Source: Daily_Mail
Liverpool announce £80m shirt deal with Standard Chartered Bank
Liverpool have announced the biggest commercial deal in their history after agreeing a four-year sponsorship with Standard Chartered Bank.
The bank will become the club's main sponsor from July next year until the end of the 2013-14 season in a deal reportedly worth £80million to Liverpool.
Standard Chartered will therefore replace Carlsberg as the Reds' shirt sponsor.
Liverpool managing director Christian Purslow believes the deal can get their new stadium project back on track.
Liverpool City Council last year granted planning permission to allow the club to build a 60,000-seat stadium in Stanley Park, however progress has been delayed, with Anfield officials citing 'global market conditions' as the cause.
Purslow said: 'The overall financial health of our football club is a key ingredient of being able to get the stadium project back up and running.
'This is a huge step forward for the club financially and that can only be helpful to create the conditions in which we can restart the stadium project.'
He added: 'Thispartnership brings together two highly successful organisations with areally strong cultural and strategic fit.
'The sponsorship opportunity attracted a huge level of interest from a widearray of globally recognised brands and in Standard Chartered we believe we have the ideal partner to move forward and help develop our global ambitions for the club.
'It is a real sign of theprogress we have made at Liverpool that we have been able to secure thelargest ever commercial deal in our history.'
Purslow said that Standard Chartered's global status reflected Liverpool's ambition to be the best football club in the world.
'They operate in a number of markets around the world where we have a vast and growing fanbase,' he said.
'They have 1,400 branches in Asia, the Middle East and Africa, 14million customers and over 70,000 employees. These branches will effectively be a shop window for Liverpool Football Club around the world.
'On the park, it is clear that we want to be the most successful football club in the world. To do that I believe that there is a pretty important link to how we perform off the park.'
