Inside the booming kit launch business: It used to be a single photo – now it’s Ozzy Osbourne, Zidane, Vieira, 60-strong production teams and six-figure fees
Ozzy Osbourne holds his phone close to his ear and waits for the answer. ‘Hey Geezer!’ he shouts. ‘Let’s play Villa Park!’. ‘As long as I play left wing,’ replies Geezer.
Not a promotional video for a Black Sabbath homecoming gig, but the launch of Aston Villa’s home shirt for the 2024-25 season. With 1970 hit Paranoid providing a backing track, Geezer — real name Terry Butler and the band’s bassist — shows up in the home dressing room and asks if he should play through the middle or on the left. Emi Martinez reacts with a double take of which George Clooney would be proud.
For the unveiling of their away kit on August 16, Villa played their next trick: Ozzy’s wife, Sharon, officially opening the new club shop. In a short video, she brandishes a pair of blue Adidas football boots and bellows ‘I’ve found his Preds!’
Meanwhile in Madrid, Patrick Vieira, Zinedine Zidane, Alessandro Del Piero, Bastian Schweinsteiger and Rio Ferdinand, football A-listers if ever there were some, chill around a swimming pool at a swanky hotel all wearing new Adidas third kits of their respective former clubs.
Welcome to the world of the football kit launch in 2024. The days of Tony Adams or Alan Shearer posing, military-style, in their new club shirts belong to another era. It’s analogue TV, with its five channels, versus modern digital and streaming services.
The business of football shirt launches has changed, with many legends now involved
Former Manchester United star Rio Ferdinand was involved in the club’s kit launch
It is a colossal operation that is years in the planning, often involves television and film production companies and where the costs can run into six figures. Indeed, Mail Sport has learned that one leading Premier League club spent more than £500,000 on this year’s edition.
The rewards are clear. Just look at the numbers: Villa’s video has had a staggering 4.4million views on X and 175,000 on YouTube, and more than 17,900 likes on TikTok and 66,000 on Instagram. That brings its own money in. And the tills are ringing in the shops, too, with a UEFA study finding that revenue from kit sales had increased by up to 60 per cent from 2019 to 2023.
‘The kit launch industry has grown exponentially on the back of exponential growth in the price of football shirts,’ says football finance expert Kieran Maguire. ‘In the football calendar, kit launch day has become a bit like the day the fixtures are released.
‘The football and entertainment industries have realised there is a crossover there. Look at Ed Sheeran — he sells lots of Ipswich shirts during his tours. Manchester United have had a range of clothing in the style of the Stone Roses. There is a symbiotic relationship there.’
Clubs probably put as much thought into what next season’s kit will look like as they do into who will be their next left back. Listening to creative directors discuss the process, you could be forgiven for thinking they are speaking about the latest Damien Hirst exhibition, or new ranges at Paris Fashion Week.
Director and photographer Thomas Van Kristen, who oversaw Chelsea’s launch, told the club’s social media channels: ‘We wanted to push creative boundaries and I think with the right team and the creatives around it we really achieved something that is quite outstanding.
‘When it comes to the shoot, we were blending different techniques to show the different stages of passion taking form.’
Every launch starts with the design process and at most top-flight clubs, not only will next season’s design have been decided, but the one for 2026-27, too. Often that is more than two years from the first sketches to the slick launch video.
Aston Villa used Ozzy Osbourne to help promote their new home kit for this season
Ed Sheeran’s popularity has helped Ipswich Town to sell a significant number of kits
At most clubs the approval process will involve several key executives, with up to 30 or 40 people involved, before ultimately being signed off by the owner. The club’s retail department and the chief operating officer will contribute and sometimes the front-of-shirt sponsor and sleeve partners, too — though there is a danger of too many cooks spoiling the broth.
‘If you change kit provider, everything tends to be a lot bigger,’ explains one Premier League executive. ‘In those circumstances, the planning for the kit launch will start around Christmas but then really start to ramp up afterwards, building steadily towards the end of May and June.
‘With the more ambitious launches, you might have 50 or 60 members of a production team working on a video — especially if it’s a bigger supplier like Adidas or Nike.
‘With the smaller suppliers, the clubs will largely be left to their own devices in terms of ideas for the launch video. In the case of Nike or Adidas, their teams will have very specific ideas about what they want.’
The main objective of these launches is simple: sell as many shirts as possible. Yet if that were the sole aim, clubs and suppliers could achieve it just as effectively by spending far less.
