![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Guinness.png\")
Long gone are the days when Guinness\u2019s only sporting association was with rugby.<\/p>\nLong gone are the days when Guinness\u2019s only sporting association was with rugby.<\/p>\n
Since 2024, the Diageo-owned stout has been building foundations in football, kicking off its Premier League partnership at the start of 2024\/25 football season before signing deals with Arsenal, Newcastle and Aston Villa for their men\u2019s and women\u2019s teams last summer.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s so far paying off for the brand, which had risen to become the number one beer in the football viewing occasion in the on-trade in Great Britain, according to Alcovision data from March 2025.<\/p>\n
But if consumers were asked where Guinness would show up next in football, they may not have guessed it would be as the front of shirt sponsor for Bristol City Women, a club playing in the second division of women\u2019s football, WSL2.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the first time in three decades that Guinness is on the front of a UK football shirt.<\/p>\n
However, the opportunity to partner with Bristol City presented \u201creally interesting, different ways into culture,\u201d for the brand, Jamie Brooks, sports partnerships lead at Guinness, tells Marketing Week.<\/p>\n
Extending further in football<\/p>\n
The deal was turned around in just a few months, making it, from Brooks\u2019 perspective, \u201cthe fastest turnaround in getting a partnership contractually done\u201d and highlighting the \u201cexcitement and interest\u201d from Diageo.<\/p>\n
The brand has seen an increase in football partnership propositions since signing its deal with the Premier League in 2024, so why go for Bristol City? \u201cSometimes the energy feels right. The ambition and the shared ambition for the partnership felt right,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Guinness has entered football \u201cin a very confident way,\u201d he says, but the brand is cautious of only appearing at the highest echelons of the sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne thing we were very conscious of is that when we look at the world of rugby and how established Guinness is within rugby, we don\u2019t just operate at the top level,\u201d explains Brooks. \u201cYes, we\u2019ve got the title sponsorship for the Six Nations, but we also operate all the way through several tiers of rugby.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s \u201creally important\u201d for the brand to do the same in football, he says, and the Bristol City partnership presents an opportunity to extend into women\u2019s football \u201cin a really meaningful way\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe headline is obviously the front of shirt,\u201d says Brooks, particularly as there\u2019s increased interest in appearing on players\u2019 chests at the moment with upcoming legislation around what brands can appear there.<\/p>\n
While he admits it\u2019s a \u201creally interesting\u201d deal that will allow Guinness to \u201ctest out\u201d a channel it hasn\u2019t used in decades, the real pull was \u201cthe other elements of the partnership that were on the table\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cGuinness doesn\u2019t have a problem with visibility and awareness,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019re having a really incredible run at the moment in that sense. But what we\u2019re really striving to do and looking to use sports as a platform to do, is drive meaningful connections with fans.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are the tangible metrics that we\u2019re all measuring, but I think it\u2019s that intangible magic that we\u2019re still getting our heads around.<\/p>\n
Jamie Brooks, Guinness<\/p>\n
Plus, the South West is an important commercial region for the brand. To help on this front Guinness is also donating partnership assets to local trade, \u201cparticularly female-owned local trade\u201d among other activations.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s great to see Guinness on a front of shirt. We\u2019re really excited by that. But that\u2019s just one element of the overall partnership proposition that got us excited,\u201d Brooks explains.<\/p>\n
Mercury13, an independent multi-club ownership group investing in women\u2019s football, took a majority stake in Bristol City last September, allowing it to spearhead investment, infrastructure and commercial opportunities.<\/p>\n
The group\u2019s chief revenue officer, Lindsey Eckhouse, says the Guinness partnership highlights \u201cthere\u2019s really a lot of value in investing in women\u2019s sport outside of eyeballs\u201d, beyond the number of people watching each match.<\/p>\n
Men\u2019s football deals typically focus on audience and reach. Selling deals in women\u2019s sport is \u201creally different\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the big opportunity, what\u2019s the role a brand like Guinness can truly, authentically play? When it comes to culture, rituals, engaging the local community and beyond that,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
For Guinness, the brand\u2019s \u201cstrongest\u201d work is when it\u2019s \u201ctelling an untold story,\u201d says Brooks. This is where the \u201cmagic of football\u201d comes in, he says, pointing to its \u2018Liberty Fields\u2019 campaign from 2019 as an example, which told the story of Japan\u2019s first female rugby team.<\/p>\n
Measuring investment in women\u2019s football<\/p>\n
Brands investing in both women\u2019s and men\u2019s sport often measure the ROI differently, given the different stages of advancement.<\/p>\n
For Guinness, the brand is \u201cstill designing what that model looks like\u201d for measuring success.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re very lucky that we are able to measure a direct ROI on site through all of the sport work we do,\u201d says Brooks.<\/p>\n
In rugby, you\u2019d be hard pressed to go to a game without drinking a pint of Guinness or Guinness 0.0, he says. \u201cOur ambition is to look to replicate some of that success within football, and become part of the ritual.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s the tangible data points the brand can measure with its investment in women\u2019s football. But there\u2019s also \u201cintangible\u201d success measures that are harder to track, he says.<\/p>\n
It could be a metric the brand hasn\u2019t landed on yet, or something it could \u201csubjectively feel\u201d it\u2019s achieving, laddering up to \u201cbeing a credible part of culture within women\u2019s football\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are the tangible metrics that we\u2019re all measuring, but I think it\u2019s that intangible magic that we\u2019re still getting our heads around. What does success really look like for us on a deeper level?\u201d<\/p>\n
Eckhouse adds that in women\u2019s football, measurement is \u201cbeing developed across the board\u201d.<\/p>\n
It still gets compared to the men\u2019s game, despite being a \u201ccompletely different product, consumed very differently by fans,\u201d she argues. \u201cSo being in stadium isn\u2019t necessarily the right measure of fandom in the women\u2019s game.\u201d<\/p>\n
What makes this partnership exciting, she adds, is that there\u2019s \u201ca lot of innovation\u201d the two parties can do to bring it \u201cto life, together\u201d.<\/p>\n
Guinness wants to be \u201cbuilding by design,\u201d adds Brooks, rather than taking a \u201ccopy and paste\u201d approach from the men\u2019s game.<\/p>\n
Regarding the future of Guinness\u2019s sport sponsorship activity, and whether the brand will start showing up on the front of more football shirts, Brooks say it\u2019s focus is on how it can knock the partnerships it already has \u201cout of the park\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe easiest thing to do in this job is just to say yes to everything. I think it\u2019s much harder to actually focus on properly activating and leveraging the assets and the partnerships [we have],\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Long gone are the days when Guinness\u2019s only sporting association was with rugby. Since 2024, the Diageo-owned stout…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483331,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-483330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}