Oldham Athletic

Though it may surprise some of you to learn this, the home of Oldham Athletic Association Football Club was until fairly recently, called sportsdirect.com Park. The stadium began life, however, as The Athletic Ground when it opened some time around 1896. At that time Oldham’s first ever football club, Oldham County, played there, but they folded in in 1899 and Pine Villa Football Club took over the ground. They immediately changed their name to Oldham Athletic, and the name of the ground to the one that will be more familiar to football fans everywhere: Boundary Park. The sportsdirect.com name came, unsurprisingly, from sponsorship. The sporting behemoth that is sportsdirect.com began sponsoring the ground in 2014 as part of a five year deal. The club became the 30th of the 92 teams in the Football League to accept a commercial name for their ground. It meant the end of more than 100 years of the club’s home ground being called Boundary Park, something many fans were upset by, despite the obvious positive financial implications for the club. The club needed the money, but they also listened to their fans, and four years into the deal (which had been extended) they re-negotiated with sportsdirect.com to change the name back to Boundary Park.