ExpressVPN talk Spurs sponsor deal, Brooklyn Nets and esports
Tottenham Hotspur are facing the loss of a key sponsor next season, with ExpressVPN possibly “taking a break from the Premier League” as their two-year deal with the relegation-threatened club comes to an end.
The deal, signed in 2024, concludes this month with Spurs hovering just above the relegation zone. The north London club or West Ham United will join 23 other clubs in next year’s Championship in the coming weeks.
“We’re evaluating all of our opportunities with them, possibly with some other folks,” Zac Eller, general manager of global partnerships at ExpressVPN, told CityAM. “Possibly taking a little break from the Premier League and looking at some other opportunities.
“We’re always testing and learning and trying to see where we can have maximum impact”.
Asked whether the digital firm would back Spurs in the second tier, Eller said that he wouldn’t want to cross that bridge until they knew, insisting he didn’t want to jinx the team. But he said that the partnership has been a “valuable opportunity to engage a large global audience”.
From Spurs to motorsport? Think again
ExpressVPN look to be exiting live sport, with a future Tottenham deal seemingly unlikely and a recent one-year agreement with racing driver Robert Shwartzman not renewed.
“We had never done anything in motorsport,” Eller said. “We wanted to top-dip and you’re not going to do that with an F1 partnership.
“It was a great opportunity. It allowed us to better understand how we can activate in motorsport. There’s a lot of partners and sometimes it is a little bit hard to cut through.”
Eller added that they wouldn’t get involved with Formula 1 for the sake of it, instead evaluating potential partners individually.
ExpressVPN’s largest live sport activation is with the Brooklyn Nets – the Joseph Tsai-owned NBA team based out of 19,000-capacity Barclays Centre – where it is part of a tidal wave of digital firms making moves into US sport.
Eller said the deal aligns with the brand due to the target demographics in New York City, while the US more widely is being seen as an attractive market for the firm that counts the likes of NordVPN – whose founders own UK basketball team London Lions – as its rivals.
ExpressVPN is optimistic about future value in esports. The likes of the Riot Games and G2 Esports may be foreign entities to many but there has been a mass migration of the younger demographic from traditional sport viewership to gaming.
Many sports have affiliate gaming leagues while competitions can see winners earning millions.
Esports pivot
“I don’t want to opine on the future of esport because I’m not the expert there,” Eller said. “But we know that over 40 per cent of hardcore gamers playing these multiplayer games and watching esports are using a VPN when they’re gaming – for privacy, for security, for performance.
“We’re able to reach these big audiences but they’re also very much of a great audience fit, and we’re able to work with teams and games and tournaments and players that are probably more open to doing stuff with us that is not just a traditional player appearance or event activation. We can have a little bit more fun.”
In a sponsorship market where challenger banks, AI, and tech organisations are looking to surge into relevance, it is interesting to see a firm focused on online privacy actively picking where to be – and choosing to chase a new audience over an existing one.
“There’s a lot of our competitors that are literally sponsoring every football team no matter what the league, no matter how big they are,” Eller concludes. “For us, it’s about carefully choosing partners, making good decisions, and investing in those partnerships.”