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QPR sign £20m sponsorship deal
Share Mike McGrath The Guardian, Wednesday 26 March 2008 Article historyQueens Park Rangers have landed a £20m kit sponsorship deal with the Italian sportswear firm Lotto to add to their new wealth but Flavio Briatore insists the club will not be held to ransom despite their war chest. Briatore believes the five-year deal will help to build a foundation for success in the future although the co-owner is also wary of radical changes.
Should there be a need for a bigger stadium, Briatore wants the club to stay in west London. In the short term, the Championship club are looking for the right transfer targets rather than high-profile signings.
"We are not going to throw away money at all," Briatore said. "We [will] try to put the club together in the right way and what we have done now is a demonstration of that. We are not the new blood of football. QPR is QPR, Chelsea are Chelsea - we will do it our way.
"If we say which players we want, the price is 10 times bigger. When somebody arrives in the business people say that it is new blood to suck. There is nothing to suck here. We don't have blood."
Briatore, who runs the Renault grand prix team, owns QPR with the formula one rights owner, Bernie Ecclestone, and the steel ty**** Lakshmi Mittal. Their investment has seen the club linked with a host of players. "We have a wish list," said Amit Bhatia, QPR Holdings' vice-chairman.
Ecclestone considered nearby Chelsea before Roman Abramovich took over but Briatore did not want to make comparisons between the clubs. Abramovich brought almost instant success to Stamford Bridge but Briatore says he is merely looking to build foundations.
"We want to consolidate the club and create a base," he said. "This year our goal is to stay in the Championship. We need to do it step by step. We want to build up a club. You want to start from the bottom and create a new club, this is exciting. It's a new adventure. It is a club in the middle of London, probably the best location in the city. The club has a story behind it and a lot of potential, as we've seen already."
Share Mike McGrath The Guardian, Wednesday 26 March 2008 Article historyQueens Park Rangers have landed a £20m kit sponsorship deal with the Italian sportswear firm Lotto to add to their new wealth but Flavio Briatore insists the club will not be held to ransom despite their war chest. Briatore believes the five-year deal will help to build a foundation for success in the future although the co-owner is also wary of radical changes.
Should there be a need for a bigger stadium, Briatore wants the club to stay in west London. In the short term, the Championship club are looking for the right transfer targets rather than high-profile signings.
"We are not going to throw away money at all," Briatore said. "We [will] try to put the club together in the right way and what we have done now is a demonstration of that. We are not the new blood of football. QPR is QPR, Chelsea are Chelsea - we will do it our way.
"If we say which players we want, the price is 10 times bigger. When somebody arrives in the business people say that it is new blood to suck. There is nothing to suck here. We don't have blood."
Briatore, who runs the Renault grand prix team, owns QPR with the formula one rights owner, Bernie Ecclestone, and the steel ty**** Lakshmi Mittal. Their investment has seen the club linked with a host of players. "We have a wish list," said Amit Bhatia, QPR Holdings' vice-chairman.
Ecclestone considered nearby Chelsea before Roman Abramovich took over but Briatore did not want to make comparisons between the clubs. Abramovich brought almost instant success to Stamford Bridge but Briatore says he is merely looking to build foundations.
"We want to consolidate the club and create a base," he said. "This year our goal is to stay in the Championship. We need to do it step by step. We want to build up a club. You want to start from the bottom and create a new club, this is exciting. It's a new adventure. It is a club in the middle of London, probably the best location in the city. The club has a story behind it and a lot of potential, as we've seen already."
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