Why am I seeing Guinness everywhere in football?
Guinness’s recent surge into club football, with new deals expected in quick succession with Arsenal and Newcastle United, follows their 2024 appointment as the Official Beer Sponsor of the Premier League. These aren’t isolated moments of opportunism, but part of a much broader, deliberate brand strategy. What we’re witnessing is Guinness using football as a platform to embed itself deeper into cultural rituals, both locally and globally.
The stout brand’s current approach to the league mirrors, in some respects, what Carling once achieved with the League Cup in the 2000s: becoming synonymous with a competition through repeated visibility and emotional familiarity. But Guinness are aiming wider: not just one tournament, but the game itself, via the clubs it's composed of.
A strategic fit
YouGov data from September 2024 shows Guinness outperformed its rivals in brand favourability across key demographics, including 41% of men and 37% of women, ahead of Peroni and Kopparberg. Among Premier League fans, their “Consideration” score jumped to 25%, above other leading beers. With Budweiser exiting the Premier League partnership, Guinness seized a £40m opportunity not just to fill a sponsorship gap, but to recalibrate its public image, appealing to younger, more diverse, and globally distributed audiences.
In this context, Guinness’s choice to back both Arsenal (as their southern flagship) and Newcastle United (representing the north) feels surgically targeted. Each club brings with it a distinct culture, regional identity, and loyal base. Events like Guinness pints adorned with the faces of Shay Given and Shola Ameobi during Newcastle’s pre-season tour in Asia highlight the brand’s willingness to tap into localised fan nostalgia without needing to dilute its global footprint.
Moving through the sporting world
This isn’t new ground for Guinness. The brand has long used sport to reinforce its proclaimed values of tradition, community, and resilience. Its historic association with rugby, particularly the Guinness Six Nations, has made it a near-ubiquitous presence on that stage. But football represents a more crowded, more commercially volatile space. That’s part of the challenge and the opportunity.
Guinness are aiming for resonance and awareness on a large scale. Rather than outspending competitors on sheer exposure, it’s building multi-layered relationships across league, club, and supporter levels, ones that may yield longer-term brand loyalty.
So, if you’re wondering why Guinness keeps turning up at football grounds near you, it’s not by chance. It’s a strategy, one pint at a time.
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