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Football Article | On This Day In Football – June 3rd ... posted 350 days ago online 


The Sponsorship era begins

It was today in 1977 that the FA officially accepted a proposal submitted by three clubs that allowed sponsorship to be included on team’s kits. The three clubs in question were Kettering Town, Derby County and Bolton Wanderers and as many of you will already know, it was Kettering who ushered in the new age of shirt sponsorship with their controversial ‘Kettering Tyres’ kits in 1976.

Former Wolves and Northern Ireland player Derek Dougan joined up with Kettering, then in the Southern League Premier, as chief executive after his retirement from playing. Dougan then completed a deal with the local company Kettering Tyres and on the 24th January 1976, Kettering made history in their league fixture against Bath City as the first English team to wear a shirt with a sponsor. The FA immediately stepped in and ordered them to remove the sponsor. Dougan however thought he had found a way around the problem when the slogan was shortened to ‘Kettering T’ and claimed it stood for Kettering Town rather than Kettering Tyres.

The non-league club got away with this for a couple of months before the threat of a fine in April by the FA forced them to remove the sponsor from their shirt. Not one to give up, Dougan and Kettering came together with Derby and Bolton and proposed that the FA change their stance and allowed clubs to seek shirt sponsorship with the huge potential for financial profit and the FA accepted the proposal 34 years ago to this day and since then the level of sponsorship not only on kits has become enormous throughout world football with huge deals worth millions of pounds to both clubs and sponsors, a far cry from the apparent four figure deal between Kettering Town and Kettering Tyres. Ironically for Kettering, they failed to find a sponsor for the following season in 1977.
   

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