Kingfisher no longer title sponsor of East Bengal

City soccer giants East Bengal on Monday confirmed that beverage company Kingfisher will no longer remain the club's title sponsor.

The club's senior officials had held a meeting where they took the decision to remove the company as their main sponsors because they had earlier decided to slash the sponsor amount to Rs 1.5 crore.

On May 9 in a meeting with the club officials, the United Brewery (UB) Group's representatives had intimated the club that that the company will trim the sponsorship amount by almost Rs 2 crore.

Previously, the amount was Rs 3.5 crores till last season.

Addressing the media after the meeting in the club premises, club General Secretary Kalyan Majumder said: "UB group never said that they will not be sponsoring us. They have said that they will pay us a certain amount of money as sponsors of the club but as the amount is too less, we will not consider them as our title sponsors. But they will continue to be one of our co-sponsors."

Senior official Debabrata Sarkar addded, "We are trying to get a new chief sponsor as soon as possible so that the financial problem gets solved. Hopefully we will get a new sponsor soon."

East Bengal finished fourth in the I-League and runners-up in the Super Cup this season.

--IANS

dm/vd