• Premier League

Liverpool looking for naming rights deal

How Liverpool's main stand would look after £75 million redevelopment © Liverpool Football Club

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Liverpool will consider selling the naming rights to the main stand at Anfield in order to help pay for its £75 million redevelopment costs.

However, the club will not be offering up the naming rights to the stadium as a whole.

A planning application to increase the capacity of the stand by 8,500 seats to 21,000 by adding an extra tier was approved by Liverpool City Council last month.

That decision is currently subject to a six-week consultation period, during which legal challenges to the council's decision can be submitted.

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But, barring any late hitches, Liverpool hope to begin work on the new stand in early 2015 with the aim of getting it completed by August 2016.

The club also intend to increase the size of the Anfield Road End by 4,800 seats to raise the stadium's overall capacity to 58,800 by 2018.

The expansion of Anfield - with the extra revenue that would bring - is one of the reasons chief commercial officer Billy Hogan told ESPN last week that he felt Liverpool were moving in the right direction financially.

Hogan told the Liverpool Echo: "The new main stand is going to be a big focus for all of us. The process is still ongoing. We're getting closer to certainty but we're not there yet.

"When that certainty arrives, from a commercial standpoint we'll be ready to get to work on that. We wouldn't consider selling naming rights for the stadium as a whole but in terms of the name of the main stand that's something we will look at.

"We'll be looking to bring in a number of new partners. A naming partnership for the stand would make sense."

Liverpool are one of seven clubs being investigated by UEFA over possible breaches of Financial Fair Play rules.

Those rules limit clubs in European competition to losses of no more than €45m (£35m) - over a two-year period.

Liverpool lost £49.8m loss over the 12 months to May 31, 2013, having lost £40.5m over the 10 months prior to that. However, the club have taken steps to increase revenue by securing nine new sponsorship deals since then - with Hogan making clear that they are seeking more.

A number of Premier League clubs have increased revenue by selling naming rights. Manchester City's ground was renamed the Etihad Stadium in 2010 as part of a £400m deal with Etihad Airways, which also included shirt sponsorship and investment in a new training ground on the site.

Arsenal struck a £90m shirt sponsorship and stadium naming rights deal with the airline Emirates in 2004 - to take effect from 2006. Under that deal, the airline were giving the naming rights to the club's new ground at Ashburton Grove for 15 years.

That combined agreement was extended in 2012 in a deal worth £150m, with Emirates extending its shirt sponsorship to 2019 and the stadium naming rights package to 2028.

Ian Ayre, Liverpool's chief executive, said in October 2012 that Liverpool were not looking to sell the naming rights to Anfield as a whole - which Hogan insists is still the case.

But football finance expert Tom Cannon, from the University of Liverpool, told ESPN in April that the club could expect to make £50m a season if they did.

"If you look at the deal Arsenal did for the Emirates Stadium as a guide, I'd say that Liverpool would be looking for 50 million pounds a year, perhaps over a 10-year deal, if they were to sell the naming rights," Cannon said at the time. "Given the history and heritage of the club, I would be surprised if they accepted less than that.

"That's something, in my view, that they have to look at, because they won't be covering the cost of the expansion in ticket sales.

"Bear in mind that they could be paying around £11m a year just in interest payments on loans for the stadium redevelopment."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd