Bristol Sport: Huboo becomes sponsor of five city teams

Ashton Gate is the home to both Bristol City and Bristol Bears men's football and rugby teams

Bristol Sport's chairman hopes the backing of a new long-term sponsor will give them more financial stability across all five of their teams.

E-commerce company Huboo will sponsor Bristol City men and women, Bristol Bears men and women and the Bristol Flyers from the 2022-23 season.

Bristol Sport was formed in 2014, bringing the football, rugby and basketball teams under one roof.

Huboo enquired about rugby sponsorship, before backing all five teams.

"It's a wonderful position to have someone who is across all the sports teams, all the demographics that covers in terms of both playing and fanbase, and really recognising the unique thing we've set up here and being able to capitalise on that for both parties," chairman Jon Lansdown, whose father Stephen owns the Bristol Sport franchise, said.

"The fact that they are a fast growing local business as well makes the synergies even better, in terms of they have similar values, they have similar communities interesting in terms of where they're based.

"It just makes that relationship very authentic and easy to grow from."

Financial stability

In December, Bristol City announced losses of £38.4m for the 2020-21 financial year, significantly up on the £10.1m the previous year.

The Championship club pointed to the impact of having to play behind closed doors because of the coronavirus pandemic and a big drop in profits from selling players.

Under the EFL's profit and sustainability rules, clubs must contain their losses to £39m over a rolling three-year period, or incur sanctions.

While Lansdown said the new deal - thought to be worth more than their current agreement - will help, it only "scratches the surface" as they look for new streams of revenue.

"It's important because it's a great partnership and it's security going forward and hopefully it's a long-lasting relationship," Lansdown continued.

"In terms of some of the numbers you would have seen for losses in Financial Fair Play it scratches the surface to an extent.

"Yes it is really important and it's a great platform but it's not going to solve all of your issues in one go."

With the EFL's financial rules as they are, the Robins' losses mean they are at risk of facing a possible points deduction next season or beyond.

"There's no doubt it's put pressure on everyone. I would have thought there would be five, six, seven in our league in a similar position than we are," Lansdown said.

"For us we're in a slightly different position because if you take our transfer sales over a longer period of time and see what we average a year, if we averaged that we'd be absolutely fine now.

"It's pretty easy to prove that what we could have normally done in the last three, four windows we just haven't been able to do.

MansionBet have been the primary sponsor of Bristol City's men's team since 2020

"We're in the situation we're in and we need to find a way out of it and find a more positive way forward."

For Bristol City, the move also ends a four-year association with gambling or betting companies. Dunder casino sponsored the club from 2018, with online betting company MansionBet taking over in 2020.

Gambling firms are a major source of revenue in football - with 87% of Championship clubs having betting partners as of December 2020.

But its involvement in football is currently under review by the UK government, which is considering a ban on sponsorship in sport.

Lansdown said they were not actively looking to disassociate with betting or gambling sponsors, but the change to a local sponsor within the Bristol community was the ideal model they were looking for when the Bristol Sport franchise was set up.

"In terms to football we play in the SkyBet Championship and I can understand where the thoughts and the theories come from," he said.

"But we've got to be thankful to what we've had to this point and excited and proud to what we have going forward."