‘Players want to leave’ - PIF commitment ‘raising alarm bells’ at Newcastle United despite £60m deal
Newcastle United have agreed a three-year deal that will see KNOX Hydrate be the club's new front-of-shirt sponsor.
Football financial expert Stefan Borson believes Newcastle United’s recent shirt sponsor announcement signals bad news for the club.
As reported by our sister title, The Gazette, earlier this month, the Magpies agreed a lucrative front-of-shirt deal with KNOX Hydrate. The sports drink brand had already stumped up a £6million per year package to sponsor the training ground.
It is understood that the kit deal will see Newcastle net around £20million per season. This is lower than the £25million Sela - owned by PIF - stumped up over the past three years.
There are mitigating factors for this, with the prohibition of betting sponsors affecting the market. Chelsea, for example, have struck a deal worth £16million less than their previous partnership.
Newcastle United challenge
Monetary guru Borson has highlighted all of the current problems at St James’ Park. In particular, he suggested Sela no longer investing should raise alarm bells about PIF’s commitment.
"There's clearly an issue generally in the club,” he told Football Insider. “The players clearly want to leave. There's definitely something going on with the Saudis in terms of them pulling back investment. And you can see that from the front-of-shirt deal that they've ended up having to do with KNOX.
"So things are not great there, clearly. All of the momentum that they built up with the Champions League and finishing really well in the league, all of that has dissipated. And it's a really challenging situation they've got now this summer."
Yasir Al-Rumayyan reaffirms commitment
Toon chairman Al-Rumayyan - also the governor of PIF - jetted to Tyneside in May. During his visit, he reaffirmed his long-term commitment to making Newcastle a football powerhouse.
This sentiment has been echoed several times by CEO David Hopkinson, who bullishly predicts the Magpies will be a European heavyweight within four years. At the FII summit a fortnight ago, Al-Rumayyan outlined PIF’s stance to its global portfolio - which includes Newcastle.
“For us at the PIF, we always continue to invest, be very diverse and our portfolio structurally resilient,” he said. “We are a long-term patient investor and we will remain committed to all of our investments and investment strategy around the world.
“A lot of people thought we would stop deploying investments internationally. I can tell you that we're not going to stop. The percentages are going lower, but the absolute numbers will continue to grow.
“We just got our board to approve our new strategy until the end of 2030. What PIF did since 2016, we basically brought the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the world. Now our new strategy is to bring the world back to Saudi.”