The Saint Helens of Super League will soon be playing at Totally Wicked Stadium after reaching an agreement with the maker of electronic cigarettes on a five-year sponsorship deal.
The side has been sponsored by Totally Wicked since 2013, but until now, the stadium was known as Langtree Park.
St. Helens chairman Eamonn McManus announced the deal on the club’s website, saying, “Totally Wicked has been a loyal and valuable supporter and sponsor of Saints for the last four years. For the club, this new increased sponsorship deal was a natural development of an already established relationship that has been of tremendous benefit to the club, not just financially, but also in supporting our wider health objectives.”
All well and good, say we, but the panache of the new name is undeniable. It reeks of creativity that is not often found in an era when sports stadiums seem to be striving to come up with names that will not be considered offensive in any way. Selling naming rights to corporations has often led to some exceeding boring venue names, but that could never be said of a stadium named Totally Wicked.
Here’s hoping that others follow the lead of Saint Helens, or perhaps Middlefart Stadium in Denmark and come up with something a little more interesting than Melbourne Cricket Ground.