The Toughsheet Stadium

I've spent a bit of time on my Toughsheet spreadsheet, Sluffy.  Its quite interesting from an analytical point of view and I could spend more time to fill in a few gaps but I don't think its worth it.

My conclusions confirm that this is a local business that's consistently been doing well with an owner that wants to do something for the club and the community whilst also promoting the company name  to a bigger audience.

From the figures speculated on t'internet it is quite a big commitment for Toughsheet as a business. The company had a bumper year in 2019/20 for some reason but, if you discount that, the pre-tax profits haven't been too variable averaging about £1.7m.p.a. over the last six years. £500K to £750K p.a. out of that is a lot of money.

Anyway, good luck to them.

A bit of the background story from the company point of view - good reading too!

Bolton Wanderers new stadium sponsors Toughsheet announced

Billed as the most lucrative naming rights deal in the club’s history, the ‘TS Community Stadium’ will come into operation at the end of this season, following the expiry of the current arrangement with the University of Bolton.

Toughsheet are the largest dampproof membrane manufacturers in the UK and have received national and international recognition for their work in plastic and waste recycling.

Now employing more than 70 staff at their site at Chequerbent Works – also the largest plastic recycling facility in the country – Toughsheet believe the link with an upwardly-mobile Wanderers can help them become a nationally recognised brand.

“We are really looking forward to it,” said managing director, Doug Mercer, who has followed the club’s fortunes all his life.

“We did a lot of sponsorship with Wanderers in the 2000s but, to be truthful, about the time of Dean Holdsworth and Ken Anderson I’d just become disillusioned with football, never-mind Bolton. I switched off completely.

“I’d kept an eye on it from afar and when Sharon Brittan and Co came in I just thought ‘here we go, another who’ll milk it and run it into the ground’ but almost immediately I like what she was doing. She was trying to put it on a sound footing.

“When she banned gambling at the stadium, I liked that. It was one of my pet hates and it showed they had a bit of ethics. I’d had so many friends in the past who’d had addictions and it caused so many problems.

“So, we started watching the way they were running it. Things were being done properly and she won’t let it get into financial difficulty, like 80 per cent of other clubs are at the moment.

“I kept my eye out and then heard the stadium name was coming up. I wanted to have a go at it because, as a company, we need name recognition. There is a double bonus in supporting the club and getting our brand out there to the rest of the country and world, really.

“It is a multi-million pound deal and it is one we are really proud to do.”

Mr Mercer is well aware that the company’s risqué name might raise a few eyebrows across the fanbase and in the footballing world in general.

“I’ve said to Sharon, we’re happy to have a bit of fun with it,” he said. “Obviously the brand name is a bit tongue-in-cheek, a bit schoolboy humour.

“But I can’t wait to see them try and make each other say it on Sky Sports, it’ll be a great laugh!”

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Bolton Wanderers new sponsor Dougie Mercer on the signing

The man behind a multi-million pound stadium sponsorship deal at Bolton Wanderers has revealed a poignant reason for forging links with the club.

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Doug Mercer, managing director of Westhoughton recycling firm Toughsheet, said his late wife Bernie’s dedication to her beloved Wanderers inspired him to invest a record sum into putting his company’s name on its front door.

Officially branded the TS Community Stadium, the link-up enabled him to pay a tribute, seven years after she passed away.

“I have probably been a Bolton fan all my life – but I didn’t know what a Bolton fan was before I’d met my first wife, Bernadette, who would be the mother of my two daughters,” he told The Bolton News.

“She was absolutely besotted. She loved everything about Bolton Wanderers.

“She died of breast cancer but literally still going to games three weeks before she passed away, on crutches, on medication, she just adored the place.

“This is all a little memorial to her because she would have been chuffed to bits to see us doing this.

“It was ridiculous how much she loved the club. Even I’d be jealous sometimes, I felt like a second-class citizen!”

Mercer is a well-known figure in the Bolton community and his company have been involved with The Bolton News’ own business awards for several years.

“I have always tried to help local charities whenever I can, and I’m an ambassador for the Destitute Animal Shelter and am raising quite a lot of money for them at the moment. We are also donors to Bolton Hospice,” he said.

“I like to concentrate on the more local causes because I do think there is more wastage when you look at some of the bigger national ones. I can keep my eye on how they are going on.

“That’s part of getting on board with Bolton Wanderers as well, they are doing things the right way and it feels like a community club again.”

Toughsheet hope the partnership with Wanderers can help promote their brand both in the UK and further afield.

Mercer recently returned from a holiday in Florida and was taken aback with how many Boltonians he bumped into.

“You don’t realise sometimes how famous that brand is, and how many people over there still follow the club from miles away.

