West Brom face another season without a shirt sponsor

May 28 2009 by Chris Lepkowski

“Now we are back in the Championship it will be a lesser amount and are we prepared to accept that or do we wait for a strategic partnership.

“In the Championship it is much more of a commodity product, in the Premier League we would take more of a strategic look at it.

“I still think we will be very selective about who we bring in.

“There will be more clubs looking and more people who will be looking to do less commercially viable deals than we’d be willing to go into. So the odds are looking favourable that we won’t go with a sponsor this season.

“We would like to put something on there this year but we don’t want to put a name on the shirt for the name’s sake.

“Commercially that wouldn’t be a very good deal. What’s the point? You might as well be honest and say ‘there’s no money’.”

Albion plan to release their new home and away Umbro kit in early July, keeping the yellow kit as a third strip.

But, unlike Villa did with Acorns, Albion have no plans to offer shirt space to a charity but may include sponsorship for occasional community schemes.

“We won’t go down the charity route,” added Peace.

“We have one or two hybrd projects where we may have something on the shirts which is generated via the community schemes we run.

“The sponsorless shirt was a collectors’ item and it would be nice to keep it as that.”