Former Northampton Town Football Club stadium sponsor PTS Academy goes bust with £4 million debts

Company collapses with loss of 32 jobs in Moulton Park
PTS signed a five-year deal with Cobblers over naming rights to Sixfields in 2018PTS signed a five-year deal with Cobblers over naming rights to Sixfields in 2018
PTS signed a five-year deal with Cobblers over naming rights to Sixfields in 2018

Former Northampton Town stadium sponsor PTS Academy Training has gone into liquidation owing nearly £4 million.

The company bought the naming rights to Sixfields stadium for five years in 2018.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

But the deal ended this summer amid the company's uncertain financial future in the wake of the Education and Skills Funding Agency withdrawing funding for its apprenticeship schemes.

The Moulton Park firm, which employed 32 people, hoped to continue trading with a scaled-down operation.

But its list of creditors revealed debts of £70,000 to the Cobblers — where they also had a deal as back-of-shirt sponsors — a £1.5 million Covid loan from Lloyds Bank, and nearly £500,000 in tax bills.

Northampton Saints is also owed £60,000 under a deal agreed in February 2020 to make PTS the club's official training and development partner.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Liquidator Gary Pettit, of Northampton-based insolvency specialists PBC Business Recovery, said: "This has been a very, very successful company that most people would envy the level of business it achieved.

"But there have been issues with a third-party training provider.

"Legal advice was being taken over the action by ESFA to cut funding last year and there had been a long, long debate. But, basically, that's what has shut them down.

"They had hoped to carry on trading on a reduced scale but the viability just wasn't there, so they ceased trading last month."

Related topics: