English Premier League heavyweights Tottenham Hotspur (Spurs) have announced a new long-term partnership with iconic US sports media enterprise Sports Illustrated (SI) and its Sports Illustrated Tickets (SIT) marketplace.
The 12-year deal sees Sports Illustrated and SIT take up prominent branding presence across the east side of Spurs’ 62,850-capacity Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
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As the club’s official fan experience partner, Sports Illustrated will feature prominently across the east stand of the stadium, an area featuring in-person activations based on the magazine’s historic cover design and the club’s history, with an accompanying digital storytelling platform, “Sports Illustrated Tickets' Defining Moments” to be integrated across the area.
Furthermore, a bar area in the lower tier of the stand will be established, known as The Cover Club, utilizing the Sports Illustrated brand.
Going forward, across the partnership, Sportcal understands that more brands under the Sports Illustrated umbrella may also be integrated across the ground.
Sports Illustrated is owned by Authentic Brands Group, which also owns the likes of clothing brands Champion, Reebok, and the image rights for a number of prominent sportspeople.
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By GlobalDataElsewhere, a new premium hospitality offering, the 3,000 seater Club SI, will be created in the stand to bolster the stadium’s top-line VIP offering, featuring Sports Illustrated interactive activations and more.
This partnership will extend to marketing rights across the men’s and women’s teams, as well as other events hosted at the stadium, and the F1 Drive – London experience located at the venue.
With the long-term deal in place, SI becomes the first member of ‘The Collective’, Tottenham’s new elite sponsorship tier centered around the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, as the club looks to ramp up its potential as a commercial asset.
The Collective sponsorship platform was established by Spurs in collaboration with the properties division of Excel Sports Management, the prominent sports agency that also supported the club in its partnership negotiations with Sports Illustrated Tickets.
Tottenham Hotspur Stadium is one of the newest in the Premier League and widely regarded as one of the most impressive sporting facilities in the world, and, speaking to Sportcal (GlobalData Sport), Spurs chief revenue officer Ryan Norys explained of the venue’s growing commercialization: “One of the key pillars of the stadium is that we're trying to diversify our revenues, and trying to be as forward thinking as possible.
“The sole objective, which has always been the case since we opened [the stadium] five years ago, is to be able to sustainably invest in our football teams and deliver long-term sporting success. And to be able to do that, we do need to maximize the stadium and basically all of its facets and offerings.”
Like many of Sports Illustrated’s other commercial partnerships in the space, this deal will be focused on galvanizing fan engagement, an area Norys says could help galvanize revenue generation, not just locally, but globally.
“The club itself is going through a bit of a digital transformation where we're trying to learn as much about not only our fans, but the customers, the consumers, and the patrons that are visiting the stadium. Really trying to have that 360-degree scope around what their interests are, where they go to buy products, what food items they like, which areas of the stadium they like to sit [etc].
“And one of the components of that is creating a partnership like this with Sports Illustrated, because they're going to be able to deepen that fan relationship even further, and the insights we're able to provide them are going to help them cater their messaging and their experiences [to the fans].
“So you may be coming for a Tottenham match, and then, several weeks later, or several months later, you get an email or some type of notification or an offer from SI tickets to come and attend an NFL match at the stadium. And while you're a Tottenham fan, this now also allows you to get basic exposure to the NFL, where you may not have done previously, and vice versa.”
For Sports Illustrated and SIT, on the other hand, the brand’s first English Premier League partnership offers it the chance to continue its growth aims in the European market with a club that is not only a consistent presence in the league but will also feature in the UEFA Champions League in the 2025-26 campaign.
SIT is already partnered with second-tier side Birmingham City, and in Europe will support the NFL’s international game in Madrid in November.
On this latest partnership, and its ramifications for the Sports Illustrated Brand, SIT chief executive David Lane explained to Sportcal: “We certainly have the global recognition, but it's partnerships like this that allow us to continue to reintroduce who we are to a generation that may not be as familiar with us, and then for those that are [familiar], to do things that they see as exciting and impactful, and Tottenham is the best partner to do so.
“We walk from so many [partnership opportunities] because it's just not the right fit,” he reveals, continuing: “We're not going to just put our logo up on a glass door and tell you you're entering some Sports Illustrated experience; it has to be credible.
“We're already an official partner of the NFL. We're already working with the clubs stateside. We're already doing things that put us in a position to be a great partner, not a vendor,” he finishes, highlighting the fact that, as the NFL plays multiple games at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium each year, the partnership puts Tottenham in a good position to leverage SIT’s position in both markets to grow the club’s international fandom.
On that, Norys finished “What we want to do is we want people from all over the world to come visit the stadium, go through the multitude of different Sports Illustrated experiences we're going to launch – not only throughout the year, but even year-over-year – and we want them to say ‘When you go to the stadium, you need to check out the SI experience,’ because these are the types of activations and things that you're going to be able to do that feel like they bring you closer to the sport, closer to the event you're attending, and I think most importantly, closer to both Tottenham and SI.”
