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Stoke City confident stadium rights deal will comply with Premier League's FFP rules

Craig Brough / Reuters

Stoke City's owner, the online betting company bet365, isn't sweating over the Premier League's Financial Fair Play rules.

After Stoke announced an initial six-year stadium naming rights agreement on Thursday that will see the Britannia Stadium named the bet365 Stadium starting next season, a spokesman for the Potters told David Conn of the Guardian: "We are comfortable we will continue to comply with FFP rules."

Related: Stoke City announces stadium will be renamed bet365 Stadium

As a result of the £8-billion television deal that will kick in for the next Premier League season and run until the 2018-19 campaign, owners must limit the money they contribute to their club in order to bankroll losses. As Conn explains, investment can't be disguised by inflated sponsorship deals, and the league therefore requires such deals to be made for a fair market value.

The seat capacity at Stoke's stadium, which replaced the Victoria Ground in 1997, will also be raised next season, as the Potters plan on redeveloping the ground by "filling in" the corner between the DPD and Marston's Pedigree Stands, creating an extra 1,800 seats and lifting the capacity to 30,000.

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