Stoke City chief operating officer Simon King gives an insight into the process of changing the club's badge
The new Stoke City badge is in place on the side of the bet365 Stadium.
The new Stoke City badge is in place on the side of the bet365 Stadium.(Image: Pete Stonier)
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Simon King was able to call on his experience dealing with supporter backlash at Hull City to oversee a major change to a ‘heritage asset’ at Stoke City.
King was commercial director at Hull in 2013 when then owner Assem Allam told him and fans that he wanted to change the name of the club to Hull Tigers. There was uproar but Allan turned a deaf ear to fan reaction.
King had to submit a witness statement to the FA as they eventually blocked the idea – and put in place measures to protect traditions or assets including name, shirt colour and badge.
That was at the forefront of his thinking when he decided to tackle the thorny issue of potentially changing the crest at Stoke, where he has been chief operating officer since 2022.
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Stoke’s then owners had faced criticism for switching the city crest for a minimalist design in 2001 but it had subsequently been on the club’s shirts for 25 years, including a decade in the Premier League.
There were surveys, fan assemblies and a landslide vote during 18 months of consultation that actively involved more 5,000 supporters. The new design was unveiled in August last year and launched this summer – with a sense of pride for those who had directed the project.
“(Back in 2013) the owner wanted to change the name to Hull Tigers. The logic was that you’ve got Hull City, you’ve got Norwich City, you’ve got a lot of Cities, you’ve got a lot of Uniteds and the second name didn’t really symbolise anything to do with the club," said King during an extensive interview for the Stoke podcast. "By calling it Tigers it had its own identity and it would be far more marketable in Asia, where the tiger has a strong identity.
“You could see the logic but very quickly you realised that wasn’t going to be supported by the support base, who have been known as Hull City for more than 100 years. There wasn’t fan consultation on that then and that wasn’t just at Hull. Generally those things just happened because the owner wanted it to happen.
“Going forward to the crest change here, one of the things they have done from a governing body point of view with all of those different things like the situation at Hull with the name change or the change of colours that Cardiff had, there clearly had to be a level of fan consultation for what they call heritage assets before it is passed through to the FA, EFL or Premier League – and it is generally the FA that take a lead on this stuff.
New and old: the new badge will be phased in around the bet365 Stadium and Clayton Wood.
New and old: the new badge will be phased in around the bet365 Stadium and Clayton Wood.
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“We had a framework that we had to work to at the football club for the change of crest. I think we went another level up. I’ve seen a number of other clubs change their crest and they do the consultation, seek the feedback on the design and announce the new design three months later, saying, ‘Based on the consultation we had this is what you basically asked for and this is the design.’ That’s absolutely fine and they’re not doing anything wrong with that.
“We went one step further and had all the consultation meetings online and offline and gave the fans the vote about whether to pass it through. I’ve not seen that level done anywhere else, to put the decision back into he hands of supporters.
“I’m really glad that we did it that way because then going into the launch of the crest it really does have supporter backing and it makes you feel quite secure. When I saw it for the first time on the shirt it was a proud moment because you looked at it and it looked amazing on that home kit this year.
“It’s obviously gone around the stadium and around different sites but it was when I first saw it on the kit that I thought we’ve really done something brilliant here, everyone – supporters, club. It was a 12, 18-month process and we’ve got something with iconography that is synonymous with the local area.
“We always speak about wanting to create an identity for the football club and that’s on the pitch but off it as well and we’ve dipped into the past with a crest we’ve had before and modernised it to look forward. I think we’ve landed in a great place with supporters at the heart of it.”
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