Glasgow Subway bosses have snubbed the chance to replicate a money-spinning scheme adopted by London Underground and allow tube stations to be rebranded for profit, The Herald can reveal.

It comes after Transport for London secured a sponsorship deal worth up to £2.1m over the next five years for The London cable car to be rebranded with the name of Swedish software firm IFS, following a £36 million, 10-year sponsorship deal with airline Emirates which ended in June in last year.

As well as the London cable car, TfL, which operates The London Underground, has allowed tube stations to be sponsored for almost a decade as part of efforts to raise billions of millions of pounds in non-fare revenue for investment in London’s transport infrastructure.

However, despite the scheme proving highly lucrative for TfL, Glasgow Subway bosses have confirmed they would not consider allowing for stations to be rebranded by corporate sponsors.

A spokesperson for Scottish Passenger Transport (SPT), which operates Glasgow Subway, told The Herald: “It’s important for passengers, and potential passengers, that the name and location of a station is easily recognisable. For this reason we would not consider allowing brand names to temporarily rename Subway stations.”

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Mark Ruskell MSP, Scottish Greens’ spokesperson on Environment, Climate, Energy, Transport and Culture, echoed the stance adopted by SPT and said that Scotland’s transport network is “too important” for it to be used “as a promotional vehicle for corporations”.

He told The Herald: “"There may be good reasons to make rare and short-term exceptions that can be considered on a case-by-case basis, but we should be wary of any calls to sell off station names or normalise the use of company branding on public information.

"Our transport network exists to connect our country and our communities. It must always be accessible, clear and easy to navigate. It is too important to be used as a promotional vehicle for corporations."

It follows fears that Glasgow Subway services could be permanently cut due to a Covid cash black hole, after the network suffered a 97 per cent fall in passenger journeys – in line with that which commercial bus, rail and other transport operators across Scotland had experienced. 

The unprecedented impact that COVID-19 had on travel demand led the Scottish Government to provide over £36 million in emergency funding support to Glasgow Subway and Edinburgh Trams to cover the period up to March of 2022.

Meanwhile, SPT’s annual report for 2021/2022 showed that Glasgow Subway ticket sales revenue dropped from £19.5 million in 2019/2020 to £12.6 million in 2021/2022, with total subway patronage also dropping from 13,217,000 passengers in 2019/2020 to 8,036,000 in 2021/2022.

Despite drawing criticism from RMT Union that selling the naming rights to tube stations would “undermine the public service ethos of London’s transport network”, TfL has gone on to work with the likes of Visa, the BBC, Amazon, ITV and Sony to rebrand stations since its first partnered with Buxton Water to commercially rename a Tube station for the first time back in 2015.

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In 2020, Piccadilly Circus, one of London’s most well-known tube stations, was renamed PICARDilly Circus for a 48-hour period, with themed station branding and signage placed around the station and special PA announcements, ahead of the launch of Amazon Prime Video original series Star Trek: Picard.

Meanwhile, in January last year, TfL netted £130,000 from a sponsorship contract that saw Green Park tube station rebranded ‘Green Planet’ as part of a three-day long campaign to coincide with the release of the Sir David Attenborough series of the same name, while in May, IKEA paid TfL £800,000 to secure its logos on every Tube map for a year. 

TfL said it will continue to welcome opportunities to collaborate with brands on “exciting marketing opportunities” such as via the temporary rebranding of London Underground stations.

Emma Strain, Customer Director at TfL, told The Herald: “We welcome brands to collaborate on exciting marketing opportunities, such as the temporary rebranding of stations, in ways that appropriately celebrate both organisations. 

“Since the first time a Tube station was temporarily commercially renamed back in 2015, working with Buxton Water, we have had a variety of iconic sponsorship deals with a range of brands, such as PlayStation and Pokémon. We continue to remain open to working with new brands in creative and innovative ways, with any revenue generated by these partnerships to be reinvested back into our network for the benefit of our customers.” 

Over the years, transport operators in cities such as New York, Madrid, Rome and Dubai have also struck deals to rebrand underground stations. In Dubai, the city’s Roads and Transport Authority raised £440 million by selling off naming rights to 13 underground stations in 2013, which helped the authority cover 60 per cent of its operation and maintenance costs across the entire transport network.