- May 14, 2007
- 14,041
- 2,980
Why? You sometimes see it with players that have been sold that a club can match a bid to buy them back.
Because it would seriously compromise the naming rights process. If Levy wanted to maximise the value being obtained, he'd want to be discussing it with several potential "bidders", all of which would be big/global brands with massive legal budgets.
There is absolutely no way any of them would sign up to a process whereby they bid, and this bid would be shared with a competitor. The bidding companies legal teams would never sign off on such a process.
I don't doubt that HSBC, in their capacity as lender, will have visibility of the size of the naming rights deal. But in their capacity as potential bidder on naming rights, I'd be extremely surprised. There'd be non disclosure agreements galore on something like this.
I'm not sure you can equate the buy back of a player with a near £1bn project.