On the “Other teams new kits” thread, it’s mentioned that Holsten is a “classic” sponsor due to its appearances on Spurs shirts.
Got me thinking about others.
For me, off the top of my head, the ones that spring to mind are:
Charlton - Woolwich (obviously)
Man U - Sharp
Arsenal - JVC
Liverpool - Crown Paints
Leeds - Top Man
Spurs - Holsten
Wimbledon - Truman (I think)
Pa**ce - Virgin (appropriate)
West Ham - Avco
Everton - NEC
Man City - Brother
Coventry - Talbot
That’s all I’ve got for now.
Any others that stick out? I may have got some wrong maybe?
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Luton Town - Bedford
Watford - Solvite
QPR - Compaq (I think)
Villa - Mita Copiers
Scum - Lewisham (nobody other than the local council would touch them lol)
Forest - Shipstones
Kettering Town - Kettering Tyres (the first ever shirt sponsorship deal signed in 1976)
Both companies were part of ' The Burton Group' whose biggest factory was based in Hudson Road, Leeds.
Peter Ridsdale who became chairman of Leeds, previously was on the board of 'The Burton Group' & also Managing Director of Top Man.
Villa - Muller
Ipswich - Fisons
Norwich - Norwich and Peterborough building society
Forest - Labatt's
Smallwall - LDDC
QPR - Guinness
West Ham - Dr Martens
Fiorentina - Nintendo
Newcastle Brown Ale for Newcastle, especially when it was just the blue star
Newcastle Brown Ale were definitely the definitive Newcastle sponsor
Bolton - Reebok
Some classic foreign ones that come to mind.
Napoli (Maradona) - Mars
Ajax - ABN Amro
AC Milan - Opel
Inter Milan - Pirelli
Real Madrid - Teka
Others will have far greater insight into this than I do, but it's worth noting that:
Sportfive data indicate sponsorship campaigns outperform traditional advertising by 58% in brand awareness among sports fans, and 49% even among the general population. Familiarity with a sponsoring brand leads to +40% "likeability", +53% consideration, +41% in actual usage, and a 7% boost in recommendation likelihood. Shirt sponsorship works.
The fact that posters on here can very easily recall shirt sponsors from twenty or thirty years ago prove that enduring brand awareness is created. In fact, GWI/WARC research shows that 65% of fans notice shirt sponsors, which is the highest recognition across sponsorship types. And Brand Finance has reported average revenue increases of 10–15% driven by sponsorships via brand loyalty and trust. Simply put: shooser the right club, for the right reason; invest in shirt sponsorship; and engage with fans and you are likely to increase brand awareness and earn more revenue from every customer.
Big companies, with huge marketing budgets want to wield their clout and measure their success by ROI. Visa, for example, earned $480 worth of media coverage for every $100 they spent on partnering with the World Cup. Smaller companies just want you to know they exist.
If there's a democratic match between sponsor and audience (eg a betting company, rather than a jewellery brand, sponsoring a football club); and if the sponsor spends as much (or almost as much) in activation (promotions, experiences, etc) as in paying rights; and if the sponsor focuses on engagement metrics (social impressions, brand lift surveys, digital activations, sign-ups, etc); and there's a brand fit and authenticity (e.g. collaborations that reflect and compliment brand values and engage communities perform better), then there's a far higher chance of "success", however that's measured.
Of course there are examples of sponsorships that went so badly wrong as to have a long-term deleterious effect on the sponsor. Beko seemed to have found the perfect club for their sponsorship when they chose Millwall. Why was it a perfect match? Beko suffered reputational damage to their brand, had to issue product safety warnings and recalled their products. No-one, it seemed, liked them.
I think of Carlsberg for Liverpool, SEGA for Arsenal, Vodafone for Man United, Newcastle Brown Ale for Newcastle, ntl: for Celtic, Rangers and Aston Villa, Autoglass for Chelsea, Brother for Man City, Dr Martens for West Ham.
Pirelli on Inter shirts, ABN Amro sideways on Ajax shirts, Opel on Bayern, PSG and AC Milan, Teka on Madrid, Sony on Juventus, and Nintendo on Fiorentina.
My brother-in-law, a Spurs season ticket holder, still refuses to buy JVC products, more than twenty years after they stopped sponsoring Arsenal.
I read read some of Ron Atkinson's biography (he managed them shortly before this) and he said that, the sponsorship wasn't sanctioned by the FA and were told to remove it from their shirts, so they changed it to Kettering T, stating the T stood for Town not Tyres, which the FA were still not happy about and so abbreviated it to KT, which also got rejected but allowed the year after. It ended up giving them far more exposure than if they had just ignored it to start with.
Charlton Athletic and high street 'fashion' chain C&A missed a trick there.