- Sep 15, 2007
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No sponsor would want to associated by name with a project that might hit problems - I get that.
But given we are going full steam ahead with this thing, and given all that effort we put in to entice the NFL sponsors - the NFL were mean to to be lining them up as I remember - I was expecting the ITKs by now to be giving us a little bit more than nowhere close to a deal.
Unless of course Hertyid meant we are nowhere near a deal with the 3 mega corporations that we have narrowed it down to. That would be more than fine.
I'll add that I believe the tie in with the nfl is genuine. I imagine Joe Lewis would be quite pleased with himself if he got to see NFL games in his own stadium, but whether that means he would be prepared to splash out big time to achieve that is another question.
My expectation (not ITK but just general business experience) is that DL will have narrowed potential sponsors down to a very short list, maybe 3 or 4, and agreed headline terms - but not on any legally binding format, and there may well be a ton of detail to be agreed on what the sponsorship includes or doesn't include other than naming rights.
On the other side the potential sponsors may well be looking at other big sponsorship deals (not necessarily naming rights deals) if the Spurs deal falls through.
At a certain point in time the sponsors and Spurs are going to be ready to finalise the deal, but as I say I think that comes in 6-12 months when the stadium outcome/precise timescales is more certain, and there may be other non Spurs timings that the deal wants to coincide with (who knows).
That's just the way that a big deal like the naming rights deal is going to work.
I wouldn't worry that the deal isn't going to be done, I just don't know when.
Will we get ITK info beforehand - quite possibly. But equally possibly (like Modric arriving) we may wake up one Sunday morning (before that TW had opened) to Spurs being headline.....