The Hill Dickinson marketing team might not want to hear it, but you struggle to imagine a parent taking their child’s hand in August and leading them to Everton’s first home game with the words ‘come on kiddo, we’re off to the Hill Dicks’.
Stadium naming rights is a tricky business. In general, one-word names tend to stick better: think Etihad, Emirates and going further back the Reebok and the JJB. All these were the names for new stadia, meaning Hill Dickinson has a chance at least of becoming the established name. Changing an existing name is much harder, as the experience of Newcastle’s Sports Direct Arena (AKA St James’ Park) testifies. Reading initial responses on social media, Hill Dickinson Stadium seems a bit wordy, and chances are that most Everton fans – although not, crucially, the media – will still call it Bramley Moore Dock, no matter what the name outside says.
Whether the name sticks or not, this is an eye-catching deal all-round. Hill Dickinson is a thriving law firm with an eye for expansion, but committing anywhere between £6m and £10m (depending on what you read) a year is a massive outlay for a business posting a profit of £57m in 2023/24.
The narrative of a Liverpool-founded firm helping to take Everton into a new era is intoxicating and the commitment to enhancing the club’s charity work is admirable. But what exactly is the firm hoping to achieve through this sponsorship tie-up? To put into a Europe-wide context, Hill Dickinson is now moving in the same circles in sponsoring a stadium as Spotify (Barcelona), Allianz (Bayern and Juventus) and Deutsche Bank (Eintracht Frankfurt) – relative corporate giants compared to a top 50 UK law firm.
Law firms may sponsor smaller local sports teams as a gesture of goodwill and community spirit, but they tend not to sponsor arenas or sporting events because they are not tapping into a mass market. Coca-Cola sponsors the Olympics because it wants to sell as much product as possible and needs to be in consumers’ minds at all times. Law firms don’t need that omnipresence and there is a limit to their potential customer base.
In general, people don’t know law firm brands. The average Joe may be able to name their local High Street firm or one they saw advertising on daytime TV, but awareness of even the highest echelons of the profession is limited. Hill Dickinson has arguably become the most famous law firm in the country overnight, but that is a low bar. Sponsoring the stadium gets the name out there, and no doubt provides fabulous opportunities for schmoozing clients on matchdays, but committing millions to the project feels like a bit of a gamble (not to mention putting off would-be clients who are Liverpool fans). It will be fascinating to see what tangible benefits it brings.
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