Town chief executive Simon Clegg says the club is still open to the idea of stadium sponsorship. The Blues first expressed an interest in selling the naming rights to Portman Road a decade ago with the ground coming close to becoming the TXU Stadium before the former club sponsors went into administration.
Clegg says the additional income from Portman Road being renamed after a sponsor would be more than useful as Championship clubs start to move towards a break-even model: "From my point of view, particularly in the context of Financial Fair Play, I’m never going to say never.
"I’ve got a business responsibility to explore every commercial opportunity that gets presented to this football club.
"I’m well aware what’s happened at Newcastle [who renamed St James’ Park the Sports Direct Arena] in the last year and the impact that has had on the fans, but I have a commercial responsibility to this organisation to ensure I can do whatever is right and appropriate to this club to give us a competitive advantage.
"And if that means bringing in additional commercial sponsors in whatever field it might be, including if necessary naming rights to the ground, that’s something that I have to explore.
"I’m not committing to doing it and let me assure you the budget requirement would considerably greater than individual stand sponsorships. But it’s not something I would close my mind to as a complete non-starter ever.”
He says he is yet to hold talks with any parties interested in sponsoring the stadium and would insist that any deal was for a very lengthy period: "I think in terms of naming rights for a stadium you’re looking for much longer than you might require for stand sponsorship, a big commitment.
"We need to recognise that sponsorship budgets are tight out there at the moment. A lot of money has been spent on the Olympics. A lot of large corporates have spent huge sums of money on the Olympics and things are tight out there.
"But we will continue to explore all avenues for generating additional income because it potentially provides us with a competitive advantage over some of the other 23 clubs that we’re trying to beat to get into the Premier League.”