Newcastle announce new stadium name

NEWCASTLE United managing director Derek Llambias has confirmed that the club's stadium will be known as sportsdirect.com @ St James' Park for the rest of the season. The club will then seek a new sponsor to take over the naming rights from Sports Direct, a sportswear firm owned by the club's owner, Mike Ashley, for the 2010-11 campaign. The news is a clarification of last night's announcement regarding the naming rights for St James'. A previous statement had suggested that St James' Park would be completely renamed, but Llambias insisted that the 'St James' Park' section of the name would remain. The result is an unseemly compromise that will do little to placate the mounting fury amongst supporters of Newcastle United. Planned demonstrations are still expected to go ahead before Saturday's Championship home game with Peterborough. Llambias said: "We could have worded it (last week's statement) better, and that's why I came out to try and explain where we are and what we are hoping to achieve. "With a renaming, it was always going to be 'Whatever brand it was going to be @ St James' Park'. "For the remainder of this season, we already have sportsdirect.com on the Gallowgate. "So we'd like to take that branding through the rest of the stadium and on the outside - where you see St James' now - we would like to have sportsdirect.com @ St James' so it can showcase to whoever is out there that might wish to buy the package. "If you want extra players, we have to bring in extra revenue and that is one source of revenue that's been under-valued in the past. "We're not taking away St James' Park - we're just adding to it. We will showcase sportsdirect.com until the end of the season and I'm sure we're going to get a sponsor in for next season." ** READ MORE NEWCASTLE UNITED NEWS IN TOMORROW'S NORTHERN ECHO **

Source: Northern_Echo