A Newcastle United training ground sponsor was announced on Thursday morning.
An official club statement naming KNOX Hydration.
They are a South African sports drinks company and are not in any way affiliated with the majority Newcastle United owners, the Saudi Arabia PIF.
It is a three year deal and sees KNOX Hydration become the first ever Newcastle United training ground sponsor. They also become the training kit sleeve sponsor.
This three year deal is active from 1 July 2026.
Now a media exclusive has revealed just how much this deal is worth.
Chris Waugh at The Athletic making public that it is an £18m deal, £6m a year.
It has been a regular puzzle for Newcastle United fans. With the club desperately needing to close the gap on the half dozen Premier League clubs who continue to have far higher revenues, why weren’t the Newcastle United owners looking at every possible avenue to bring in sponsors? With the training ground and training kit amongst those sponsorship deals that weren’t taken advantage of.
It feels now as if things may well be finally kicking off.
Closing the gap on the Manchester clubs, Liverpool, Spurs, Chelsea and Arsenal is still going to be a huge long-term challenge, but every journey starts with a single step.
The man from The Athletic detailing that this is only the beginning, with a series of other commercial deals set to follow.
Chris Waugh stating: “A more lucrative front-of-training-wear sponsor is still being sought and interest has been registered — KNOX will feature on the shirt sleeve, but not on the centre of the kit — as well, with Newcastle looking to rapidly grow their commercial income under David Hopkinson, the chief executive who arrived in September. This is the first sign of Hopkinson fulfilling the promise he made to pump-prime every potential revenue stream, with further deals set to follow.”
With talks having taken place with interested companies, a front of training kit partner is set to follow, hopefully bringing in millions more. Every little helps…
Chris Waugh adding: “Both deals cumulatively would place Newcastle among the highest earners for training-ground and training-kit sponsorship deals in football, club sources insist.”
It was never going to be just one moment, just one commercial deal, that enables Newcastle United to close the gap on those generating far more money currently.
It is going to take a lot of successful progress on and off the pitch to come together and get Newcastle United properly competitive long-term.
This summer sees the current main Newcastle United sponsorship deal up for grabs, the Sela front of shirt arrangement coming to an end. That deal brought in a reported £25m per year in extra revenue and when you compare where the club is now compared to when that sponsorship was agreed, the hope must be that any new sponsor will be paying substantially more. Agreed ahead of the 2023/24 season, these past three years have seen two Champions League campaigns and a trophy win, the profile of Newcastle United very different now, especially with the assistance of deals such as the Adidas kit one as well.
In the future, a new state of the art training complex would of course be able to attract far higher sponsorship deals. Whilst if a brand new Newcastle United stadium is built and the club decide to allow sponsorship of that, it would be a whole other level.