Yahoo News Aston Villa kits and badge: Everything we know after adidas and crest teased with one word
How do you make an adidas Aston Villa shirt even better? Stick a Champions League sleeve patch on it.
This is the most exciting time to be a Villa supporter for a long time; wherever you look there's something to get giddy about. As the season draws to a close, it's time fans turn their attention to the pre-season tour, summer transfers, in Villa's case, opponents in next season's Champions League and, of course, the new kit range.
Villa's kits will be manufactured by adidas from next season after Nassef Sawiris - who owns around seven per cent of the German company - and Chris Heck struck an agreement last year. The deal is reportedly worth multi-millions of pounds for the men’s and women’s teams, and the academy.
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Villa all but confirmed the new deal when they took to social media in the aftermath of Sunday's 5-0 dead rubber defeat at Crystal Palace to offer a tease.
They showed an image of what is likely to be the new lion and shield crest, with three lines at the bottom. .The caption was a single word 'Tomorrow'.
adidas
Kit manufacturer sponsorship revenues have been combined with total merchandising revenues to provide as good a measure of club popularity as any, and adidas will hopefully help take Villa into a global market in the years to come.
During his successful reign at the Philadelphia 76ers, Heck tapped into fashion, art and culture to increase the franchise's visibility. They collaborated with Nike to make exclusive shoes, which were given to influencers after they had been to games, and that pushed millions of social media users towards the NBA franchise.
The Sixers now have one of the largest season ticket bases in the NBA, and more than 15,000 fans on a season ticket waiting list. The franchise’s valuation was under $300m when Heck first arrived, now, it stands in excess of $3bn.
Villa's move to link up with adidas came after complaints from playing staff earlier this season about ‘wet-look’ Castore shirts.
"What we’ve done in 11 months, we’ve cleared up a lot of, let’s say, not great contracts," Heck said at SportsPro Live 2024. "We have reinvented ourselves. We will be launching the next generation of our brand, coming up in a few weeks.
"We have doubled our front-of-shirt deal, plus we have doubled our sleeve deal, plus we have doubled our kit deal. I haven’t been talking much because honestly we have been working to get this accomplished and now it’s time to share that the big six, who we are chasing, quite frankly we are ready to kick the door down."
Newcastle United will also swap Castore for adidas from next season and they alongside Villa shall join an elite stable of clubs. UEFA's recent European Club Finance and Investment Landscape report outlines exactly that and the financial bonuses which could come Villa's way.
Kit manufacturer sponsorship revenues have been combined with total merchandising revenues to provide, in UEFA's own words, 'probably as good a measure of club popularity as any' and adidas are the supplier for nearly half of the sides in the top 20 in 2023: Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Manchester United, Arsenal, Juventus, Ajax, Celtic and Leeds United.
The list comprises all the dozen teams with the highest total revenues in 2023, as well as a number of other huge clubs in Eintracht Frankfurt, Galatasaray and Fenerbahce. This is a significant move and there can be no doubt that adidas will help take Villa into a global market in the years to come.
Celtic raised £29m in kit and merchandising revenue alone, which represented nearly a quarter of the Scottish giant's overall turnover, while Leeds recorded a similar figure in 2022. Villa, in contrast, will now rebuild their own retail operations as part of the club's upcoming deal with adidas.
Sponsorship
Heck, now tasked with building Villa as a major global brand and increasing the club's revenue streams, has also overseen a £40m sponsorship deal with Betano.
The Greek online betting platform will be the most lucrative front-of-shirt sponsor in the club’s history. The Betano deal is set to run for two years until 2026 when the ban on gambling companies on shirt fronts comes into effect.
Back in December, UEFA added Betano as a global sponsor of this summer's 2024 European Football Championship. The betting firm will also sponsor the next two editions of the Copa America. Betano currently feature on the shirts of Portuguese clubs FC Porto and Sporting CP, as well as Brazilian clubs Atletico Miniero and Fluminense.
"Those [big three] deals are massive," Heck told Villa TV. "We're really excited about getting those deals going in the summer, and we'll have a foundation to build on this business with those sponsors. As we add on more sponsors, we add on more nuances with the stadium and premium seating and merchandising.
He added: "It'll take a lot of time, a lot of effort and a lot of changes as we grow our business. We use the analogy with FFP that we have a train which is the football side, and a train on the business side. The train on the football side is going lightning fast and that's a good thing. The business side has to catch that train. We're working around the clock trying to do sponsorship deals, changing the stadium to be beneficial to Financial Fair Play, find new revenue streams, take in our merchandise in-house and things of that nature.”
Crest
Merchandising is a huge factor which will help Villa increase revenue and also become an attractive proposition to more fans on a global scale.
Villa closed their club shop after Monday night's Premier League clash against Liverpool "to allow a considerable schedule of works to commence ahead of a multi-million-pound project that will transform our club store and double its size."
Coming back to Heck's comments about launching "the next generation" of Villa as a brand leads us to the new crest. Like the deal with adidas, the new crest is also no big secret. The outline of it can be seen on the wall of the former Stumps building on the Witton Lane.
The new crest and the deal with adidas were also teased on the big screens at Villa Park during half-time of the match against Liverpool.
