There is little common ground between Linacre College, a small seat of postgraduate learning in Oxford, and Arsenal, a football club based in north London.
But both turn out to be highly marketable brands. Arsenal sold the naming rights on its stadium to Emirates as part of an initial 15-year deal in 2004, initially worth £100m. Now little Linacre College, named for a Renaissance physician and humanist, is selling its naming rights to a Vietnamese budget airline tycoon for £155m.
There is of course a big difference. Emirates Airlines’ naming rights are a cost of doing business; overall sales and marketing in the pre-pandemic year accounted for 6 per cent of total costs. Linacre — or Thao College, assuming the agreement goes ahead — will receive a “philanthropy donation”.
These generally carry tax benefits. Linacre is still ironing out the mechanics of the funding, which is to come from Sovico group, Vietnam’s aviation-to-finance conglomerate chaired by Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao. But non-resident companies within the UK corporation tax regime — trading through a branch, for instance — can claim gift aid.
In both the UK and US, tax concessions accrue only when there is no benefit to the donor. But both jurisdictions are coy on the status of naming rights. Linda Sugin, professor of law at Fordham University in the US, recalls no cases where the Internal Revenue Service reduced the deduction by the value of these rights. The UK requirement that they be “unsolicited and not expected” is hardly watertight.
Naming rights can be a liability for the institution. Buildings have a habit of hanging around. Lincoln Center discovered the cost when it was obliged to hand over $15m to heirs after renaming Fisher Avery Hall.
Or look at some of the legacies of the Sackler family, benefactors who fell into disgrace for their role in fuelling America’s opioid epidemic. London’s National Portrait Gallery and the trust were able to “jointly agree” to nix a £1m largesse but King’s College, London, recipient of £7m, is still home to the Sackler Institute for Translational Neurodevelopment.
The US and Asia lead the way for naming rights in education; Hong Kong University’s campus buildings are a veritable Who’s Who of tycoons. But Britain is rapidly catching up, not least in Oxford where the Saïd Business School is packed with named rooms and chairs. Graduates of the latter, which specialises in socially responsible investment, might advise their crosstown peers at Linacre on the value of thorough due diligence before signing off.