State drops sponsorship of British football club

Visit Florida's logo won't adorn the jerseys of the Fulham Football Club in the next season of the British Championship league.

The London-based team, owned by Naples resident and Jacksonville Jaguar's owner Shahid "Shad" Khan, announced that grosvenorcasinos.com will take over as the team's main sponsor for the next two years.

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The deal was announced Wednesday in advance of the club's pre-season home match this Saturday.

Officials with Visit Florida --- the football club's main sponsor for the past two seasons --- did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday afternoon.

The deal with Florida's tourism agency, worth $1.25 million for the second-tier club in the prior season, was a critical component in state House leadership's criticism of Visit Florida's spending.

The tourism agency also was hammered for sponsoring an auto racing team --- a deal recently ended --- and a $1 million contract with Miami rapper Pitbull, hired to highlight the state.

The Pitbull deal prompted Gov. Rick Scott in December to force the state's tourism-marketing leader, Will Seccombe, to resign.

Seccombe stepped down shortly after two other agency officials had their positions eliminated without any public explanation.

One of those Visit Florida officials, former chief marketing officer Paul Phipps, oversaw the Fulham contracts.

The contracts were part of a wider strategy by Visit Florida to draw more visitors from the United Kingdom, purportedly one of Florida's largest international markets.


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