future and immediately invested £30million into the club, with a further £10million in personal guarantees. From then on the future looked bright for Hull City, debts were being settled and more importantly the team were performing well on the pitch. Under current manager Nigel Pearsons guidance, the team notched up a club record run of 17 unbeaten away matches in the 10-11 season.

The following season they managed to finish 8^th in the Championship under Nick Barmby, however on the 8^th May he was sacked from the club after reportedly making comments about the clubs ownership and transfer policies. Steve Bruce replaced him for the 12/13 season and things only get better for Hull City on the pitch. After a highly successful campaign in the league, the clubs promotion hopes boiled down to the last day and following a dramatic 2-2 draw at home to the already promoted Cardiff City, Hull finally made their return to the Premier League after, this after fellow promotion contenders Watford went down 2-1 at home to Leeds.

In the eyes of the fans, nothing could possibly bring them down right?

Wrong!  

With great shock to the fans, the man who had surely saved the club from financial ruin and cemented his status as a club legend, revealed that he had reregistered the club as “Hull City Tigers ltd”, dropping ‘Association Football Club’ from the name. Now the actual ‘club name’ had not changed but the ‘company name’ had. This move signalled his intentions to eventually change, or in his words “shorten”, the actual club name to “Hull Tigers”, totally dropping ‘AFC’ & ‘City’ from the club name.

In an interview to the Daily Mail on the 8^th August 2013, Allam had this to say:

“In the commercial world, the shorter the name, the better. The more it can spread quickly. My dislike for the word 'City' is because it is common. I want the club to be special. It is about identity. 'City' is a lousy identity. Hull City Association Football Club is too long”

“AFC is redundant, it is not used by the club. The fans never mention AFC, nor do the media,"

His reasoning behind the change was both understandable to me but all gone about in the wrong way. He claimed that the club needed to explore extra avenues of making money in the global market, stating in an interview to the Guardian on the 12th September 2013 that “By next year I will change the name to Hull Tigers." He added, "I cannot afford to run the club by fans' feeling."

Understandably fans reacted in a negative manner towards these plans and immedialty set about trying to block them. A supporters website (www.citytillwedie.com) was set up as a forefront for the campaign against any name change. Hull City fans also demonstrated during games, with fans all standing together and repeatedly singing “City till I die” when the time on the board strikes 19:04.

Clearly however, the fans objections to these plans have fallen on death ears with the recent confirmation of Mr.Allams plans this week, to change the ‘club name’ to Hull Tigers. All this after claiming that nothing would be decided without the fans consent.

Here are just a couple of reactions I received from Hull City fans regarding the recent news:

Darren Norton:

“I am very much against the name change. There is no proven commercial value to the name change. It can’t be positive if the owner has already called the protesters  “a small minority that no longer go to games ". Such naivety has already put into question his sanity, as well as his ability to make rational business decisions. Under the current set up he has no one to question his decisions at board room level”

“The owner stated that no changes would be made without the consent of the fans. He has already back tracked on this promise”

Keysha Mackie:

“It’s just ridiculous, it will break with a 109 years of history and tradition, it’s basically like going to support a brand new club. Fine! it may bring in money and overseas fans and things like that, but I already think without this name change we already have the foundations to become a big club. Dr. Allam did pretty much save us when he first came into the club, so I support him for that as he put his own hard earned money into our club, which was a mess at the time due to the previous owner”

“I suppose when your club is considering a name change its pretty much all about money and the clubs future, talking commercial wise it may have a positive effect on it, but that doesn't mean to say I’m all for the name change because I’m all against it as you can tell”

The FA's Rule 3L states: "Any application for a change of playing name must be received by the Association before 1 April in any calendar year in order for it to be considered by [the FA] Council for adoption in the following playing season.

"The[FA] Council will use its absolute discretion in deciding whether to approve a change in a club's playing name."

Although it is my understanding that the FA have already taken a dim view on this, having already confirmed their intentions to always refer Hull City AFC to their historical name. However something similar to this has already happened before, not so much to the approval of the FA, but they allowed it to pass.

In 2012, current Malaysian owner of Cardiff City changed the club crest, from a bluebird to the Red Dragon and also the team colours, going from Blue to Red. Yet again all this to appeal to a more global market, mainly in his home country of Malaysia and in and around Asia. Now the financial investment of Vincent Tan has done wonders for the club, but is it really worthy throwing a clubs tradition and heritage out of the window? Mr Tan is already an extremely wealthy businessmen, why the need for more money?

 

My opinion on all this is that I do understand and appreciate the owners intentions behind these changes, however particularly in the case of Hull City and Assem Allam, I just get the feeling that he really doesn’t care what the fans have to say about this. To me he’s taken the “It’s my club and I’ll do what I like” attitude, which I do respect as he is the owner, but is that really a smart move? Is it really worth losing all respect that the fans once had for you?

Surely to protect the Heritage of this beautiful game, which we invented! Plans like this should not be allowed to materialise. But what can the FA do about it? Or even FIFA? That’s just up to them to decide I guess?