Qatar telecoms group linked with Liverpool FC
LIVERPOOL Football Club could switch its sponsorship rights from Standard Chartered Bank to Qatari telecom firm Ooredoo, according to reports.
Standard Chartered, Liverpool’s current shirt sponsor, has 18 months remaining on the £20m per year deal signed in September 2009 and could extend the deal on improved terms.
However a spokesman for Ooredoo told the Middle East news service Aljazeera that it is in talks and these include a naming rights deals for the club’s historic Anfield ground.
The spokesman said: “We want to sponsor the club in full. We want to sponsor the stadium (possibly rename it) as well as the club’s kits. Our goal is to reach the Asian markets where the Premier League has an enormous fan base.
“We received the tender from the club a few days ago and we are currently in the process of due diligence and we are studying each aspect of the study. It is a dual interest, Liverpool needs the money to compete with the European heavyweights and we want to expand our brand to reach new markets via football.”
Ooredoo’s interest in using football to raise its profile appears to be serious – it recently struck a deal with Barcelona’s Lionel Messi to represent it.
