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Originally Posted by denphone
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I can now discuss this seeing as I no longer work for the company concerned.
I hinted at this happening several months ago but couldn't say anything due to the amount of money Ashley was spending with my previous employer.
Next time you get a dug-out shot at St James' Sports Direct whatever stadium, have a look at the seats. Not usually for a premiership club, all the dug-out seats are Recaro Speed seats (ones found in Honda Civic Type-R, out of interest). They're done out in club colours, again not usual for a football team.
Now where Newcastle's differ slightly is that during the summer they wanted the seats changed a little. Once again, clubs often make improvements and amendments to the stadium during the off-season but this time Ashley wanted a dramatic change. He wanted us to replace all the seats with new ones and retrim them in club colours but with the SportsDirect.com logo below the club's crest. The idea being of course that when you get a dug-out shot, behind the players you'll see the website advertised.
Only thing is, we did the job and sent the seats up to SJ'sP but Mike Ashley wasn't happy. He felt the club logo was to distracting from the website logo so he returned the seats to us to have them retrimmed again (remember this is top-grade leather and we're talking 12-14 seats) but with the club crest removed and the SportsDirect.com made bigger.
OK it's his club and he can spend whatever he wants (I'm not going to say how much it cost but we're talking 5 figures) on promoting his other business venture but that feels like such a sell-out.