Sunderland have unveiled a new club crest, creating history with a striking one-off design that makes a strident show of their environmental credentials.
In a first in world football, the Black Cats have revived their iconic ship badge from 30 years ago but added rising sea water over the word Sunderland to drive home the “urgency” around climate change. It is part of Green Football’s Great Save initiative.
Sunderland’s chief business officer David Bruce told The i Paper the club had not taken the decision to tinker with the “iconic” club crest lightly.
“This is something we’re really, really serious about – a football club can’t just be known for playing football,” he says.
“It has to be known for the work that it does in the community, how it unites audiences and how it takes advantage of its elevated role in society and that’s what this is about.
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“No club has done something like this before but this is about much more than a piece of marketing buzz. Of course we want to get people talking about it but it’s authentic and as a club we’re deadly serious about it. This is not a ‘one and done’ thing.”
Sunderland’s kit makers Hummel have commissioned shirts embroided with the new badge for Saturday’s crunch promotion clash at Coventry. After that they will be auctioned, with the money raised going to local environmental charities.
We should expect nothing less from the Championship’s disruptors-in-chief. A club prepared to be bold in its recruitment – and rewarded for their daring with a fine young team in the thick of a promotion push – is equally forthright about doing the right things for their local community.
The club’s green credentials are flawless: among them a solar farm being planned for the training ground, shirts made from recycled plastic and the fact 50 per cent of their energy comes from renewable sources. The badge re-design wants to draw attention to that.
“The point we’re making is: if we don’t make the right choices we’re going to be in a tough spot here,” he says.
“We’re a coastal club, sitting by the ocean so if we don’t make good conscious choices and are smart about how we operate we run the risk of this city that we love being underwater or, at the very least, water slowly creeping into places we enjoy.”
Sunderland are in the midst of a promotion push (Photo: PA)Sunderland sit fourth in the Championship and this week released their latest annual accounts that showed an £8.6m loss. Despite some missteps there is a feeling at the Stadium of Light that the club is moving in the right direction under the ownership of Kyril Louis-Dreyfus.
It falls to Bruce, the most senior non-football executive at the club, to drive revenues to support their bid to return to English football’s top table.
“Sustainability isn’t just about the environment, it’s financial as well and we’ve gone on the record as saying we want to be run sustainably,” he says.
“It’s really hard to do that in the modern game but we’re trying to do that, we’re trying to drive revenues but we know we’ve got a long way to go.
“Even in the Championship – taking the Premier League aside because it’s well documented what happens to your revenue when you go into the Premier League – we’ve got a long way to go.
“We’re trying to be smart with our costs, like every club has to be, and we’ve got a trading model in place.
“When you think about our players, look at Jack Clarke and Ross Stewart, they’re transfers that show you bring people in for a price, sell them on but Jack left and we’ve got a ready-made replacement in Romaine Mundle and Tommy Watson. You’ve got the next generation as a fan, the next generation to be excited about.
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Read More“That’s a model football has to adopt. It doesn’t matter whether you’re Manchester United, Chelsea or you’re Sunderland in the Championship.
“Overall the numbers are going in the right direction and when we look around at our peers in the Championship we’re reasonably sustainable as it relates to the economics that underpin how we run the football club.
“We want to continue along that path for as long as we can.”
Would the club be ready for the Premier League if promoted? Bruce feels it would be.
“I think that on and off the pitch we’re trying to build a world class organisation,” he says.
“The Championship is a phenomenal league and fantastic product but if you’re in football you want to be in the top flight, which is where all the opportunities come.
“We want to build a world class organisation that does things slightly differently on and off the pitch. From a mindset point of view we’re there.
“There’s a lot to do if you get to the Premier League but we feel like we know what those things are and we’d be ready to turn them on quickly when that time happens, which is hopefully sooner rather than later.”
Sunderland are part of Green Football’s Great Save initiative, which runs to April 2. An estimated 100,000 tonnes of sportswear end up in landfill and fans are being urged to pass on, sell or reuse their kit. To find out how visit www.greenfootball.org
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