, the deal will allow Red Sox owner The Fenway Sports Group to promote the London club in the US and sell the sponsorship rights of its shirts in 2011. Fenway has also said it will look at selling the naming rights of Fulham's grade 2-listed ground, Craven Cottage, one of the oldest in the league.
However, the suggestion from Sam Kennedy, Fenway's chief operating officer, that Fulham plays a league game in the US will ruffle the most feathers. A furore was created last year when the Premier League attempted to lay the groundwork for just such a move.
The Red Sox — twice winners of the World Series in the past 10 years — are one of the major teams in world baseball while Fulham are a relatively small Premiership team. Yet Kennedy said there were a number of links between the two, including heritage and strong local ties.
The Fulham-Red Sox deal is not the first promotional tie-in between a football and baseball club. In 2001 to develop sponsorship and joint promotional programs and sell each other's licensed goods.
In what the BBC reported to be "one of the biggest joint marketing deals in the history of sport" the then Manchester United chief executive Peter Kenyon suggested the deal would help drive the club's profile in the US.
There is little evidence of the deal even being in place now with no reference two either on the clubs' sites.