Coca-Cola League Championship?

By John Swift
May 16 2004

Coca-Cola are to be the new sponsors of the football league, but they have some rather shcoking plans. Coca-Cola want to re-brand the lower leagues with their name.

Under Coca-Cola's new plans the Nationwide first division will become the "The Coca-Cola League Championship", the Nationwide second division will become "The Coca-Cola League Championship One", and the Nationwide third division will become "The Coca-Cola League Championship Two". Coca-Cola take over from Nationwide at the beginning of next season in athree year deal, reportedly worth 15 million pounds, and it would seem they have rather large plans for the football league.

The 72 league clubs from all three current divisions are set to vote on this change of name in next months annual general meeting. However this renaming is only part of a much wider process for advertising being undertaken. TBWA, the advertising company are being employed to increase advertising opertunities in football.

But should football really be selling advertising left, right and centre in such an alarming fashion. Surely there is enough sponsorship in football already. Coca-Cola seem to want more from this sposorship deal than, the perhaps under appreciated, Nationwide did from their deal.

The first division in effect will be split from the second and the third. Will this mean that the clubs below the first division will be left high and dry? Surely we do not want another seperate league. The Premiership being a breakaway league is bad enough? And the League Cup being a sell-out is not great either. But these plans will push many other the edge. Whatever happened to the days when our leagues were just numbered 1, 2, 3 and 4?

So what does this mean for Nottingham Forest? Well we will be place in the "Coca-Cola League Championship" which admittedly sounds higher than the Nationwide first division, however in reality we all know it's the same thing. And do we, as fans of Forest, want to allow this to continue? We must let the club know how we feel so they can kick out these ludicrous plans invented by Coca-Cola who believe they can use anything to their own ends.