Sports clubs and franchises have realised they can sell the same sponsorship a dozen times, provided the categories get silly enough. They have risen to the challenge.
Sports clubs make their money in three broad buckets: broadcast, matchday and commercial. Broadcast money is set by league-level deals a single club has little say over; matchday is capped by the size of the stadium and the number of home games.
Commercial revenue is one line of business that has no real ceiling, and clubs and franchises can push at it by cutting it into smaller and smaller pieces.
A sports team can only sell one or two shirt sponsors, but it can sell an official beer, an official soft drink, an official water and an official responsible drinking partner all at once, because none of them compete. Specific enough categories don’t overlap, so you can sign as many as you like. Which is how you end up with a sponsor for things nobody knew were sponsorable.
Sports science hasn’t helped. Every massage gun, mattress and mindset coach is now somebody’s exclusive category. It’s the same for regions, which is why one club can have an official noodle partner on one continent and an official savoury snack partner on another.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with most of these deals, they’re real products, it’s real money – normal business. It’s the names that have lost the plot.
Here are ten of the worst.
1. Official Agricultural Vehicles Partner – Manchester United & Yanmar
They once rolled out a branded United tractor in Bangkok like it was a marquee summer signing. It made real money across Southeast Asia, to be fair. There’s no farmland at Old Trafford though, and given how the place is run off the pitch, a side income in agriculture isn’t the maddest idea.
2. Official Percussive Therapy Device Partner – Manchester United & Therabody
A magnificently overblown way of saying “massage gun sponsor”. While the thing probably does help players recover, a “percussive therapy device” is what you’d call it trying to get it through airport security without too many follow-up questions from a man called Jeff.
3. Official Workwear Partner – Everton & Strauss
Unveiled in December 2025: a German firm making proper heavy-duty trousers and jackets. The title just makes it sound like the club’s got a side hustle kitting out scaffolders, which, given the last few years of accounts, you wouldn’t completely rule out.
4. Official Blood Flow Restriction Partner – Manchester City Women & Hytro
The wearables do work, and elite teams use them to speed up recovery. But the title sounds more like a symptom you’d Google at 2am before deciding it was nothing and going back to sleep, than a sponsorship agreement.
5. Official Performance Mindset Partner – Manchester United & Mindflick
This is corporate away-day language of the highest order. You can practically hear the flip chart squeaking and smell the lukewarm coffee in the polystyrene cup. Somewhere in there is a real attempt to do sports psychology, buried under a job title that belongs on a lanyard at a regional sales conference.
6. Official Tools Partner – NASCAR & Stanley Black & Decker
Honestly, fair enough. Pit crews change four tyres before you’ve finished reading this sentence, so tools earn their place. It still comes across like the local DIY shop sponsoring the village fete, except the tombola’s been swapped for forty stock cars doing 200mph.
7. Official Mattress and Pillow Partner – Tottenham Hotspur & Mammoth
This deal has been running since 2017, and, to be fair, good sleep is the key to performance – just not in the case of Tottenham. Maybe too much time sitting around a boardroom testing out pillows rather than being out on the training pitch is the cause for their recent form? Pillow firm enough for everyone? Show of hands?
8. Official Optometry and Hearing Partner – England & Wales Cricket Board & Specsavers
Either a masterstroke or a passive-aggressive note to every umpire who’s ever botched an LBW. “Should’ve gone to Specsavers” basically writes itself, and English cricket has handed them the perfect stooges twice a session. Lovely deal. Shame nobody could find a word snappier than “optometry”.
9. Official Chicken Partner – NBA & Wingstop
Not just any partner. It’s THE chicken partner. Somewhere there’s a contract, signed by grown adults, formally appointing a company to be the league’s designated guys for chicken. Wingstop, to their eternal credit, went all the way in on this rather than dying of embarrassment like the rest of us would.
10. Official Responsible Drinking Partner – Manchester United & Smirnoff
Drinking responsibly is sound advice freely available to everyone, which makes “official” the funniest word in the title. As though, without the deal, fans would have no sanctioned source for the idea that twelve pints is plenty.
I’m sure you’ve noticed Manchester United account for four of these ten sponsorship name designations, which tells you everything. And we still never reached the noodles.
