NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE, ENGLAND - FEBRUARY 14: Newcastle United Head Coach Eddie Howe gestures during the Newcastle United Training Session at the Newcastle United Training Centre on February 14, 2024 in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. (Photo by Serena Taylor/Newcastle United via Getty Images)
Newcastle United are strengthening their commercial team as part of the club’s efforts to boost revenues.
Newcastle are gradually increasing staffing levels across the board and, having already created new roles in retail and licensing and e-commerce in the first few months of the year, the Magpies are searching for a head of partnership services, a partnership services manager and a partnership services executive. These will be crucial appointments for Newcastle moving forward as, obviously, the more respected, lucrative sponsors the club can secure, the more money the Magpies are able to spend while complying with financial regulations.
So what will the new recruits do? Well, amongst other responsibilities, the head of partnership services will lead on the ‘development and execution’ of the club’s partnership strategy, including special projects, such as the city stakeholder partnerships, while the partnership services manager will lead the partnership service executives in ‘researching and delivering category intelligence, data and insights to provide best in class support’. Finally, according to the job description, it will fall to the partnership services executive to research companies, industry categories and market trends to produce reports for the partnership development team in their ‘prospecting efforts’ and to find the contact details for individuals at companies to supply the partnership development team with ‘prospective leads’.
CEO Darren Eales previously commented that Newcastle were ‘seeing more and more commercial partners wanting to become part of this journey’ in a field with ‘real potential growth’ given the size of the club compared to the commercial revenues the Magpies have historically brought in over the years. For context, Newcastle’s commercial income rose by a whopping 66% last season but it showed what a low base the black-and-whites were starting from, following years of neglect in the Ashley era, that the £43.9m generated paled in comparison to the £302.9m Manchester United took home in the same period.
