GULF Air will NOT be joining Queens Park Rangers Football Club on its journey into the top flight of English football.
The national carrier and the Premiership newcomers have parted company after three controversial years, and the club is now on the hunt for a replacement shirt sponsor and commercial partner to leverage its promotion to the Premier League.
Gulf Air boss Samer Majali faced one of the most crucial commercial decisions to date in his attempt to glide Gulf Air towards profitability ... to back a renewal of the deal or walk away just as the football club steps into the global spotlight playing the likes of Emirates-backed Arsenal and Etihad-sponsored Manchester City.
Mr Majali chose the latter, as this week Gulf Air confirmed that it would not be renewing its shirt sponsorship deal. He said: “The airline has taken this decision as its current business focus is directed towards supporting more local initiatives that are not only in line with the national carrier’s corporate social responsibility objectives but also support the social and economic vision of Bahrain.”
The club is in talks with a number of prospective new sponsors about a multi-million-pound deal, sources have disclosed, with rumours of a deal set to be shortly struck with an Indian brewery giant.
A spokesman for the club also confirmed that QPR and Gulf Air have parted company. Gulf Air had been QPR’s main sponsor since signing a three-year deal in 2008, with the gulfair.com web address appearing on the team’s shirts and ground hoardings.
QPR is owned by business tycoon Lakshmi Mittal and his family, Flavio Briatore and Formula 1 chief Bernie Ecclestone. The club, which is managed by Neil Warnock, was promoted to the Premier League after winning the Championship, the second tier of English football.
The relationship between the national carrier and Rangers was originally spawned after a brief encounter at the Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix between the airline’s chief executive officer at the time, Bjorn Naf, and Flavio Briatore, then managing director of the Renault Formula One team and joint owner of QPR.
One London newspaper headline screamed: Rangers in £7 million sponsorship deal. It reported that the contract was believed to be worth £1 million a season (BD612,000) and the overall value could have risen to £7 million (BD4,283,000) depending on the club gaining promotion and staying in the Premier League.
But instead of challenging for promotion during the sponsorship contract the club mostly languished near the bottom and went through more managers than Gulf Air did CEOs before hitting the big time thanks to Arab ‘player of the season’ Adel Taarabt at the end of the deal.
During that period Briatore stepped down as chairman - although the Italian businessman and Ecclestone remain shareholders of the club - and Naf was axed and now plies his trade at Hong Kong-based business jet operator, Metrojet.
GulfWeekly predicted after the signing ceremony to expect some turbulence from the airline’s critics in Bahrain. Almost on cue, parliamentarians were featured in our sister publication, the Gulf Daily News, criticising Gulf Air’s sponsorship, which was described as pointless. “If it was a well-known and high-profile team we would have welcomed it but nobody knows them,” one said at the time.
Next season, however, could be a whole different matter but in business terms it was too late a show for Gulf Air as the airline now concentrates at winning hearts and influencing people closer to home.
