Branding
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LONDON — Currently languishing near the bottom of the fourth tier of English football, Forest Green Rovers don’t have the global profile, colossal riches or superstar players of the world’s top teams. But despite their small stature, the Rovers enjoy one major bragging right: they’re the first European soccer club to be sponsored by Rock & Roll Hall of Famers the Grateful Dead.
“For us, it’s a perfect match,” says the California band’s archivist and legacy manager, David Lemieux. “Forest Green Rovers is a team that really follows Grateful Dead values, which is to say that we’re both conscious of the world around us and we want to make sure that we leave it a better place than when we arrived.”
Grateful Dead’s decades-long promotion of environmental causes is well-known throughout the music business, but Forest Green Rovers’ eco credentials are equally impressive.
Based in the small town of Nailsworth, Gloucestershire, just over 100 miles outside London, Forest Green Rovers Football Club has been recognized by both the United Nations and football’s international governing body, FIFA, as “the world’s greenest football club.” The team and its owner, Dale Vince, have won praise for pioneering sustainable practices like using renewable energy to power its 5,000-capacity ground, transporting players in an electric bus and serving vegan food to players, staff and fans.
Forest Green Rovers Chairman Dale Vince at a Labour Party conference in Liverpool on Oct. 8, 2023.
OLI SCARFF/AFP via Getty Images
The idea to partner Grateful Dead with Forest Green first landed on Lemieux’s desk 18 months ago when it was presented to him by the retail and licensing team at Warner Music Group’s services division WMX, which looks after the group’s merchandising rights outside of touring and online. (Grateful Dead’s music catalog is handled by WMG’s Rhino Records, which also runs the band’s Dead.net website, while Warner Chappell Music represents the act’s publishing interests globally, in conjunction with the Grateful Dead’s company, Ice Nine).
At the time of WMX’s pitch, Lemieux wasn’t familiar with Forest Green Rovers, which has spent much of its 134-year history competing outside the top level, with its best-ever finish coming in the 2021/22 season when the club was crowned champions of League Two (they were relegated 12 months later). But after researching the club and its energy industrialist owner, he says it was a natural fit for the two organizations to team up on a clothing merch deal that sees Grateful Dead’s iconic green skull logo featured on a range of Forest Green co-branded sporting wear, t-shirts and hoodies, produced by U.K. sustainable clothing business I Dress Myself.
“We love to partner with cool people, cool companies and cool organizations who are trying to make a positive difference,” says Lemieux, a self-confessed “hippy Deadhead” who has worked for the legendary California-formed group for 25 years and been a follower of English football since the late 1990s, when he studied in the United Kingdom and would regularly attend matches.
Courtesy of Warner Music and Forrest Green Rovers.
Financial terms of the deal with Forest Green have not been disclosed, although Lemieux describes it as “not a huge money-maker for anyone.” (The most expensive clothing item on sale in the Forest Green online store is a “Grateful Dead Lightning Hoodie” featuring the green skull motif that costs around $75.00.)
For custodians of Grateful Dead — which officially disbanded in 1995 following the death of guitarist and songwriter Jerry Garcia but has continued to tour in various incarnations, most recently as Dead & Company, featuring original members Bob Weir and Mickey Hart — the tie-up with Forest Green is the latest in a vast and ever-growing line of merch and licensing deals helping keep the Grateful Dead brand alive.
At present, the band has deals with more than 100 merch partners and more than 750 products on sale in over 50 territories, spanning everything from water bottles to cosmic mushroom foraging tools to camping equipment to Grateful Dead-branded skis and snowboards, as well as an extensive range of t-shirts and clothing.
Historically, the bulk of those merch deals have been with companies in North America, Grateful Dead’s biggest market for touring and record sales. But Lemieux says he’s now seeing an increasing number of licensing offers come in from Japan, England, South America and other international territories.
“Brand awareness is growing and it’s growing fast in the international markets,” says Lemieux. He credits Warner Music’s licensing teams in New York and England for working hard to find “best in class” partners.
“At the heart of everything Grateful Dead do is sustainability, so when we work on projects for them, whether it’s a multi-million-dollar deal or a small project, they need to know about its sustainable nature,” says WMX licensing and record retail account director Alex Mitchell, who oversaw the merch deal with Forest Green Rovers.
Courtesy of Warner Music and Forrest Green Rovers.
Mitchell says the season-long partnership with the club (with an option to renew next year) is one of several licensing deals WMX are working on to “make the Grateful Dead story better known” in the United Kingdom and Europe beyond “just being a cool band t-shirt.”
