Hello and welcome to the Sports Pundit Newsletter,
It’s been a hot week across the UK and today’s lead story is focused on hot coral, the colour synonymous with Monzo.
Monzo holds approximately 39% of the digital banking market in the UK, but has had limited presence in sport. That changed this week with the announcement of their partnership with The Hundred. Here’s what their limited track record tells us about what to expect.
Here’s what’s coming up:
Monzo Becomes Official Banking Partner of The Hundred 🏏
Tennis Australia Partners with the PGA TOUR for Presidents Cup ⛳
USTA Launches Inaugural Connect Innovation Challenge 🎾
Let’s get into it!
FINTECHS IN FOOTBALL
Monzo has signed as Official Banking Partner of The Hundred, with the deal expanding from 2027 to include presenting partnership of the Player Auction, marking the digital bank’s most significant sponsorship commitment to date.
Physical assets include branding across all eight Hundred venues, sponsorship of the Decision Review System on live broadcast, and fan engagement activations at the Eliminator and Final, operating at competition level and clear of franchise inventory where established financial brands like Barclays already hold positions.
All eight Hundred franchises are now under new ownership structures following a centrally-run sale to overseas investors, bringing new team identities and the first ever player auction for both men and women.
It arrives off the back of Monzo and Coventry City winning Gold for Sponsorship/Partnership of the Year at the 2026 Football Business Awards, external validation for a model that treated a shirt deal as a product channel rather than a logo placement.
Monzo continues as front-of-shirt partner at Coventry for 2026/27 as the club returns to the Premier League, meaning both partnerships run concurrently this season at different scales.
Why It Matters
Monzo has built one of the UK’s most recognisable consumer brands through digital channels and viral stunts. Sponsorship had never been a significant part of the model, which is what makes this announcement interesting.
Two years ago they made their first and only move until now, a fairly under-the-radar deal with Coventry City in the EFL Championship. This is about to pay off hugely with new-found Premier League exposure as Lampard’s men topped the league this year but beyond picking the right horse, how they went about it is very illustrative.
Beyond the obvious points about brand awareness on broadcast channels and physical presence for a digital bank, Monzo has been smart in the way it has incorporated its product directly into the partnership.
The bank ran a number of campaigns last season, each tied to something Monzo’s product could already do.
Their cashback offer ran for nearly two months from August 2025 and gave Coventry fans 10% back on eligible transactions with the club, covering kits, matchday food and drink, and tickets. Over that period, fans received more than £28,000 in cashback, a great example of a sponsorship putting money directly back into the hands of the people it is supposed to serve.
Other initiatives included launching a Sky Blue app icon that fans could download, a striking hot coral away shirt (matching their famous card), and most notably a 1p shirt campaign giving anyone opening a Monzo account the opportunity to purchase said kit, framed around how small daily savings compound.
The results were pretty strong. 32,000 users engaged with the cashback offer, 68,000 downloaded the app icon, and away shirt sales rose 45%.
Crucially, none of this was pushed broadly across Monzo’s entire customer base. It was opt-in, available to the community that cared, which means Monzo customers with no interest in Coventry City were never asked to. This is important, particularly in a sport with as much tribalism as English football, and is often something that puts brands off.
The Hundred, operating without such club allegiances, is a cleaner environment still. It is cross-gender, family-oriented, spread across eight venues in England and Wales, and built around the younger, digitally engaged audience Monzo most wants to reach.
Their bet is that what worked for a tight local community in Coventry can scale to a multi-venue competition across seven cities in England and Wales. Their confidence in doing so will have been (rightfully) bolstered by two seasons of quietly getting the model right first. I’m excited to see how it plays out.
GET YOUR TICKETS NOW
On July 10th, we’re bringing together executives from Spotify, Snapchat, Substack, England Rugby, The FA, and Livewire at Victoria Road, home of Dagenham & Redbridge FC, for Sports Pundit’s first Football Media Summit.
Six panels across the afternoon explore where football, media, gaming, and the creator economy are actually heading:
How Can Gaming Be Leveraged for Good?
Do Creators or Clubs Own the Football Audience?
How Are Clubs Turning Digital Audiences Into Direct Revenues?
How Are Football and Gaming Rewriting Fan Engagement?
How Are Leading Sports Organisations Embracing Innovation?
What Does Streaming Mean for Football’s Commercial Future?
Confirmed speakers include Kahlen Macauley from Snapchat, Alexandra Adey from Spotify, Arthur Guisasola from Substack, Rob Gevertz from England Rugby, Tori Horobin from Livewire, John Grabowski CEO of Dagenham & Redbridge, Harry Hugo of Farnham Town FC, and musician Avelino, a former guest of the Sports Pundit Podcast. Further speakers to be announced.
Gates open at 4pm. Six panels from 4:30pm. A World Cup Quarter-Final watch-along kicks off at 8pm if you want to stay on.
Tickets are £12, with profits going to gaming charity SpecialEffect.
SUPPORTED BY DIZPLAI 📲
Your biggest fans are invisible to you. Here’s the proof…
The channels that give you the most reach give you the least data. The Anonymous Fan Index, Dizplai’s benchmark study, proves it.
Ticketing is the richest source of fan data, cited by 67% of respondents. Membership and loyalty programmes came in at 48%, social media at 41%. Broadcast audiences, where most organisations have their greatest reach, are the hardest to convert. 67% said broadcast viewers were their most anonymous fan group.
Supertri’s Chris Williams knows the commercial consequence of that. Relying purely on broadcast numbers, he says, leaves you exposed on your sponsorship proposition.
The Anonymous Fan Index sets out what closing that gap looks like. Download it free and use the Fan Revenue Calculator to put a number on your own opportunity.
HIGHLIGHTS
Tennis Australia to deliver 2028 Presidents Cup at Kingston Heath Golf Club ⛳
Tennis Australia has partnered with the PGA TOUR to handle the operational, experiential, and commercial delivery of the 2028 Presidents Cup in Melbourne, covering ticketing, sponsorship, hospitality, fan experience, and broader event operations, drawing on its expertise running the Australian Open.
The deal is the first major project under Tennis Australia’s newly established events enterprise, designed to commercialise its world-class event delivery capability beyond tennis, with proceeds reinvested back into growing the sport domestically.
USTA launches inaugural Connect Innovation Challenge, giving startups access to US Open data 🎾
The USTA has launched its first Connect Innovation Challenge, giving builders, startups, and engineers access to real USTA and US Open datasets to develop solutions that can help grow the game, with a $10,000 grand prize and the chance to pitch at the US Open itself.
The initiative, championed by USTA Board member and Cartan Capital founder CiCi Bellis, is a direct attempt to connect tennis with the wider technology and startup ecosystem, applications are open until 3 July.
Chelsea FC partner with AI legal platform Legora in multi-year deal ⚖️
Chelsea FC have announced a multi-year partnership with Legora, an AI platform for legal professionals, with the brand featuring on the sleeve of training kits across the men’s, women’s, and Academy teams.
The deal is another example of an AI-native business using top-flight football sponsorship as a credibility and visibility play, Legora joins a growing list of enterprise AI companies entering sport through kit and stadium inventory.
M+C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment appointed as global PR agency for BOSS and HUGO 👔
Hugo Boss has appointed M+C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment as global PR agency of record for both its BOSS and HUGO brands, covering key markets including the UK, US, and DACH region across sport, fashion, art, and culture.
The appointment builds on Hugo Boss’s existing portfolio of high-profile sports and cultural partnerships, including the Australian Open, Laver Cup, Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team, and Art Basel, and signals an ambition to deepen its positioning at the intersection of fashion and sport.
System of a Down launch official fan stores across five European cities for sold-out stadium tour 🎸
System of a Down are opening official fan stores in Stockholm, Paris, Berlin, Düsseldorf, and London between 27 June and 16 July, timed around their sold-out European stadium tour and the 25th anniversary of their album Toxicity.
The stores will stock exclusive merchandise including a football kit collaboration with sportswear brand hummel, city-specific vinyl pressings of Toxicity, and commemorative posters, a considered fan experience built around scarcity and local identity rather than generic tour merch.
SPORTS PUNDIT PODCAST
On today’s episode of the Sports Pundit Podcast, I’m joined by Jada Balster, CMO at Perk.
Jada is a B2B marketing leader with more than 20 years of experience across companies including Epicor, S&P Global, and Adobe. Today she leads marketing at Perk, the all-in-one travel and spend management platform formerly known as TravelPerk.
In this conversation, we explore how B2B marketing has evolved from a demand generation discipline into a brand-building function, and why Perk recently embarked on its biggest ever marketing investment through a company-wide rebrand. We discuss the role sport can play in accelerating brand growth, including why Perk selected the Audi Revolut Formula One team as its first major sports partnership, and how the company plans to stand out as Formula One continues to get noisier for incoming brands.
Timestamps
02:00 - Jada’s Career Journey
04:00 - TravelPerk Becomes Perk
06:00 - Rebrand Rollout and Metrics
10:00 - Why Sport and F1 Fit
15:00 - Choosing the Audi Partnership
24:00 - Integration Beyond the Logo
27:00 - Activating Across Channels
34:00 - What’s Next for Perk
🔍 Search ‘Sports Pundit Podcast’ wherever you listen, available on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube 🎧
Andy Marston is the founder of Sports Pundit, a community and media platform for sports and technology executives. Through a weekly newsletter, podcast network, lively group chat, and regular social events, he shares industry analysis and connects leaders across the sector. Alongside Sports Pundit, Andy leads Corporate Venture at athlete-backed venture firm, The Players Fund, where he works with high-profile sports IP such as Como 1907 to design venture strategies and drive innovation initiatives.
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