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I got quite a shock tonight when I found out that the Football Conference will be sponsored by Blue Square for three years and rebranded as Blue Square Premier. It’s an unusual choice, back in 2001 when I ran the website ‘Conference League’ I struggled to get any affiliate revenue from Conference betting online, but I suppose it’s not about that - just having the football results read out with a Blue Square name drop will suffice come Saturday tea time. I wonder how long it will take the TV and radio commentators to stop calling it the ‘Nationwide Conference’… they only just stopped calling it the ‘Vauxhall Conference’! I suspect plenty of people will question the validity of the word ‘Premier’, we’re often talking ‘big boot and run’ football, even my beloved Stevenage Borough FC don’t really merit the description ‘premier’ and I’ll be the first to admit that.

The main Press Release reads:

Blue Square to sponsor Football Conference in groundbreaking deal Leading UK interactive gaming provider announces new title sponsorship deal

Blue Square, one of the UK’s leading interactive gaming providers, has announced a new three-year sponsorship of the Football Conference. The deal is effective from the start of the 2007/08 season and is an unprecedented deal in Non-League football.

To coincide with the new deal, the three conference divisions will undergo name changes. The Football conference will now be known as The Blue Square Premier (currently Football Conference), Blue Square North (Conference North) and Blue Square South (Conference South).

The sponsorship deal covers the naming rights to the leagues, sponsorship of perimeter boards, corner flags, patches and match officials. In addition, Blue Square will be supporting a number of new initiatives, which include a Blue Square Player of the Month. On the player of the month panel will be Paul Parker, the former England & Manchester United defender, who also has extensive Non-League experience, including a stint managing Welling.

Martin Belsham, Blue Square CEO, said of the new partnership: “The Premiership is often criticised for being over inflated and out of the realms of reality in terms of wages and TV rights. We see our sponsorship as a way of engaging with real football fans and giving the Blue Square Premier clubs some much needed collateral to assist them with their development”.

Bill King, Chairman of the Football Conference, said, “Our League is the gateway to the clubs in the professional structure in the UK and is an established part of the UK football scene. I’m delighted to be seeing a piece of non-league football history in the making and am extremely excited about what this partnership with Blue Square can achieve.”

At least they managed to register all the domains before they made the announcement this time, I got quite a bit of traffic from nationwideconference.com and vauxhallconference.com back in the day

Technorati Tags: football conference, blue square, blue square premier, nationwide conference

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