SoS in ATFV

Many things have changed over the last 18 months as we’ve adjusted to a post Covid world. It almost feels like another lifetime since we played to full crowds and it’s been a welcome relief that we can now return to attending matches again after so long. 

But we will no longer be going to the place we have affectionately known as the Liberty anymore. It’s now being called the amazingly strange Swansea.com Stadium. 

The stadium naming rights had been up in the air for a while, and it was often speculated once the club held the lease on the stadium that they’d be looking for a new title sponsor. 

Relegation from the top flight wouldn’t have helped on that front, but considering the lease deal was done in November 2017 it’s surprising it’s taken this long for this change to happen. 

This isn’t the first time the naming rights for our home since 2005 have changed. Originally it was to be known as “White Rock” after the nearby copper works which was a good, original moniker. But this was dropped as it was believed that the stadium name needed to be “clean” in order to have a better chance of attracting sponsors.  

By the time our new home was ready though, there was still no title sponsor, so the farcical “The New Stadium, Swansea” was temporarily adopted for the first few games of the season. It took until October of that year for Liberty to sign the deal for an initial five years for £500,000.  

It took time but the name eventually stuck, and for the last sixteen years the majority of people have referred to it as “the Liberty”.  

In truth I’d be very surprised now if that name doesn’t stick for the foreseeable. Once grounds have a name, that tends to be it. Remember Mike Ashley calling the home of Newcastle the “Sports Direct Arena”? There was no way that was going to stick. Yes officially on programmes like Match of the Day and in the media it may have been referred to by that name. But everyone else was still calling it St James Park.