Angry Birds, Modern Football, and New Everton

Let me get a few things out of the way before I continue.

1. I don’t think the Angry Birds logo looks great on the sleeve of Everton’s kits.

2. These new Angry Birds characters based on Everton players look creepy.

3. Despite all that, I love this for Everton.

People complain about modern football day in and day out, but let’s be really honest: the reason people all over the world can watch the best players on earth as regularly as they can is because of the huge money in the modern game.

Being able to extend your brand to new areas is how a club gets bigger, especially when its own country is as football-saturated as England.

It is no accident that the three first Angry Bird characters based on Everton players are three of their most internationally recognized stars (pending Richarlison leading the EPL in scoring this year and Jordan Pickford leading the league in clean sheets).

Gylfi Sigurdsson is known around the world for his exploits in the Euros and World Cup with Iceland, Cenk Tosun is hugely popular in Turkey, and Theo Walcott is a long term mainstay in the English Premier League and has 47 caps with the English national team.

This move pushes the Everton brand further across the globe, something the ‘Big Six’ in England have already achieved. To match them on the pitch we need to match them on the business side of things, and success on that commercial basis will benefit the club, its local fans, and the community it serves so well.

When a club’s relationship with its sponsors is not just one where they promote the sponsor but the sponsor turns around and furthers their brand as well, it is a sign of a very well-run club from a business perspective. This is good to see from Everton, even if it doesn’t keep us from having nightmares over Angry Bird Theo Walcott staring into our souls: