I was on the Forest Green Rovers website and I was reading the player profiles, every player had a "sponsored by" field and either a person's name or a company name was there. What is this and how does this work? Do players below the professional leagues have to be sponsored by someone for travel expenses, lodging, whatever?
Well the Conference does have a dozen full time clubs at the moment, and as a supporter of one of those professional sides, we have the same system in place. Effectively a way of raising a bit of extra money, the sort of sums involved are actually pretty low. The person sponsoring will then get some kit signed by the player at the end of the season.
I see, so this is a way for the lower division clubs to make a little extra money. So how does this work? Does the club send out a mailer, do people know someone with the club? I know that stuff sounds silly, but I'm really curious as to how it works.
Well at Halifax someone would contact the web/lottery manager who handles it (and I suspect that this would be similar at other clubs). This season however we don't actually have prices in the programme, and it seems most of the squad have their home kit fully sponsored, but not very many away kits. A couple of people also sponsor just the socks (which wouldn't be very much).