Purina, St. Louis City SC ink soccer jersey sponsorship deal
The city’s new Major League Soccer team on Wednesday unveiled a partnership with St. Louis pet food maker Purina, incorporating the company’s iconic checkerboard square into St. Louis City SC’s uniforms and the team’s identity.Get more news about football training jacket,you can vist futbolucl!
“St. Louis is a sports town, but it’s also a city of pet lovers and pet advocates,” Nina Leigh Krueger, Nestlé Purina PetCare CEO and president, said in an announcement video.
It’s the first major sponsorship deal announced by St. Louis City SC, the new MLS club scheduled to begin play in 2023 in the under-construction Downtown West stadium. The partnership promises to yield loads of pet-centric cross promotions, such as adoption events, and the team said it hoped to work with Purina to “become the most pet-friendly club in MLS.”We are thrilled to partner with an iconic company like Purina that has such deep roots in St. Louis,” St. Louis City chief executive Carolyn Kindle Betz said in a statement. “Not only does Purina share our love for St. Louis, but they also have our same vision of working to make our community stronger. I couldn’t think of a better company to be our club’s first founding partner and to be represented on the front of our team’s kit.”
Kit sponsorships can be as or more valuable than stadium naming rights, said Eric Smallwood, president of sports sponsorship consultancy Apex Marketing Group, based in the Detroit area. The team didn’t release financial details of the deal, but Smallwood said similar MLS kit sponsorships can be worth $3 million to $5 million a year.No matter where they play, they get that exposure, so it’s pretty valuable for a sponsor,” Smallwood said. “It becomes part of the team’s colors, the team’s identity.”
MLS kit sponsorship is an outgrowth of European soccer, where corporate logos on jerseys and uniforms are far more common than in the U.S. Smallwood said such a deal is likely to include the sponsor’s logo on virtual jerseys in video games and jerseys sold to fans.
The team is working with Adidas on the final design of the team’s jerseys, Kindle Betz said. In the meantime there will be plenty of “co-branded pet swag so we can hold fans over,” she said.