OSPREYS: St Helen’s south stand to carry JCP Solicitors name for five years

The south stand at the new St Helen’s has a name before it has a crowd. JCP Solicitors will call it the JCP Solicitors Stand for the next five years under a deal announced on Wednesday.

The Swansea-headquartered firm becomes an official partner of the Ospreys in a six-figure agreement running to 2031, the club’s longest-dated commercial deal since the move from Bridgend.

Its logo goes on the sleeve of the first-team shirt this season and onto the replica shirts fans buy from 2027. In return the firm gets match tickets, business club membership, use of the ground for its own events and hospitality in what the club is calling the Aviary, its new dining space at St Helen’s.

The shirt it goes on is the kit unveiled this month: a black home jersey threaded with bronze castle motifs, and an away shirt that maps Swansea’s streets in copperworks teal. The first-team sleeve carries the JCP mark from the season opener in Durban on 26 September; the replica versions catch up next year.

Second backer in a week

The announcement comes four days after Swansea Building Society renewed its back-of-shirt sponsorship of both the Ospreys and Swansea RFC for the season, and a week after the club’s first fixture at the ground was confirmed as the Dragons on 24 October.

Hayley Davies, chief executive of JCP Solicitors, said the firm could not be prouder to support “our iconic local team”. She added that, like the residents and businesses of Swansea, Neath Port Talbot and Bridgend who had “stood beside the Ospreys during the recent period of uncertainty”, the firm wanted to show its support after “this challenging period”.

That period is not over. The Welsh Rugby Union’s three-team model starts in 2028/29 with one west Wales licence left for the Ospreys and the Scarlets to contest, and the process begins in December. A five-year sponsorship is, among other things, a bet on the outcome.

Richard Lancaster, the Ospreys’ managing director for business, said the commitment to a long-term partnership “reflects real confidence in the Ospreys, our ambitions, and our future”, and that backing from respected regional firms was vital to growing the club on and off the pitch.

Lancaster was promoted from commercial director only last month, with a brief that includes running the club’s own venue for the first time. He said then that a home of its own “creates opportunities commercially and operationally”. The stand naming is the first of those to be signed.

The ground it’s going on

The stand being named is the new one on the seafront side, part of the council’s £7.6m rebuild that also moves the existing stand to the Mumbles end and puts a fan zone at the Guildhall end, for a capacity a little under 7,000.

The club is putting £2.6m of its own money in, on a 50-year lease, and has taken on the matchday operation. The artificial pitch was laid last week.

JCP says the deal also endorses the wider redevelopment as a year-round home for Swansea RFC, schools, local clubs, Swansea University and the Ospreys’ community programmes. The council has said its funding secures community use for around 90 per cent of available hours outside major fixtures.

The firm is marking its 35th year, and framed the deal as part of that anniversary. Its Swansea office, where Wednesday’s photograph was taken with Ospreys players Lawson Creighton and Ryan Smith, is a few minutes from the ground.

Cardiff follow the Dragons to St Helen’s on 31 October. By then the stand should have its name on it.

Author

Richard Bond

Swansea-based sports journalist.
Twitter: @RichBond00
Email: RichardBond@swanseabaynews.com