September 19 – Everton’s announcement of video game Angry Birds as its first sleeve sponsor turned into a social media gift Monday as the club’s returned child progidy Wayne Rooney was convicted of drunk driving. Twitter was buzzing with comment on the irony.
Everton have agreed a multi-year deal with Rovio Entertainment for the Angry Birds game –the first video game to take the newly created sleeve sponsorship position at a Premier League football club. No figure was announced for the deal.
While Rovio will benefit from exposure, particularly in Asia, from being on the club sleeve, Everton will also have a return benefit from association with the young demographic of biggest video game success the world has ever seen.
Angry Birds had 450 million game downloads in 2016, has had 3.7 billon game installs since 2009, 3 billion Youtube views and has 25 million Facebook followers. It will be interesting to see if Everton will gain new fans from Angry Birds’ demographic whose choice of football club may not yet be fully formed.
Alan McTavish, Head of Commercial at Everton, said: “In return, working with Rovio and the Angry Birds brand gives Everton exposure in key international markets through their breadth of digital channels in gaming and animation, as well as a wide range of co-branded merchandise.”
A short-animated film released on Youtube to launch the partnership sees Angry Birds lead character Birds, Red, signing for the Blues at the club’s Finch Farm training ground.
Ville Heijari, CMO of games at Rovio Entertainment said: “This is Rovio’s first partnership in the most watched sports league in the world, and a logical continuation of our global Angry Birds brand partnerships.”
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