“All the history, Lofthouse, Big Sam, people remember it, they are mad and stay up into the middle of the night watching Wanderers.

“For the company, I want to try and tap into that and get our own brand out there and being talked about because the club is going well and it is an exciting time to be involved.”

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Is anger over Bolton Wanderers' stadium name change misplaced?

DOES the name above the door really matter? Well, yes, to some is certainly does.

News of a new stadium sponsor was pushed out by the club late on Sunday morning, ensuring there would be only one topic of conversation among Wanderers fans over lunch, or a late weekend pint.

According to the club’s official communique, the offer of naming the stadium had been taken to more than 400 companies by leading sports agency SGI, with around 20 expressing further interest. And, in the end, the honour fell to an organisation just one junction down the M61

Toughsheet have been one of Bolton’s real business success stories of recent years. Along with some pioneering work on plastic and waste recycling they have established themselves as the UK’s leading provider of dampsheet membranes – a product used in near-enough every building which lays a concrete floor.

That expansion has led to some seriously impressive figures. The workforce has been expanded to more than 80, and in 2021 Toughsheet’s profits were among the 100 fastest growing in the country, according to the Sunday Times.

Recycled building products may not be as sexy as, say, a major clothing and leisure brand which also had roots in Bolton, but its upward curve should nevertheless a source of some local pride.

But let’s address the elephant in the room. Toughsheet is a name to conjure with, especially in the banter-driven world of football fandom. It isn’t lost on the company itself – and owner Dougi Mercer is delighted by the idea of Jeff Stelling, Gary Lineker, Gary Neville or Jack Dearden trying to wraps their lips around it on a regular basis.

They want their name to be recognised nationally. And Toughsheet had the financial wherewithal to make that happen – the club underlining that this deal eclipsed even the money shelled out by Reebok over the course of seventeen years between 1997 and 2014.

To some supporters, however, the schoolboy humour of it all has been difficult to accept. There has been some blow-back on social media, some ridicule nationally, and it would not have been unexpected.

“We know people are going to take the mickey a bit,” Mr Mercer told us last week. “But we’re OK with that. We want to have a bit of fun and help the club at the same time.”

Like Macron and the University of Bolton, Toughsheet will have a battle on their hands just to get themselves recognised above the original sponsor, Reebok, in some of the older fans’ eyes.

An inevitable by-product of opening a stadium complete with a corporate link, the sportswear firm lingered long after combining with Adidas and swearing off football altogether – albeit a decision they have since altered.

Then there is the problem of shorthand. The University of Bolton Stadium very quickly morphed into the UniBol for some, not least space-restricted headlines writers.

There will be a natural consensus on the new stadium name too. Whilst the ‘Toughsheet Stadium’ may have been a jarring thought at first, the Toughsheet Community Stadium softens it further, and the TS Community Stadium rolls off the tongue quite well.

There was also the matter of a backstory – both in the company’s local history, its owner’s relationship with the club, and also the tragic passing of his late wife, Bernadette, which led to the decision to take the plunge and become the stadium sponsor.

Once the story was explained without the dispassionate corporate speak and jargon which so often accompanies these official announcements, some supporters changed their mind, or at least became more accepting of the new name. Others may take some time.

Wanderers supporters tend to do self-depreciation well. If any fanbase can ride the rollercoaster they have over the past decade and still be smiling, then surely the odd risible link on Soccer Saturday won’t necessarily be a major problem?

As with any club, fans tend to be happy when their team is winning on the pitch. Should Ian Evatt’s side book a Papa Johns Trophy final at Wembley by beating Accrington Stanley on Wednesday night, then the agenda will change once more.

And if they don’t? Well, Wanderers had better work even harder to make sure the Toughsheet Stadium is playing host to Championship football next season.

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Ten Bobsworth wrote:I've spent a bit of time on my Toughsheet spreadsheet, Sluffy.  Its quite interesting from an analytical point of view and I could spend more time to fill in a few gaps but I don't think its worth it.

My conclusions confirm that this is a local business that's consistently been doing well with an owner that wants to do something for the club and the community whilst also promoting the company name  to a bigger audience.

From the figures speculated on t'internet it is quite a big commitment for Toughsheet as a business. The company had a bumper year in 2019/20 for some reason but, if you discount that, the pre-tax profits haven't been too variable averaging about £1.7m.p.a. over the last six years. £500K to £750K p.a. out of that is a lot of money.

Anyway, good luck to them.

Thanks Bob.

We don't actually know what the amount of the sponsorship is do we?

