Hill Dickinson Stadium will see its first Premier League action against Brighton & Hive Albion on Sunday
Everton will play their first competitive match at the Hill Dickinson Stadium this weekend
Everton will play their first competitive match at the Hill Dickinson Stadium this weekend
(Image: Andrew Teebay Liverpool Echo)
When Everton started their search for a stadium naming rights partner three years ago for their new home, they sought out help. The club brought on board US firm Elevate Sports Ventures to support the work that was being done by the club’s commercial team.
With the 52,888-seater stadium on the horizon on the banks of the River Mersey requiring a partner for the lucrative stadium naming rights after the option to have former club partner, Russian holdings firm USM, was removed from the table after they had paid to have first refusal on the rights. That never materialised following UK Government sanctions on Russian business following Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine.
For a new, iconic venue in one of the UK’s most vibrant and populous cities, the net was cast far and wide for a potential partner. Back in May it was confirmed that Liverpool-based global legal firm Hill Dickinson would take the naming rights on a multi-year deal, the Toffees’ home to be known as Hill Dickinson Stadium.
But how did Everton land on a UK legal firm, a Premier League first, when it came to securing a stadium naming rights partner?
Everton wanted a company that aligned with the values of the club but who had a global appeal and reach. On the side of the naming rights partner, the importance of being able to effectively activate on a partnership through venue sponsorship was crucial.
“We started seeing in our data that brands with a local interest or who had something very important to them in Liverpool or the Northwest were sustaining the conversation a bit longer, they were more interested,” Paul Kahkia, Elevate’s vice-president of strategy and insight told SportsPro.
“We saw that in all the metrics that we were seeing, so we doubled down on that. And that’s when category became a bit less important, because there was a lot of interest coming from the locality, the region.”
Everton and Elevate’s focus on narrowing down the list of options to ones that would tick the correct boxes saw Hill Dickinson, a legal firm whose Liverpool roots date back to the company’s founding in the city in 1810, come into the picture during the midway point of last year. Having made some £57m in operating profit for 2024, the company had the ability to engage on a naming rights deal and the agreement gathered pace, with Hill Dickinson representatives visiting the stadium back in January. That was shortly after Everton had been taken under new ownership with the completion of The Friedkin Group takeover in December of 2024.
“There was this realisation that this is a new era,” Jonathan Patterson, senior director of partnerships at Elevate told SportsPro.
“New ownership, new possibilities for the club, but also for Liverpool as a place for attracting the Ed Sheeran concerts, the Taylor Swift concerts, rugby league, obviously the Euros in 2028, and the full regeneration of the waterfront.”
Other brands had been in the mix throughout the process, but it was felt that Hill Dickinson was the most natural fit.
There was also the desire to ensure a deal was wrapped up before the start of the season so as to avoid a Tottenham Hotspur scenario, where no rights have yet been secured since the 2019 opening and the ‘Tottenham Hotspur Stadium’ name remains something of a placeholder.
The first set of naming rights for new stadiums are the most important. It is where familiarisation starts and where fans become connected with the brand and the name, something that can often last beyond the deal itself.
“It’s universally understood in this game of doing naming rights that [the stadium name] has to be there when people go to their first matchday and start building those rituals and habits again,” Patterson told SportsPro.
“I think it was extremely important that for the very first matchday that people walk in, they’re calling it by the name that it’s intended to be, because then it’s much less of a shock to the system of changing again.
“That’s why the value compounds year on year. It just becomes more ingrained and more steeped in history.”