Chelsea are to consider selling naming rights for Stamford Bridge, according to the club's chief executive.

Ron Gourlay explained that the Premier League club are pursuing new sponsorship opportunites as a way of keeping them competitive financially, but he admitted that renaming the stadium could be an unpopular move with supporters.

"Retaining the heritage of the stadium is paramount to considering such a move but we think that is achievable and on that basis we would enter into discussions over naming rights with the right partner for Chelsea," he said. 'We understand that this is a sensitive issue for our fans and that is why we would keep the name Stamford Bridge in any deal.

'What we are not prepared to happen, and I am sure our fans will appreciate this, is allow our rival clubs in England and Europe to gain a competitive advantage over us in terms of the revenue they can generate through either expanding the capacity of their existing stadia or moving to a new stadium and then invest that upside in their team or the club."

The announcement comes a day after Derek Llambias, the Newcastle United managing director, confirmed that St James' Park will be called sportsdirect.com@St James' Park for the remainder of the season. The decision by the Championship club to change 117 years of history has come in for huge criticism from Newcastle supporters who already have a poor opinion of Mike Ashley, the club's owner.

However, Gourlay is confident that Chelsea fans will consider the idea of renaming Stamford Bridge on its merits.

"The match day experience at Stamford Bridge and the relationship with our fans has improved greatly through initiatives such as our flexible ticketing policy for all cup matches, the freezing of non-hospitality ticket prices for the last four seasons for Premier League matches and subsidised or free travel to a significant number of away games," he said.

"But we need to keep evolving and move the business forward to support the football side and the club generally. This is a potentially realistic way of doing that."