Everton FC link up with Angry Birds for sleeve sponsorship

The Premier League has been underway for a few matches now, and there have been a couple of league-wide kit changes to take note of if you’ve been following the action.

For starters, there’s a new name and number font for the kits. Personally, I’m a big fan of the change as it looks more like something you’d see on an athletic jersey instead of something that’s just printed on because it looks nice. I’d say that this was a solid upgrade on the part of the league.

Another new wrinkle is the addition of sleeve sponsorships. While not every team has taken advantage of yet another way to make money off of advertising, there are a few teams who have done so. Manchester City, Chelsea, and Stoke City are the first clubs that come to mind in this regard, but the team who has the most interesting sponsorship of all has to be Everton.

The blue representatives of Merseyside actually linked up with Rovio Entertainment, which is the video game company that was responsible for unleashing Angry Birds upon our world. As such, Rovio and Everton decided to put the Angry Birds logo on their shirt. Again, not the company’s name itself, but the game that the company is famous for. Okay, then.

As you could imagine, the response to this partnership could generously be described as “mixed.” There were plenty of fans who found it strange and disappointing that a mobile phone game had made its way onto the shirts of their beloved football club, and also plenty of fans who were just disgusted by the idea of ad logo creep now making its way onto the sleeves.

However, there were still fans who took it in stride and even the Angry Birds official Twitter account decided to roll with the internet punches that they received.

Still, what do you all make of this? How would you feel if your favorite sports team decided to go this particular route when it came to sponsorship? How long will it take until we see some NBA team linking up with Candy Crush?