READING FC’S Thai owners this week confirmed they are likely to sell the naming rights to the Madejski Stadium if the club returns to the Premier League.

Royals have resisted the temptation to sell the rights to another company since the club moved from Elm Park in 1998.

But now that Sir John Madejski has taken a back seat in day-to-day affairs, fellow co-chairwoman, Lady Khunying Sasima Srivikorn, admitted it would be hard to resist cashing-in on the stadium’s name, which could raise millions of pounds each season.

She told the Chronicle: “People are quite interested to know if we are thinking of changing the name of the Madejski Stadium, which is symbolic of Sir John. He’s a wonderful gentleman and has put a lot of money into this club.

“It was his dream to make this club successful and the stadium was named after him. But sports marketing is huge now and football is the most watched sport of all.”

Lady Sasima says she was forced to change the lyrics to the song she recently penned named ‘They Call Us the Royals’ to accommodate a potential change of stadium name.

“When we wrote our song we used a lyric that mentioned the Madejski Stadium, but we had to change it to simply ‘stadium’ because we may change the name,” she explained.

“If we get into the Premier League we will be on television a lot and we will become very valuable and the stadium name will generate a lot of money to help the football team.”

Sir John Madejski, chairman for 24 years, is no longer bankrolling the Royals, with Lady Sasima and the club’s other shareholders now responsible. Reading signed 11 new players this summer including Matej Vydra, Ola John and Lucas Piazon in the past week alone.

Lady Sasima added: “The fans were excited on Tuesday and so was I. We had to wait until 6pm to have the final signatures after medical check-ups. There was a lot of suspense.

“The transfer window is quite unusual, I haven’t been involved in this type of business before. Everyone is bidding for players, it’s like an auction, but I am very happy with the new players. We signed exactly the players we wanted and it’s unusual for that to happen.”