Why does Watford leave adidas to sign with Kelme?

The Watford Football Club has informed adidas that it will decline the option to renew the technical sponsorship contract for the 2020-21 season and is ready to sign a four-year contract with Kelme, a Spanish brand that already wears Alavés, Espanyol, Hércules, Huesca, Rayo Vallecano and other teams in Argentina, Algeria, Bosnia, Egypt, Portugal, South Korea, Russia, Serbia and especially China.

The Pozzo family, owners of the English club since 2012, are not new to solutions that only superficially can seem irrational and inexplicable. Behind the choice to entrust the technical supply to an emerging brand and certainly less appealing than a giant like adidas, there is foresight, there is planning and above all there is a development plan that Watford wants to put into practice . It is not the first time that we have seen such a choice: several clubs have already decided to abandon the brands that cannibalize the market to have among their sponsors young projects that can give their best even if the company is not called Juventus, Real Madrid or Manchester United.

Throughout history, the technical sponsors of Watford have been really many: Umbro, Bukta, Hummel, Mizuno, Le Coq Sportif, Diadora, Joma, Burrda, Puma, Dryworld and adidas. From 1974 to today, the troubled history of the technical sponsors of the English club has been long and full of hitches. The new agreement, however, will bring about £ 10 million (11.3 million euros) in the Hornets' coffers in 4 years, unlike the 750,000 that adidas guaranteed on an annual basis also with the extension of the contract. The economic reason is certainly important but it is not the only one.

One of the reasons that pushed Watford to become the first English team to wear Kelme is the brand's ability to be recognizable especially in the Asian markets. Being a Premier League team and being recognized - and consequently selling - in such an important market segment is an occasion that Watford's management has evaluated very carefully. Kelme has become a famous brand thanks to the sponsorship of China League One and League Two (the second and third Chinese series) and collaborations with teams from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, South Korea, Vietnam and Bhutan . The strong link with China, therefore, could in absolute value have more importance than the 2.75 million euros that Kelme will pay each year to the Watford coffers.

The Hornets want to become the most important brand in Kelme's expansion strategies and the choice of having a partner with less coat of arms allows the British to leverage the championship in which they play. Having Kelme and not adidas allows a club to have personalized marketing campaigns, to have concepts for the most innovative and non-standard kits. Ultimately, moving from a high-sounding brand to an average brand is not always negative, neither in economic terms nor in terms of planning.