Jeremy Peace has revealed Albion could go another season without a main sponsor after admitting he won’t undersell the club’s most lucrative source of income.
Despite promotion as champions last season and discussions with multi-national companies Peace failed to seal a deal which matched his valuation.
Now after relegation, Albion find themselves in the same situation and face another season of brand-free blue and white striped shirts with no new developments on the horizon.
“There are no developments,” the chairman admitted.
“We have a choice, as we did last year, when we could actually sell shirt sponsorship for the commercially available amount or wait for a more strategic special partner who we would perceive paying the right amount.
“Last year we talked about international exposure, the Premier League going to 600 million homes worldwide and therefore there needed to a price for that, not just what the markets were tellings us.
“We got really close to having a company on the shirt who would have paid the right level and then the whole of the Far East fell apart so we didn’t complete that one
“Now we are back in the Championship it will be a lesser amount and are we prepared to accept that or do we wait for a strategic partnership.
“In the Championship it is much more of a commodity product, in the Premier League we would take more of a strategic look at it.
“I still think we will be very selective about who we bring in.
“There will be more clubs looking and more people who will be looking to do less commercially viable deals than we’d be willing to go into. So the odds are looking favourable that we won’t go with a sponsor this season.
“We would like to put something on there this year but we don’t want to put a name on the shirt for the name’s sake.
“Commercially that wouldn’t be a very good deal. What’s the point? You might as well be honest and say ‘there’s no money’.”