June 6 – Premier League Southampton now have two shirt sponsors. While the club has just entered the second year of shirt sponsorship of its first team kit with sportsbet.io, the Saints’ energy partner Utilita, has become the club’s first Junior Kit Partner.
Utilita, an independent energy supplier based in Hampshire, has also extended its deal as Official Energy Partner into a fifth successive season.
Sarah Batters, Director of Partnerships and Marketing at Southampton, said: “We are delighted to renew our partnership with Utilita for a fifth successive season. As a club we are well known for our academy and developing players, and therefore it seemed a perfect fit to have them as the new front of shirt sponsor for our junior and academy kits.”
Utilita’s new front of shirt sponsor for the junior shirts follows the launch of the Utilita Coaching Hubin March, which supports grassroots teams with training drills and exercises that can be done at home during the pandemic.
It also follows Utilita’s newly launched Football Rebooted campaign with environmentalist and former goalkeeper, David James, which encourages donation of football boots and Astro boots, to save families money, as well as 136,000 tonnes of carbon.
Football Rebooted is designed to put an aspirational spin on a mechanic that will get good boots through to families struggling to afford new ones, after Utilita’s State of Play report revealed that out of the 74 per cent of families who had been impacted financially by the pandemic, 18 per cent won’t be able to send their kids back to grassroots football as they can’t afford boots and other items such as goalie gloves and shin pads.
Sarah Batters, Director of Partnerships and Marketing at Southampton FC, said: “We are delighted to renew our partnership with Utilita for a fifth successive season. As a club we are well known for our academy and developing players, and therefore it seemed a perfect fit to have them as the new front of shirt sponsor for our junior and academy kits. Utilita are already doing some amazing initiatives in the grassroots space and we look forward to continuing our work together to support the future stars of our game.”
Jem Maidment, Utilita’s chief marketing officer, said: “We are proud to be the first-ever partner to sponsor the Saints’ junior kit, and to support the Saints Academy, too, which is one of the best academies in Europe, with a long history of illustrious graduates including Theo Walcott, Gareth Bale and James Ward-Prowse. All of this forms part of our wider objective to support the Premier League by investing in the footballers of tomorrow.”
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