Sports and music brand tie-ups are, of course, nothing new, and Grateful Dead has struck similar deals in the past (the band famously sponsored Lithuania’s cash-strapped 1992 Olympic basketball team and more recently held one-off brand partnerships with various baseball, basketball and ice hockey clubs in North America). But Forest Green marks its first real foray into the world’s most popular sport.
The deal comes at a time when soccer’s profile in the United States continues to climb, especially among young Americans, fueled by the arrival of global superstars like Lionel Messi to Major League Soccer and the crossover success of Apple TV+’s Ted Lasso and the hit FX series Welcome To Wrexham, which documents the fortunes of Wrexham A.F.C (who play in the same league as Forest Green) and its Hollywood actor owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney.
A year in to Spotify’s partnership with FC Barcelona and the music streamer and leading European soccer club are now focused on evolving the sponsorship deal to create “cultural moments” through sports and music collaboration.
“One year ago, we said this would be more than a partnership because we like to say that Barça is more than a club and that’s important because it’s our motto but also important when it comes to partnerships,” says Sergi Ricart, chief marketing and revenue officer, FC Barcelona. “It’s been a pioneer strategic partnership. The engagement of new audiences with the club and the engagement that the content we created has seen, it’s been massive.”
The deal — touted as a new way for the streaming giant to amplify artists across the globe — spans four seasons for team shirts and three seasons for training shirts. It will also rebrand FC Barcelona’s Camp Nou stadium as Spotify Camp Nou, following an extensive redevelopment project that’s scheduled to be ready for the 2024-2025 season. The partnership kicked off with two major artist campaigns featuring Drake‘s OVO and Rosalía‘s Motomami logos, respectively, on the Blaugrana team jerseys. Rosalía’s logo was the first to be featured on both the men’s and women’s teams home kits as part of the partnership.
Following the unveiling of Rosalía’s match kit on March 15, searches for “Rosalía” and “Motomami” on Spotify increased by over 100% globally and by nearly 200% in Spain (compared to searches on March 14), according to the streaming company. Moreover, in the hour after the El Clásico match ended on March 19, global streams of Rosalía tracks climbed on Spotify in multiple markets globally, including Egypt where the tracks saw a more than 220% boost, 170% in Morocco and almost 70% in Nigeria.
“Rosalía’s El Clásico match kit drove streams and awareness because that match has two or three times more global eyeballs than the Super Bowl. These artists are getting fully integrated campaigns and it’s stuff that is enormous in marketing value,” explains Marc Hazan, vp partnerships, Spotify.
Now, with the partnership in its second year, artists such as Anitta and Fuerza Regida have visited the training facilities for the making of the Barça on Tour summer playlist . And, during the team’s stop in L.A. on July 26 for their match against Arsenal, Daddy Yankee toured the Spotify studio with Barcelona players in tow where he showed them a behind-the-scenes-look at his recording process. Additionally, the partnership will support artists on the LED boards during the Barcelona matches while on the U.S. tour.
“We’re creating a cultural moment and for the club it’s so important,” adds Ricart. “We humbly think that we’re the biggest global sports brand but how can we move into a cultural brand and with the support of this partnership we are moving that way.”
Following its more than 20 global activations during the 2022-2023 season, Hazan is looking to tap into different markets immersing in different genres. “This is a long partnership for Spotify, we’re very invested,” he says. “It’s fair to say that football and music are two great passions, so to combine the two is something pretty unique and when you have Barcelona, arguably one of the biggest clubs with a massive following, you’re in a position where they want to partner heavily and there’s a full set of music rights available, that doesn’t come up every day.”
A New York state appeals court has sided with Jay-Z in his long-legal battle against a fragrance company called Parlux over a cologne endorsement deal that went bad.
In a ruling issued Thursday, a panel of appeals judges upheld a 2021 jury verdict that cleared the superstar of wrongdoing and potentially $67 million in damages. It also affirmed a judge’s ruling last year that it was actually Jay-Z, and not Parlux, that was owed money — nearly $7 million in unpaid royalties.
“There were multiple rational bases for upholding the jury verdict, and plaintiffs have not set forth a sufficient basis … to overturn it,” a five-judge panel ruled unanimously.
Barring further appeals, the decision could finally mean the end for more than six years of litigation over “Gold Jay-Z,” a cologne brand that the superstar, whose real name is Shawn Carter, launched in 2013 through a partnership with Parlux.
In its 2016 lawsuit, the company accused the rapper and his S. Carter Enterprises of failing to properly promote the brand, breaching his contract and dooming the product to failure. Jay-Z quickly countersued, claiming he had fulfilled his obligations despite numerous missteps from Parlux – and that the company still owed him money.