The kit is no longer just an item of clothing. It is a vehicle for a fan to feel even more connected to their club, and videos that tickle the funny bone or tug at the heart strings are a key part of that. ‘Manufacturers are losing money on the big kit deals,’ points out Maguire. ‘Adidas might lose money in terms of an actual kit deal, but what they know is that it will drive traffic to shops.
‘A fan might go to the shop and buy not only their team’s new kit, but a pair of Adidas trainers as well. It’s a loss leader.
‘For the launch videos, clubs will often try to get a famous person who’s also local, because often they won’t charge them much money. They’re looking for someone who would like to be seensupporting their local club.’
Manchester City used a clever launch video involving Paul Dickov for their new kit
As the focus on kit launch videos has sharpened, so has the rivalry between marketing teams at various Premier League clubs.
Everyone wants to know what everyone else is up to and as soon as a new shirt hits the market, the WhatsApp groups come alive. They may not admit it publicly, but they’re all looking for a pat on the back from a contact at another club, or someone working in sportswear marketing. It is the sign of a job well done.
Particularly popular this summer has been Manchester City’s ‘Dickov’s Nightmare’ production, in which former City striker Paul Dickov dreams that he missed, rather than scored, in the 1999 Division Two play-off final against Gillingham. Admiring glances have also been shot at Manchester United and their ‘away day’ theme to celebrate the launch of their blue away shirt for the forthcoming season.
‘For the past four or five weeks most clubs have been launching at 8am on a Thursday or Friday, so one of the first things I’ve been doing those days is checking my social media and having a look,’ explains one marketing official.
‘There are internal WhatsApp groups at every club and you’ll be pinging around the videos of the different launches, making observations about the bits you like and the bits you don’t. In the last three or four years it feels like the whole thing has really grown. This year was bigger than last year and it will keep rolling on.’
The football kit is no longer just for kicking a ball about or going to the game. It is a piece of history, with many clubs stocking shirts from the 1990s or 2000s in their club shops — often from eras where the club were less successful than they are now. It is a way to tie the current generation to what their parents or grandparents might remember, and to bring those days back to life.
They are fashion items, too. Look at the collaboration between Paris Saint-Germain and Nike’s Jordan brand, or the Juventus-Adidas partnership. These are shirts designed to be worn not just on the pitch, but on the street.
This trend is led by the manufacturers: spend a few minutes on your local high street and you’ll see teenagers wearing ‘Air Jordan’ caps and T-shirts — originally popular in the 1990s at the height of basketball star Michael Jordan’s fame.
Wolves broke club records in 2020 with a maroon kit when they several Portuguese players
The holy grail for clubs who partner with Adidas is the ‘trefoil’ logo. Usually reserved for trainers and casual wear, to mark their 75th anniversary Adidas allowed five clubs from their ‘A band’ — Arsenal, United, Bayern Munich, Juventus and Real Madrid — to use it on their third kits.
The manufacturer united Zidane, Del Piero, Vieira, Schweinsteiger and Ferdinand in a single image to celebrate the occasion — again, at significant cost. Ferdinand even released a video on his YouTube channel, which has 1m followers, of the story behind the kit launch.
Football shirts, then. History, fashion, and international travel.
A ticket to the rest of the world. Clubs like Madrid, Barcelona and United have conducted launches simultaneously on different continents.
As Maguire admits: ‘People are suckers for buying unusual kits’ and with their third shirts, clubs are trying to reach people who might otherwise know little about them. During Raul Jimenez’s time at Wolves, the club produced a green third shirt — a nod to Jimenez’s national side, Mexico.
For the 2020-21 season, Wolves went for the maroon of Portugal, at a time when the club had several Portuguese players. It broke multiple club records within 24 hours of going on sale. These can even appeal to customers with only a passing interest in football.
‘People buy stuff now when they come into the store and admit they don’t know who these big teams are,’ Josh Phillips, who works at Classic Football Shirts in Manchester, has said. ‘There’ll be Benfica, Newcastle or Hamburg and they’ll say I love the look of this one, it’s so vintage.’
Yet behind the snappy marketing slogans, overwrought launch videos and bizarre third kits lies a simple truth: football shirts are expensive. Premier League clubs charge the better part of £100 for them and those prices are unlikely to drop any time soon.
They can get away with that because of the lasting appeal of the home shirt. From the red of United, Arsenal and Liverpool to the claret and blue of West Ham and Villa, from the white of Tottenham and Leeds to the blues of Chelsea, Manchester City and Everton, every supporter feels an affinity with their club colours.
And if these clubs can persuade Black Sabbath or Ed Sheeran to bring those shades to life, so much the better.
