Wolverhampton Sporting Community

For most people, the association between Derby County and Pride Park was too strong to be able to easily accept calling it The iPro Stadium. Call it that we had to for a time, however, given the 10-year sponsorship deal with the sporting drinks company iPro that was signed in 2013. That was dissolved in 2016 and the ground returned to being called Pride Park Stadium. The decision to move away from the club’s former stadium, The Baseball Ground, was brought about because of two of football’s biggest tragedies: The Bradford City Stadium fire and The Hillsborough disaster. The former meant that vast portions of The Baseball Ground’s wooden components resulted in it being considered to be too big of a fire risk; whilst the latter meaning that all English football stadiums had to become all-seater. That limited Derby’s attendance to just 17,500, though that has now been increased to 33,597.