Featured image credit: Everton
UK sportswear brand Castore has become the first founding partner of Everton Stadium, with further deals for the new 52,888-capacity waterfront venue expected in the coming months.
The deal announced today (Friday) is part of a multi-year, club-record technical partnership which will see Castore supply playing, training and travel wear to the Premier League football club from the 2024-25 season.
Everton said founding partner status will give Castore access to enhanced commercial opportunities and media rights at the Merseyside club’s new home once it opens in summer 2025.
Richard Kenyon, chief commercial and communications officer at Everton, added: “It was really pleasing that Castore could see the commercial opportunities in becoming a founding partner at our new stadium and it seems fitting that such an ambitious and successful brand from our region is the first of several stadium partners we will be announcing in the coming months.”
In March 2022, Everton announced it had suspended all sponsorship arrangements with its Russian commercial partners, including USM, which held an exclusive option on the naming rights to its new stadium.
USM is a diversified Russian holding company with significant interests across the metals and mining, telecoms, technology and internet sectors, with its founder being Alisher Usmanov, the Uzbek-born Russian oligarch. Usmanov saw his assets frozen as part of sanctions imposed by the European Union following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In January 2020, Everton announced that Usmanov had agreed to pay £30m (€35.6m/$38m) for an exclusive option on the naming rights to its new stadium. USM paid £30m up front for the exclusive option on the contract.
Usmanov, a former shareholder in Premier League team Arsenal, is a close friend of Everton’s majority shareholder Farhad Moshiri.
Everton this month said it would “assess all options” after confirming that an agreement for 777 Partners to purchase a majority shareholding in the club had expired.
Moshiri agreed to sell his majority shareholding in Everton to 777 Partners in September last year. Moshiri said the deal would secure “complete financing” for the club’s new stadium, which is currently being built at Bramley-Moore Dock.
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