Plans are afoot to make Watford FC a household word all over the world. Negotiations are well advanced to link the club and their superstar chairman Elton John to a worldwide advertising campaign with the football club collecting the proceeds.

Plans for the £250,000 deal are so far advanced the Hornets are calling in architects and surveyors to design a substantial social-and-sports complex and their Vicarage Road ground. The complex, which it is hoped will be completed in the 1978-79 season, will contain a banqueting hall, gymnasium and “a magnificent social club”.

Elton John, playing his cards close to his chest, declined to reveal the nature of the massive sponsorship scheme but his manager and fellow Watford director John Reid has made several flights to the United States in relation to the deal.

“I have always dreamed of a large social club at Watford. It won’t be a scanty social club. It will be magnificent,” said the Watford chairman.

And the deal, believed to be with universal firms, could produce further revenue for the club, if the Football League give the go-ahead to playing shirt endorsements.

The potential is such that Watford are already looking into the possibility of bringing their floodlighting up to the standard required for colour television coverage.

[From the Watford Observer of April 22, 1977]

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