Newcastle move beyond Saudi in key training deal

Newcastle United have agreed a £6 million-a-year deal for their first-ever training ground and training-kit sleeve sponsor in a major boost to their revenues.

KNOX Hydration — a South African sports drinks company, not affiliated with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), the club’s 85 per cent majority owners — has bought the three-year naming rights to Newcastle’s Darsley Park training ground in Benton from July 1.

Despite identifying land for a state of the art training centre in Woolsington, near Newcastle International Airport, such a substantial infrastructure project is still multiple years away, given it requires planning permission and then needs to be constructed. Naming rights for what Hopkinson insists will be a “10-out-of-10” facility would be substantially more lucrative in the future.

In the meantime, Newcastle are expanding and refurbishing their current site, having already invested heavily in Darsley Park since the Saudi-financed takeover of October 2021.

Given Eddie Howe’s team will be based in Benton for the foreseeable future, a three-year naming-rights agreement worth around £18m ($24.5m) has been struck with KNOX. The deal starts in July and expires in 2029, which provides an indication about the general timescale Newcastle are working towards when it comes to moving into their new training ground. That appears to be a happy coincidence, rather than a conscious timescale discussed during negotiations.

Although Newcastle’s figures will have grown again across the current season, 2024-25 is the most recent year when financial results are publicly available for Premier League clubs. Across that campaign, Newcastle’s turnover (£335.3m), matchday income (£51.6m) and commercial revenue (£120.2m) were dwarfed by the average of English football’s ‘Big Six’ clubs (at £638.8m, £119m and £288.2m respectively).

Newcastle’s commercial revenue has gone up fivefold post-takeover from £21m, yet there is still a huge gap to the established elite — Liverpool’s accounts showed their commercial revenue at £323m and was their biggest income stream. Many Newcastle fans have questioned why training-ground and training-kit sponsors had not been brought in post-takeover, but those fresh revenue streams are now being opened up.

Crucially, this fresh tie-up is not with a Saudi company. In 2024-25, 34.4 per cent of Newcastle’s commercial income (£34.4m) came from PIF-related companies — deals which the Premier League defines as “associated-party transactions” (APTs).

Although the Premier League has theoretically relaxed those restrictions following Manchester City’s legal challenges, UEFA rules over APTs remain more prohibitive. While Newcastle will continue to strike commercial deals with PIF-related companies, Hopkinson is also keen to diversify beyond those.

The theory goes that this “dimensionalisation” of sponsorships, as it has been termed by some internally, should provide Newcastle with a clearer pathway to top-tier revenues. Rather than merely strike so-called ‘easy-to-achieve’ deals with Saudi partners, Newcastle’s commercial team have been directed to actively pursue as many new non-PIF sponsors as possible, too.

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The Political Economy of Football V2

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