As far as I'm aware (maybe I'm wrong?) sponsorship income is not shown as a specific item on the clubs accounts, so we don't actually know what we've revived in previous years - and so don't know what Toughsheet (I'll use TS for quickness from now on) must be paying to 'top' the highest amount paid previously?

It's only hearsay I know but the Reebok sponsorship amount was apparently peanuts in so much as the club was more interested in being linked to a world renowned brand than than the sponsorship money it brought in, and Reebok was happy to use the stadium as its HQ - hence the offer of sponsorship from them - a sort of mutual benefit rather than optimising income.

Iirc correctly the 'payday' loan company, Quick Quid, that we had signed up, until the likes of those who went on to found the ST kicked off about it such as Andy Walton, was about to pay us £500k pa, but that deal collapse because of the ST type like kickback and we ended up with Bolton Uni (that car deal, FibrLec iirc?) instead, for virtually peanut sponsorship.

I don't happen to think TS sponsorship may actually be anything like as much as £500k pa but hopefully for all concerned I do hope it is (and more!).

If it is though I would suspect that Dougi may well dip into his own pocket to finance it in someway or other (maybe something like loaning it to TS to pay to BWFC, then not claim back his loan from TS).

Until we actually see the amount specifically specified by either TS or BWFC we can only speculate on the amount and the headline 'biggest sponsorship deal in the clubs history' may well be true factually but still may not be a huge amount if the bar was set low in the first place.

Thanks Sluffy.

We don't know the amount, as you say, but I am willing to believe that it is significant to both the club and Toughsheet. I don't expect Dougi to fund it personally; the payments should be tax-deductible for the company which would save it 25% if the threatened increase in corporation tax takes place.

I expect you will have noticed that the Beeno managed to squeeze something about Ken Anderson into its article. It never fails on that account to perpetuate the myths, though its entirely possible that Dougi, in common with most Bolton supporters, has been an unknowing victim of Beeno BS over a long period of time.


'The workforce has been expanded to more than 80, and in 2021 Toughsheet’s profits were among the 100 fastest growing in the country, according to the Sunday Times. says the Beeno.

That's not what the audited accounts say.  They say that turnover dropped by 40% in 2021 and pre-tax profits by at least 75% compared to the previous year. The reality is that TS had a bumper year in 2019/20 (probably for special reasons outside of its control) before dropping back to previous levels of turnover and profit over the next two years.

Nonetheless it seems to be a very good business with an excellent return on capital employed. As you previously pointed out, TS has recently made a big investment in new plant and machinery which I'm sure they hope will lead to increased productivity and profitability. It may already be paying its way.

The stadium sponsorship still seems to me to be a bold move by Dougi. I sincerely hope it all works out well for him.

Just for clarity Bob, I was suggesting that Dougi may fund a loan to TS from his personal wealth, who then in turn provides the sponsorship money to FV, and so the money would be tax-deductible as you say.

Tbh I never considered the tax aspect (my public service background largely means that tax is not charged on services provided by the organisations I served in and claimed back on the services provided to us) but rather the legality and audit trail - if TS Ltd is sponsoring the stadium then surely the contract between the club is with TS Ltd and not Dougi himself, and if TS Ltd struggles to financially fulfil its contractual obligation that TS find the money from elsewhere to meet its obligations.

I would have thought TS would have had a sponsorship budget it could afford to pay from its future financial trading budget forecasts and thus speculated (by looking at their previous annual profits) that an additional amount of annual sponsorship (in excess of what advertising/sponsorships they may be already doing) of £500k to £750k pa (that I have seen speculated at from elsewhere other than here) seem to be a massive increase in burden for a company with profits of the last two years averaging say around £1.5m pa.

I've always been led to believe that sponsorship received by BWFC has never really been that financially fruitful over the years and if correct the 'highest sponsorship' hurdle the club as ever received may actually not be as high as many may think.

I'm not familiar as to how private industrial companies would calculate their advertising/sponsorship budgets but I would think few would set them higher than say 10% of average annual company profit, so working on that basis I would expect TS to afford to pay at most around £150k pa (probably much less in reality).

Maybe that's enough in itself to be the highest stadium sponsorship the club has had (I don't know?) but assuming it isn't, then I was suggesting Dougi would fund the shortfall from his pocket to BWFC via TS.

Maybe I'm wrong, perhaps I am, but this was my line of thinking.

The bottom line though is that the club is happy with the amount of money it is receiving and TS/Dougi are happy enough to pay it.

When i first read this i was horrified, the Tough Shit stadium is what everyone will call it. After reading the back story to the company i feel a bit better and it is a sizeable amount of money.

Its already created a lot of publicity for the company so it's done its job for them already, just don't expect me to be happy with the new name. I suppose it could have been worse, the Boo Hoo Stadium foe example.