This is Canary Wharf, sorry Kaneary Wharf, the latest in a long line of rebranded tube stations.
The name change was only supposed to be up for a few days but then England performed better than expected so it lingered until Sunday. As a reference to England captain Harry Kane it's a bit contrived, but no station name provided the same open goal that (Gareth) Southgate offered in 2018.
It's a lacklustre takeover, solely affecting the two enormous roundels in the middle of the platform, also two scruffy vinyls in the upper concourse designed to be seen by those coming down the escalators. "Minimal effort maximum exposure" is the general mantra these days, all the better to avoid people moaning about inaccessible navigation.
Another London station got a World Cup-related makeover last week and that's Bellingham, renamed by Thameslink as Jude Bellingham. But that was just a bit of fun whereas Kaneary Wharf is a sponsored takeover, not a patriotic cheer. The footwear company endorsed by Harry Kane has paid TfL a chunky fee to slap a pair of football boots on the roundels in an attempt to get additional publicity, and paid several hundred thousand pounds for the privilege.
I thought I'd dig back into the history of sponsored tube stations to see how we got from "I don’t think it’s right to sell off Tube stations" to "This activation is a great example of how TfL can work with brands". [a lot of the backstory is clickable]
It's often said that Arsenal football club were the first company to shoehorn their name onto the tube map. In 1932 legendary manager Herbert Chapman decided it would be excellent publicity for his club if Gillespie Road station were renamed, his timing perfect as the Piccadilly line was just being extended into the suburbs. Months of lobbying were eventually successful, the name initially being tweaked to Arsenal (Highbury Hill) and then in the 1960s to pure Arsenal. But Chapman never paid a penny for the change, agreeing instead to an option whereby old stocks of tickets would continue to be used until they ran out, hence I don't think we can truly call Arsenal a sponsored station.
Let's start instead in February 2006 when the internet was suddenly agog at the concept of The Sponsored Tube Map. This was compiled by blog reader Paul (Hi Paul!) and replaced the name of every tube station with a sponsored alternative. Top class puns included Seven-up Sisters, Harpiccadilly circus, Sarson's Green, Aldigate, Perriervale, NatWestminster, iPoddington and Heinz Park Corner. How the blogosphere laughed. Paul had actually been inspired bya post I wrote a month earlier but I'd hate you to think any of this is my fault. Alas once the map went viral TfL got terribly litigigious and it had to be taken down.
On the July 2007 tube map the name of North Greenwich station changed to "North Greenwich for the O2". This wasn't direct sponsorship but acknowledged that O2 had bought the naming rights to the Millennium Dome, and remained on the tube map until May 2013.
In 2011 Australian wine company Oxford Landing gave it a go. They spent months negotiating with TfL to replace every sign at Oxford Circus to say Oxford Landing instead, also to flood the station with adverts. They say TfL were interested but insisted on a ten-year term with an eight-figure pricetag, citing roundel-related copyright reasons. TfL have confirmed that informal talks took place but denied the wine maker would have been allowed to re-brand everything, this because revenue-raising "does not extend to selling the names of our stations."
TfL signed their first name-related deal in2012, not for a station but for an entirely new mode of transport. Emirates sponsored the Dangleway to the tune of £36m including a chance to name not just the service but also the terminals at each end. Emirates North Greenwich and Emirates Royal Docks were unnecessary mouthfuls but deemed acceptable for the cash they raised. A door had been opened.
In2013 the Conservatives on the Greater London Assembly published a report called 'Untapped Resource: Bearing Down On Fares Through Sponsorship'. They claimed the vast majority of the public were in favour of bearing down on fares by selling off naming rights to stations, bus routes, even entire tube lines. They recommended long-term deals (because they're more valuable) and location specific changes (e.g. 'Knightsbridge, home of Harrods' or 'Virgin Euston'), particularly with respect to forthcoming extensions. In response TfL took the moral high ground and ruled it out.
Graeme Craig, TfL’s commercial development director, said: "This report is well-intentioned but I don’t think it’s right to sell off Tube stations to someone waving a cheque book and offering a bad pun. A Tube map is to show people where a station is and renaming would bring about confusion, especially among the 30 million visitors on the network every year. The mayor has in the past ruled out the renaming of stations, largely due to the cost of changing the thousands of signs and maps across the network."
In April 2015 TfL embraced their first sponsored station as Canada Water became Buxton Water on the day of the London Marathon. Every roundel on the Jubilee line and Overground platforms was renamed, tiny bottles of water were dished out in the ticket hall and a regular announcement namechecked the sponsor five times in less than thirty seconds. Nestle stumped up £110,000 for the one-day switcheroo, which TfL claimed was "part of its wider commercial plans to generate £3.4bn in non-fare revenue over the next decade". Buxton Water made a 0.003% contribution to that goal.
And on it went...
• January 2017: Amazon Web Services spent a perhaps excessive £390,000 for the right to "temporarily change internal signage referring to the station name at Westminster Underground Station to “Webminster”, to be visible during operational hours on Thursday 12th January only." This included 43 roundels, 29 line diagrams, 6 wayfinding entrance signs and 60 platform frieze illuminated panels. The general public were duly underwhelmed.
• July 2018: In an extremely memorable takeover Southgate station was renamed Gareth Southgate following England's World Cup almost-triumph. Eight roundels on each platform got the special treatment, and because this was a zone 4 station the price of a 48-hour takeover was only £80,000. What far fewer people remember is that the campaign was sponsored by Visa, so not much credit there.
• October 2019: Disney paid £105,000 for a week of activation activities at King's Cross St Pancras. This included the right to stick a bar across every roundel saying "Lion King's Cross".
