There are rumors swirling of Newcastle Brown Ale becoming the primary sponsor of Newcastle United once again. This is fantastic! The Sunday Mirror originally broke news of preliminary talks between Heineken, the third largest beer producer in the world, and Newcastle ownership.
Newcastle wore jerseys with sponsorships from local breweries for 20 years: Newcastle Breweries, Greenall's Beers, and McEwan's Lager in the 80’s, leading into Newcastle Brown Ale being the primary sponsor from 1990-2000. Many of these uniforms were fan favorites and a source of fond memories of Kevin Keegan’s Entertainers, the signing of Alan Shearer, and some of the greatest successes of the storied club.
In 2013, Wonga, a controversial, short term loan company, became the primary sponsor for the football club much to everyone’s chagrin. As you might remember, Papiss Cisse, a muslim, refused to wear the team's kit or training wear in protest and subsequently missed a portion of Newcastle’s pre-season before the two sides resolved the issue. With the deal between Newcastle and Wonga set to expire at the conclusion of this season, Ashley and company are now searching for their next sponsorship deal. This summer, there was talk that Newcastle might buy out the last few months of the deal and switch to a new sponsor before the season’s end.
I have a hard time believing many Newcastle fans would be upset with this rekindled sponsorship, judging by the many tweets featuring photoshopped pictures of current players wearing Newcastle Brown Ale logo jerseys. I’m certainly not and would be ordering a new jersey the first chance I could. We’ll see how the talks pan out in the coming weeks - I’ll keep you posted.
- Let’s all raise a Newcastle Brown Ale tonight and cheers to a bright future. Howay the Lads!