FC Groningen is facing a financial loss of one million euros. Photo: Cor Lasker
There is a risk of a financial loss of one million euros for FC Groningen. Main sponsor Office Centre, which has been on the shirts of the northern football pride since the 2019-2020 season, is in trouble.
The office supply chain appears to be no longer able to meet its obligations. The company has already had several outstanding accounts with FC Groningen over a longer period of time. In fact, no payment has been received at all for the month of January.
The problems at Office Center are said to have been caused by the corona crisis. The company is now in a process whereby it tries to reach a settlement with the creditors, including FC Groningen, through the intervention of the court. The Eredivisionist threatens to go into the ship for a million euros.
FC Groningen concluded an indefinite contract with Office Center in September 2020. That was unique in football at the time. The then director Frans Davelaar felt completely at home in the North. A year later, Office Center was taken over by an investment company, Standard Investment, and the contract, which still contained an escape clause, was immediately terminated. Davelaar also disappeared from the scene. It meant that FC Groningen would have to have a new main sponsor in any case by 2023-2024. It was agreed that if FC Groningen found a new lender sooner, the contract could be terminated early. The new Office Center CEO, Marc-Derek Schönberger, emphasized at the time of the acquisition that the main sponsorship up to that point had fully lived up to expectations and had proved to be of great value to the company’s growth. For that reason, Office Center also announced that it would remain associated with FC Groningen as a significant partner, but no longer as the main sponsor.
The current problems seem to speed up the process of looking for a new main sponsor, although a lender of that size is not readily available. In a response, general manager Wouter Gudde deeply regrets the situation that has arisen. “This is very annoying and worrying,” the policymaker said. “Both for FC Groningen and for Office Center and its employees. We can now only await the progress and the results of the process initiated by Office Centre. That creates a very uncertain situation. We can’t say more about it or go into more detail at the moment. We need to refer to Office Center for that.”