At the start of March, Premier League clubs Everton, Aston Villa, Sunderland and Leeds launched strikingly similar ranges of Irish-themed merchandise.
Each referenced a special relationship with the Emerald Isle, offering evidence in the form of a past player turned kit model. James McCarthy, Paul McGrath, Niall Quinn and Ian Harte took turns posing in front of gold-framed images of former glories, club badges and celtic insignia.
Green, white and gold jerseys (€64), windbreakers (€75), tracksuit tops (€75), quarter-zips (€70), T-shirts (€41) and caps (€26) were made available on each club’s website and in physical stores in the UK, accompanied by slogans like “the emerald heart of Sunderland” and “Ireland’s mark on the Toffees”.
It was the work of Fanatics, a digital sports platform worth more than $25 billion that specialises in kit and merchandise manufacturing, collectables (such as trading cards) and sports betting. The company has a betting and gaming division based in Dublin, though that side of its business is only operational in the US.
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“I can see why they’re doing it,” says Martin Prendergast, club chairman of the Republic of Ireland Soccer Supporters’ Club in London. “I’m a big collector of Irish football shirts and merchandise and things like that ... It’s actually quite nice stuff.”
Prendergast says that each of the featured clubs has strong, bona fide links to Irish football, but criticises the homogeneity of the products on offer and what he sees as “no imagination”.
“This range, the fact that four teams have done it and it’s all the same kind of stuff, it wouldn’t appeal to me,” he says. “If I was a supporter of one of those clubs, I wouldn’t buy one. I wouldn’t want to be standing in the pub, and someone goes, ‘He’s got a Leeds top on ... Oh actually it’s not, it’s the Villa one ... Oh actually, it’s the Everton one.’”
As a Manchester United fan, no amount of product variation would have enticed Prendergast to invest in this particular campaign. He would like to see something similar tailored to his own club, but “would want it individual to Man United”.
“Irish United would be brilliant,” he says. “I think it’s a fantastic concept, so the idea’s right. But it’s just making them individual. Don’t just stick a badge on.”
Liam Murray of You Boys in Green (YBIG), another Irish football supporters’ group, says the product design is “excellent”, adding that “YBIG have created some of our own jerseys and tops so we know how much work and effort goes into it”.
Overall, Murray says he is neutral on the Fanatics products, believing they will mostly cater to Irish people living in the UK and will have “no impact whatsoever on Irish football”.
“Five hundred thousand people identify as Irish and live in the UK and around six million people have an Irish granny or grandad,” he says. “That’s why they create these jerseys, as it’s a big market.”
Ciarán Jordan, the vice-president of marketing at Fanatics International, is from Belfast and oversaw the St Patrick’s Day campaign. He echoes Murray’s point on the diaspora, and says the multiclub angle offered a “really rich territory to dig into the dichotomy of being an Irish fan, being of Irish descent even, in England and the notion of home”.
Fanatics carried out a similar promotion last year, launching a collection of Irish hoodies and tees with Everton, but by involving four clubs this time, Jordan says they “had to persuade [them] to set aside some of their own rivalries, [given] they’re competing day-in and day-out, and come together around a common Irish story”.
He does not dispute that the merchandise looks similar across the different clubs. Jordan says it was deliberate, and that Fanatics “really tried to lean into that and make that commonality a central plank of the whole offer”.
“We don’t shy away from that. In fact, that’s really a seminal part of the concept,” he says. “The fact that whether you’re a Mackem or whether you’re a Toffee, you’re Irish. That’s why we brought that together as one campaign, and told one story – the story of ‘closer to home’.”
The company partners with five Premier League clubs and over 50 worldwide, but decided against including Chelsea in this campaign. Jordan says they were focused on finding concrete Irish connections in terms of player history and fandom.
These items of clothing are likely to infiltrate some of the wider arenas that have become overrun with football shirts in recent years. Jordan acknowledges the trend of “blokecore” and expects the St Patrick’s Day items to be seen at festivals and concerts this summer.
Kits and merchandise have become big topics of conversation in domestic Irish football, largely due to the success of Bohemians’ model, which has incorporated collaborations with big-name artists and the promotion of long-standing club values to great effect. It has not escaped Fanatics’ attention.
“We’re very conscious of it,” Jordan says. “The marketing agency that we’ve used on this is the same agency that Bohemians use. We had this campaign developed and created in Dublin.
“We’re very conscious of the different trends that are going on in Ireland. In fact, this is a bit of a personal passion project to bring through because we’ve got so many Irish people in the business driving it.”
Neither Prendergast nor Murray is overly critical of the prices set for the merchandise, suggesting that they are in line with the general cost of gear in football. As a separate point, Prendergast bemoans the cost of Irish national team jerseys; replica kits for the men’s and women’s teams are priced at €105, which he sees as a missed opportunity.
“If Ireland qualify for the World Cup, I want to see every kid in Ireland be able to afford the Ireland kits and wear those shirts,” he says.
