Arsenal to Kaneary Wharf, Changing at Burberry Street: A History of Branding The Tube

In 1932, Herbert Chapman, the manager of Arsenal Football Club, persuaded the Underground Electric Railways Company of London to rename Gillespie Road station to Arsenal (Highbury Hill).

His team had moved from Woolwich to Highbury nearly 20 years earlier, and Chapman understood then something that many brand custodians subsequently followed: if you can associate your name with a place people have to navigate through, you have acquired a useful piece of media real estate.

While it wasn't quite sponsorship in the modern sense, as no money directly changed hands, Arsenal had already paid for improvements to a station that was particularly busy on matchdays. The new name appeared on tickets and maps and the suffix Highbury Hill was eventually dropped in 1960, leaving Arsenal as the only London Underground station named after a football club.

While he was clearly a media pioneer (but maybe didn't know it at the time), what Chapman probably wouldn't have also realised was how big this Pandora's Box of naming Underground stations would become.

The most recent example from Audible shows how far the technique has evolved from simply changing a station name. It uses a fictional Tube-style line created specifically for the campaign with stops themed with Audible titles and genres like Strangers Cross, Last Chancery Lane, Reunion Bridge.

Here's a look at some of the numerous station-naming deals that have taken place over the past decade or so.

2015 Canada Water — Buxton Water

The modern era of Tube naming rights began when Canada Water station became Buxton Water for 24 hours on the day of the London Marathon.

The £110,000 deal with Nestlé was designed to connect Buxton's sponsorship of the race with the thousands of runners and spectators travelling through the area. Roundels and branded artwork were changed, although the entrance sign and Tube maps remained untouched.

And don't the corporate sponsorship team look happy with the deal?

2020 Piccadilly Circus - Picardilly Circus

Amazon Prime Video took the Tube-renaming idea to previously unimaginable levels of punning (since Buxton Water, Westminster had been renamed Webminster for Amazon Web Services in 2017 and King's Cross St Pancras became Lion King's Cross for Disney in 2019) when Piccadilly Circus became Picardilly Circus.

The £284,000 promotion ran for 48 hours to promote Star Trek: Picard, with Sir Patrick Stewart reprising his role as Jean-Luc Picard. Roundels, station signage, line diagrammes and posters were transformed, while commuters were treated to specially recorded announcements warning them to “take care when using stairs, escalators or, transporters” [LOL].

2023 Bond Street - Burberry Street

The Covid years saw an epidemic [*cough*] of brands taking naming rights for Tube stations. Those included Sony PlayStation renaming Mile End and Seven Sisters as Miles End and Gran Turismo 7 Sisters respectively, among others, as part of a multi-game deal. But perhaps the most convoluted and controversial example was this one.

For London Fashion Week 2023, Bond Street was transformed to promote Burberry's redesigned flagship store with roundels, signage, and other elements of the station transformed in Burberry's distinctive blue and the station itself renamed Burberry Street. TfL subsequently confirmed that it received 57 complaints about the activation from people claiming they found the navigation confusing. Burberry Street therefore marked a turning point: the Tube's visual identity had become valuable advertising inventory, but TfL was discovering that its value depended on not making the Tube too difficult to use.

Creative Salon's own debate at the time captured the problem neatly: after eight years of station takeovers, perhaps the novelty was wearing off and what had once seemed like an interesting and unusual idea was becoming just another form of out-of-home media.

2024 Old Street - Fold Street

Samsung's Fold Street, created at Old Street in 2024, was more playful and at least made more more sense than Burberry Street from a naming perspective.

The station acquired the promotional name for the launch of Samsung's foldable phones [geddit?], while a wider activation turned the surrounding area into a celebration of things that fold. The brand even folded a London bus as part of the stunt, which elevated the renaming somewhat. The fee was a reported £250,000.

2025 Charing Cross - Haring Cross

The 2025 Haring Cross activation for Absolut took the format somewhere more cultural and high brow, away from flogging computer games or fashion with a simple naming pun.

While no customer signage was changed, Absolut created Haring Cross through bespoke TfL roundels and graphic treatments in the ticket hall and on the escalators in reference to artist Keith Haring, whose work had famously been influenced by the New York subway. The activation celebrated 40 years since Keith Haring’s 1986 advertising collaboration with the brand and the launch of a new Absolut Haring artist-edition bottle.

The ticket halls and escalators featured graphic designs inspired by Haring's pop art, two original 1986 paintings displayed in the UK for the first time, and free commemorative posters for commuters. The activation turned the station into something closer to a temporary gallery than a conventional advertising takeover. It was subtle and clever and didn't simply use the Tube as media — it was part of the idea.

2026 Bakerloo Line stations - Bakerl0.0

By January 2026, the Tube rename had become sufficiently established as an advertising format for Heineken 0.0 to push the pun further. The Bakerloo was styled as Bakerl0.0, with selected stations acquiring their own Dry January makeovers, including Oxf0.0rd Circus and Waterl0.0. The three-week partnership reportedly generated £375,000 for TfL.

But despite the branding, TfL was careful not to treat it as a wholesale renaming of the line: the changes were confined to selected signage and assets. That distinction was becoming increasingly important after the confusion generated by Burberry Street

The three-week activation was designed to promote Heineken's alcohol-free beer. TfL deliberately limited the changes to selected signage rather than comprehensively renaming stations, partly addressing concerns that earlier campaigns such as Burberry Street had made navigation harder. It showed that the TfL transport palette was being opened up for new commercial possibilities.

2026 Canary Wharf - Kaneary Wharf

Later in the year, it was back to station renaming rights wheen Canary Wharf had a small Harry Kane-themed football makeover to coincide with the England captain's heroics in the World Cup.

The activation by Skechers, which partners with Kane, saw roundels on the platform level changed as well as the installation of two massive floor decals at the bottom of the main escalators leading into the ticket hall.

It remained in place for just a few days in mid-July to coincide with England's high-stakes World Cup quarter-final match against Norway [running almost as long as Scotland did in the tournament.]

Terminus

As this journey reaches its final stop - and having only listed a few of the multiple renaming examples - it lands on a slightly uncomfortable truth: the Tube‑station rename is fast becoming what floating something down the Thames once was - a go‑to London advertising hack. (Full disclosure: this is an observation that was originally made by the Lucky Generals founder Andy Nairn on LinkedIn.)

One difference is that the Tube is becoming rather more sophisticated about what it sells. It is no longer just station names - it's roundels, typography, maps, line diagrammes, tannoy announcements, platforms, moquette, architecture and, increasingly, the idea of London itself. TfL now openly markets Rename For Fame as a commercial product, with station-renaming rights costing hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Some of the executions are genuinely clever. Haring Cross worked because Keith Haring's relationship with the subway was part of the idea, while Fold Street at least made the pun do some creative work. Others feel more like a brand borrowing a familiar piece of London and hoping the familiarity will do the rest.

Perhaps that is the danger. Once everyone knows they can rename a Tube station, the act of renaming one is no longer much of an idea. It is simply a media format.

Which comes back to the Thames. If the river has become the place where brands put giant things when they [think] London will notice them, the Underground risks becoming the place where they change a few letters to do the same

The question, therefore, isn't whether you can rename a Tube station, or float something down the Thames; it's whether you have an idea that would still be interesting if you couldn't.