John Player & Sons

In March 1820, William Wright set up a small tobacco factory in Craigshill, Livingston, West Lothian. This business expanded and earned Wright a comfortable fortune. John Player bought the business in 1877. He had the Castle Tobacco Factories built in Radford, Nottingham, just west of the city centre.[4] He had three large factory blocks built, but initially only one was used to process and pack tobacco. The other two blocks were loaned out to lace manufacturers until the business had expanded enough to use the additional space.[5]

John Player died in December 1884 and for the next nine years, the business was run by a small group of family friends until W G and J D Player were ready to take over the firm in 1893. The business became a private limited company in 1895, with a share capital of £200,000.[2]

The business was run later by Player's sons John Dane Player and William Goodacre Player.[6]

In 1901, in response to competitive threats from the US, Player's merged with the Imperial Tobacco Group. The largest constituent of Imperial Tobacco was W. D. & H. O. Wills and the new group was run from Wills' head office in Bristol.[2] Player's retained its own identity with cigarette brands such as Navy Cut, No. 9, John Player Special, and Gold Leaf; loose tobacco brands such as No Name; and its distinctive logo of a smoking sailor in a navy-cut cap.

Workers and staff of John Player at a Christmas party in the 1920s

Player's Medium Navy Cut was the most popular by far of the three Navy Cut brands (there was also Mild and Gold Leaf, mild being today's rich flavour). Two thirds of all the cigarettes sold in Britain were Player's and two thirds of these were branded as Player's Medium Navy Cut. In January 1937, Player's sold nearly 3.5 million cigarettes (which included 1.34 million in London).[7] The popularity of the brand was mostly amongst the middle class and in the South of England. It was smoked in the north but other brands were locally more popular.[7]

Production continued to grow until at its peak in the late 1950s, Player's was employing 11,000 workers (compared to 5,000 in 1926) and producing 15 brands of pipe tobacco and 11 brands of cigarettes.[2]

In the UK in 1968, in response to an increase in tobacco duty in the budget, Player's launched a new, cheaper brand, "Player's No.10". Priced at 3 s 2 d (16 p) for 20, it was the cheapest cigarette on the British market.[8]

Pack of Player's Extra Lights shown on a billboard in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. ca. 1980

A new factory (the 'Horizon' factory) was opened in the early 1970s on Nottingham's industrial outskirts, with better road access and more effective floor space, next to the headquarters of Boots the Chemists. On 15 April 2014, Imperial Tobacco announced that the Horizon factory would close in early 2016, bringing an end to cigarette and tobacco manufacture in Nottingham after over 130 years.

The old factories in Radford, especially the cavernous No. 1 Factory which occupied the whole area between Radford Boulevard and Alfreton Road, bordered by Player Street and Beckenham Road, were gradually run down. The No. 2 Factory, facing onto Radford Boulevard with its distinctive clock (now plinthed in the retail park on the site) and the No. 3 factory (which faced onto Churchfield lane) with its rooftop 'John Player & Sons' sign, were demolished in the late 1980s. The iron railings and gates onto Radford Boulevard from the present retail park are the ones that surrounded No. 2 Factory – the large gates (present vehicle access) were the entrance to the factory yard between No. 2 and No. 3 factories and the smaller gates were the pedestrian entrances to No. 2 factory itself.[9]

Player's still trades, but with a much reduced workforce (down to about 700 employees due to increased efficiency). It is no longer one of Nottingham's Big Three employers (the other two being Boots the Chemists and Experian).

As of 2020, the Player's Navy Cut, Players and John Player Special (JPS) brands are manufactured by Imperial Brands in the UK, whereas John Player Gold Leaf is manufactured by British American Tobacco (in some countries), and ranks as one of the best selling and most popular tobacco products in Pakistan. It is also present in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Arab States of the Persian Gulf. In South Asia, it is one of the biggest brands in the High category brand list.

The JPS brand has also been re-positioned in the last several years and is now a UK mid-price cigarette brand.