• January 2020: In one of the most creative rebrands, Piccadilly Circus was renamed Picard-dilly Circus to promote a new Star Trek-themed TV series. Amazon Prime paid £250,000 for two days, which as well as including 24 platform roundels also covered the right for "up to 6 promotional staff to roam the station and interact with TfL customers".
• October 2020: O2 paid £400,000 for a three week campaign to promote new 4G connections on the Jubilee line. Seven stations each got a couple of rebranded roundels and a 2m square activation space in the ticket hall. They were lucky to get in just before Boris ordered a second lockdown, but I still suspect customer footfall was inefficiently low.
• November 2020: In possibly the best rebranding yet, four roundels outside Oxford Circus station were replaced by colourful symbols to promote the launch of the PlayStation 5. Sony paid £280,000 for two days, for which they also got to add "30 vinyl based symbol installations" at Oxford Circus station, also one snazzy roundel each at Lancaster Gate, Mile End, Seven Sisters and West Ham. Passengerwise it was a disaster because lockdown was back in place, but the visual image went uber-viral and probably paid for itself several times over.
• January 2022: the BBC paid £135,000 so that four roundels at Green Park station could be changed to Green Planet for two days.
• September 2023: This proved one step too far. Bond Street station got a full blue makeover, both out front and on the platforms, as it became Burberry Street for the duration of London Fashion Week. Passengers complained that the name was unfamiliar and misleading and made wayfinding too difficult. Given the £200,000 deal involved 80 roundels, 132 platform friezes and 30 line diagrams you can see their point. TfL apologised afterwards and have never rebranded an entire station since, indeed this may be the over-reach that finally killed off the idea.
• January 2024: Samsung forked out an incredible £830,000 to promote their new 'Circle to Search' phone feature over a 30-day period. Rather than changing roundels a circular tube map was created and this was permitted to be displayed at "up to 8 large scale locations throughout Kings Cross Underground Station and "up to 10 locations where the London Underground Map is currently located". The map was produced in-house, hence a sponsor-free version was later shared via an FoI request.
• July 2024: Samsung again, this time plugging their new Fold phone by renaming Old Street as Fold Street. They paid £250,000 for a one-week campaign including a bespoke Fold-themed Old Street roundel and a lot of vinyls round the Old Street roundabout. The peripheral location didn't aid public recognition, the brand ambassadors looked well bored and I suspect this campaign misfired somewhat.
• July 2025: TfL announced it was seeking "the first ever sponsor of the Waterloo & City line". The name of the line wouldn't change but a successful partner would get to rebrand platforms, trains, moquette and the travelator surround, weekends excepted.
• September 2025: Charing Cross became Haring Cross for two days for vodka-related reasons, raising £210,000. According to the PR company the brief was to "Create cultural cut-through with a disruptive moment to amplify the partnership between Absolut Vodka and Keith Haring" and the campaign achieved 122M+ Earned Reach. I wrote "nothing sounds so interesting as a tube station pop-up you never saw, thereby avoiding the underwhelm of seeing it in person."
• January 2026: Heineken spent £375,000 to rebrand eight Bakerloo line stations for three weeks. They were advertising an alcohol-free lager, hence the use of 0.0 in all collateral from Bakerl0.0 to Oxf0.0rd Circus. The contract specifically restricted the takeover to 50% of all Bakerloo line platform roundels and 50% of named Bakerloo line platform friezes.
• February 2026: Six roundels at Tottenham Court Road and Covent Garden stations were reworked to show the Guinness Harp as a promotion for a new brewery attraction. Eight line diagrams were also given a black background to represent a frothing pint. Guinness paid £255,000 for this four day takeover which, crucially, never changed the name of the station
• March 2026: Warburtons spent £260,000 to add four crumpet roundels to the northbound Jubilee line platform at Baker Street station. No money was wasted southbound, or indeed anywhere else, thus renaming the station Bakers Street caused an absolute minimum of disruption. I was wholly unimpressed by the delivery, concluding "it doesn't matter how lacklustre the actual activation is, it's all about the write-up elsewhere".
• March 2026: New Balance trainers paid £200,000 for a three-day campaign at Waterloo station, plus an additional £150,000 of advertising spending. For this they got rights to "a limited number" of themed platform roundels (specifically 18%), also cobranding on 50% of Bakerloo line platform friezes, also ads on all Bakerloo line diagrams.
• July 2026: Kaneary Wharf, duration and cost to be confirmed.
As you can see, the implementation of sponsored rebrandings appears to have ramped up recently with six activations over the last twelve months. Over one million pounds has been raised in this way since the start of the year, which might sound a lot but is barely 0.01% of TfL's budget. Reassuringly takeovers are no longer allowed to cover the whole of a station, it's all about the maximum impact a creative change can deliver. But it does reflect a shift in policy from 2013 with TfL now happy to encourage brand-led experiences of limited duration, publicly focusing on the fact they make passengers smile, not that they're commercial advertising.
Emma Strain, customer director at TfL, said: “We are always keen to work with brands to create new experiences for the millions of people who travel on our network. Through well-planned, creative activations like these, we can help companies reach people as they travel across London. Any activations on our network are fully assessed to ensure that they do not impact our services, staff or customers, and the additional revenue raised is invested into London’s transport network to provide further improvements across the capital.”
We have thus far dodged the prostitution of 'Burger King's Cross' or 'Knightsbridge, home of Harrods' as permanent station names, but TfL are now much happier to offload tube stations to someone waving the modern equivalent of a cheque book and offering a bad pun. I'm not convinced it helps.
