RCD Mallorca’s home stadium will now be known as the Estadi Mallorca Son Moix after the LaLiga football club agreed a new sponsorship agreement with the Consell de Mallorca.
The ground had previously been known as the Visit Mallorca Estadi through an agreement with the island’s tourism board, but the club announced in August that this deal would be scrapped amid concerns about over-promotion of the province.
The new deal agreed by the club and the council will run for the duration of the 2022-23 season. The council had previously agreed to honour its share of the €1.5m (£1.3m/$1.6m) deal that saw Visit Mallorca hold naming rights to the stadium, and the new agreement will be worth a maximum of €1.815m.
The stadium had been known as the Visit Mallorca Estadi for the past two seasons, with RCD Mallorca having originally donated the rights in June 2020 as a means to help the island’s tourism economy recover from the impact of COVID-19.
In August, the club agreed a one-season extension to its deal with the Mallorca Tourism Foundation (FMT), through which it would receive a fee for promoting the island as a sports destination. However, this was shelved after opposition from one of the three parties that comprise the province’s ruling administration.
The terms of the new deal between the club and the council state that ‘Mallorca’ will be prominently highlighted in the branding of the stadium.
Alfonso Díaz, RCD Mallorca’s chief business officer, said: “It is a great pride to be the entity that leads this sports promotion and these socio-cultural values and to have these roots in Mallorca.
“This agreement will help this 106-year-old club to be even more deeply rooted in its island, its people, its values and the great fans we have. The reality is that RCD Mallorca is the largest entity in terms of impact, scope and repercussion at a sporting level – I think it is a great tool to transmit all those values.”
Catalina Cladera, president of the Consell de Mallorca, added: “The institutional messages that we want will be made, taking advantage of the platform that RCD Mallorca represents within the league and in all the areas in which it is present. It is a pioneering agreement that represents a qualitative leap for Mallorca.”
It was reported last week that RCD Mallorca is preparing a capital increase of €15m to support the redevelopment of the stadium.
The club was given the go-ahead to revamp the stadium back in April after initially presenting plans in January. The venue opened in 1999 and RCD Mallorca feels the stadium must evolve and adapt to “changing times”.