After a three week trial in late 2021, featuring heated testimony from the star himself, jurors largely sided with Jay-Z and found that Parlux was entitled to nothing. Then in August, New York Supreme Court Justice Andrew Borrok ruled Parlux owes Jay-Z $6.78 million in unpaid royalties, including interest.
Seeking the overturn the verdict on appeal, attorneys for Parlux argued that the trial judge had improperly instructed the jury about requirements in the contract about Jay-Z’s personal appearances and the need for Parlux to provide a “product development plan.”
But in Thursday’s ruling, the appellate panel was unmoved: “The court correctly instructed the jury on the burdens of proof, and any error in characterizing the notice requirement for personal appearances and the PDP as ‘conditions precedent’ was harmless when considering the overall instructions.”
Parlux can still challenge the outcome once more, taking the case to the Court of Appeals, New York’s top appellate court. An attorney for the company did not immediately return a request for comment.
Ozuna and Coors Light join forces and kick off their newest campaign Ritmo Chill. In the spirit of the beer brand’s slogan “Made To Chill” — which is on par with Coors Light’s aesthetic of the Rocky Mountains — Ozuna heads towards the icy route but gives his newest song some heat with the tropical-laden single, “Chill Conmigo,” written and produced by the artist himself.
The visual follows the Puerto Rican-Dominican star in an office setting who’s ready to break free and go on a quest for chiller moments. So he climbs to the peak of the Rocky Mountains and discovers a loaded Coors Light cooler. “Yo solo busco un ambiente para vacilar con mi gente,” he sings against a joyous mix of Afrobeats and calypso pop. “I’m just looking for an environment to hang out with my people.” Then the scene transitions to the Ozuna enjoying himself at a spring break-styled pool party.
“Ritmo Chill is a musical program focused on helping consumers eliminate daily pressures by relaxing with good music and a cold Coors Light,” said consumer excellence senior manager, LatAm, Yaidi Clery in a statement. “The collab with Ozuna is a dream partnership because they both embody that spirit of taking things easy and letting go with good vibes. Just like Ozuna, Coors Light is ‘made to chill’.”
Although Coors Light Latin America soft launched Ritmo Chill last year, which also includes a series of five playlists on Spotify titled “Chill with Friends,” “After Work,” “Beach Chill,” “Pool Time,” and Chill Vibes,” it’s the first time the division launches an original song and video with a Latin powerhouse performer for their campaign.
Ozuna, a global reggaeton and Latin trap hitmaker, is a five-time No. 1 chart-topper on Hot Latin Songs. He has landed on the Top Latin Albums with all of his five albums, including two No. 1s, and has reached the Billboard Hot 100 twenty times to date with hits like “Taki Taki,” “Te Boté,” “Monotonía,” “Criminal,” and more. In December, Ozuna performed live at the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 closing ceremony.
Adidas says it is investigating allegations of inappropriate workplace conduct by the rapper formerly known as Kanye West that ex-employees made in an anonymous letter also accusing the German sportswear brand of looking the other way.
Adidas, which made his Yeezy line, cut ties with Ye last month over his offensive and antisemitic remarks after facing pressure to follow other brands and companies in ending partnerships with the rapper. It said it expected to take a hit of 250 million euros ($246 million) to its net income this year from the move.
Ye was suspended from Twitter and Instagram over his remarks but has been back tweeting this month.
Rolling Stone has reported that it spoke to more than two dozen former Yeezy and Adidas workers and obtained a letter from several former Yeezy employees to the sportswear company alleging that Ye created a toxic work environment by showing sexual photos and videos in meetings, making vulgar comments and bullying the people who worked for him. All the former employees spoke to the magazine on condition of anonymity.
The letter accused the company of knowing about the problematic behavior and failing to protect employees.
“It is currently not clear whether the accusations made in an anonymous letter are true. However, we take these allegations very seriously and have taken the decision to launch an independent investigation of the matter immediately to address the allegations,” Claudia Lange, head of media relations for Adidas, said in a statement Friday (Nov. 25).
She said the company was not sharing more details about the investigation for now.
Ye’s last known music and personal representatives didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment.
Adidas also addressed Ye’s previous remarks that led the company to sever its relationship with him, saying Friday that it “does not tolerate hate speech and offensive behavior and therefore has terminated the adidas Yeezy partnership.”
“We have been and continue to be actively engaged in conversations with our employees about the events that lead (sic) to our decision to end the partnership,” Lange said in the statement. “They have our full support and as we’re working through the details of the termination.”
The company, which named a new CEO this month in a sped-up timeline for a power transfer, said it owns the rights to product designs except for the Yeezy name and is developing plans for what to do with existing inventory.