1975 Ford Capri Mk II 2.0 JPS

John Player's brands are well known in motor racing from their long association with the Lotus Formula One team, the Forsythe Racing Champ Car team, and Norton motorcycle racing team.

Ford introduced the John Player Special limited edition, (known as the JPS) in March 1975. Available only in black or white, the JPS featured yards of gold pinstriping to mimic the Formula 1 livery, gold-coloured wheels, and a bespoke upgraded interior of beige cloth and carpet trimmed with black.

North America

Greg Moore in a 1996 IndyCar with Player's branding.

Imperial Tobacco Canada's Player's brands also sponsored Canadian auto racing for decades. After a blanket tobacco advertising ban was instituted in the Canadian Tobacco Act in 1988, Imperial created a new corporation, Player's Racing Ltd., that was strictly an auto racing promotion company. This took advantage of an exemption in the Act that allowed tobacco companies to sponsor "cultural events" using the company's proper name instead of a brand name. Player's Ltd. advertising looked nearly identical to Player's cigarette packs, and given that it was one of the few legal outlets for advertising, the company was extensively promoted both during race weekends and at other sporting events.

Player's Racing promoted a number of Canadian drivers, including 1995 Indianapolis 500 and IndyCar champion Jacques Villeneuve, whose Forsythe-Green Racing team carried a Player's Ltd livery. The team would later carry on in CART as Player's Forsythe Racing, which after the Tobacco Act was struck down as violating the Charter of Rights, was able to use Player's branding. The team was competitive and featured Canadian drivers Greg Moore, Patrick Carpentier, Alex Tagliani, and in 2003, Paul Tracy. Tracy would win the championship in 2003, just as a new Tobacco Act ban took full effect for auto racing in October of 2003. The team would use a "GOOD BYE, CANADA" theme for Tracy and Carpentier's final races and not have explicit Player's branding.

Player's were one of the first UK tobacco companies to include sets of general interest cards in their packs of cigarettes. One of the first sets, produced in 1893, was Castles and Abbeys. These cards were generally produced in sets of 50 and have since become highly collectable. Other sets produced include Street Cries (cries of street vendors) in 1913 and 1916; Footballers (1926); Civil Aircraft (1935); Motor Cars (1936) and a Coronation Series in 1937. John Player & Sons issued more than 200 sets of cards and some were reprinted in the 1990s.

In sports, Player's released several cards series, mostly association football collections. One of them was the "Cup Winners" series, featuring FA Cup winning teams and the illustrated "Hints on association football" in 1934, where some football movements (kicks, passes, defensive tactics, etc.) were shown.[3] Player's also released a rugby union series in 1926,[15] and a cricket series in 1934.[16]

• 
  Donald Bradman from Australian Cricket Team Tour of England Series, 1934
• 
  "Hints on association football" Series, 1934
• 
  Player's cards exhibited in 1932
• 
  de Havilland DH.88 Comet, no. 9 of 50 from 'Civil Aircraft,' 1935
• 
  Archbishop of Canterbury from Player's Coronation Series, 1937
• 
  Order of the Indian Empire from Player's Coronation Series, 1937

• The cover art for Procol Harum's 1969 album A Salty Dog and Haruomi Hosono's 1973 album Tropical Dandy are pastiches of the Player's Navy Cut sailor logo. The subject depicted there was band's lyricist Keith Reid and was painted by "Dickinson", his wife by then.[17]

• In Ian Fleming's 1961 James Bond novel Thunderball, Bond's love interest Domino Vitali fantasises at length about the sailor depicted on the Player's Navy Cut logo.[18][19]

• Magrath, Derek (1997) [1991]. Norton the Complete Story. Crowood Classics. Rambsbury: The Crowood Press. ISBN 1-86126-062-8.
• Pevsner, Nikolas (1979). Nottinghamshire. Harmondsworth: Yale University Press. ISBN 0300096364.

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• Imperial Brands, owner