22 01732 759725 Brentford FC, with delivery by its MSP partner LittleFish; CSCM – Technology Partner of Ipswich Town FC; Focus Group – a longstanding partner of Brighton & Hove Albion, currently the Platinum Lounge sponsor (see below); FPT – a Vietnamese IT services company aiming to raise its profile in the UK and globally as the Sleeve Sponsor of Chelsea FC; GreenIP – a communications platform provider and Premier Regional Partner for Bournemouth; KCOM – the Hull-based communications provider and Hull FC Official Community Partner; N-able – the Official Cyber Security Partner of Manchester City; NTT Data – Arsenal’s official Digital Transformation Partner; Orion Innovation – the Official Digital Transformation Partner of Liverpool FC; and Temporal – an open-source platform for building reliable applications and the new Front of Shirt Sponsor at Crystal Palace. So, what are some of the names to look out for this season? Here, in alphabetical order, is an incomplete list of some of the brands you can expect to see adorning shirts, pitches, stadia and concourses in the FY26/27 season. Acronis – a cybersecurity partner for a number of sporting outfits including Premier League football is back, after a long summer of …er football, and with it the chance to spot some familiar names around the grounds and on the shirts of the players. There are many reasons why one might want to sponsor a Premier League football club, from global brand recognition to local community engagement, and plenty of ways to get involved. You don’t have to be the shirt sponsor. Commercial and community partnerships offer more affordable options that still attract a sprinkling of stardust and the chance to entertain customers and prospects. Even being an official supplier, the most common form of engagement for technology companies, has its benefits. Technology companies and football clubs are natural bedfellows. All eyes might be on the the action on the pitch, but both club operations and the fan experience are ultimately dependent on technology, be it reliable broadband and networking infrastructure, eye-catching large format displays, digital transformation for CX and efficiency or cybersecurity for keeping everything protected. Tech businesses sponsoring Premier League football clubs this season Spot the sponsor SPONSORSHIP Maintaining Focus Ralph Gilbert, Co-founder & Director of Focus Group, outlines the trajectory of the company’s evolving relationship with Brighton & Hove Albion 1. When did your relationship with Brighton begin? Our relationship with Brighton & Hove Albion goes back 20 years, starting with a small board at the Withdean Stadium. The partnership accelerated when we became shirt sponsors in 2010/2011 and deepened further when the club moved to the Amex Stadium in 2011, where we became their stadium IT and WiFi provider. 2. What type of sponsor are you? We’re Platinum Lounge sponsors (sponsoring the Focus Group Lounge) and the club’s official telecoms and IT partner. This continues into the 2026/27 season under our new agreement with the club. 3. Why did Focus Group choose to partner with Brighton, and what did you hope to achieve from the sponsorship? Brighton & Hove Albion is part of our identity – our customers know us as big Brighton fans. We wanted to use the partnership to entertain clients through hospitality, gain regional exposure, and bring the Focus Group brand to life through a club with real history and strong community values. 4. How has the partnership benefited Focus Group? It’s given us a huge level of regional exposure and strengthened our brand identity across Sussex and beyond. We use match-day hospitality to entertain clients, and sponsoring the Focus Lounge since the 2022/23 season has created new brand visibility and commercial opportunities. 5. Are your technologies or services used directly by Brighton, and how has Brighton benefited? Yes – we deliver the club’s telephony, IT, secure network infrastructure and stadium WiFi. We were the first company to install stadium WiFi at a football club, and did it at speed, setting up and logging in from the car park outside the stadium. This matters because mobile signal is notoriously poor at the Amex when 30,000 fans are in for a match, so our free guest WiFi is a key part of the fan experience. Every fan who logs on sees ‘powered by Focus Group’ – something we get a lot of positive feedback on. 6. What’s been the highlight of your partnership so far? Over the last 20 years, we’ve used our expertise in digital transformation to improve the way Albion engages with fans by harnessing the power of highperformance connectivity to deliver free stadium WiFi, deployed a secure network infrastructure and implemented a future-proof telecommunications solution. More broadly, seeing the club’s exponential growth at the Amex underpinned by technology we’ve delivered behind the scenes has been hugely rewarding. Focus Group has a long-standing relationship with Brighton & Hove Albion
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