👕 Castore: The £100m British brand
Castore are in the middle of an aggressive push to partner with some elite sporting organisations. This week, we unpack the growth.
What do Lando Norris (Formula 1 Driver), Jason Holder (West Indies Cricket Captain) and Andy Murray all have in common?
Any guesses?
Well, the answer is they all apply their trade wearing Castore - a British premium sportswear brand projected to turn over £100m this year after only 6 years of operation.
Castore is Headquartered out of Manchester and is founded by two brothers, Philip Beahon, 29 and Thomas Beahon, 32.
Philip used to play for Lancashire Cricket Club and Tom used to play for Tranmere Rovers before both moving to London to work in finance.
After raising a £3.5m round in 2018 which brought Robert Senior (CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi) and Arnaud Massenet (investor in Net-a-Porter) to the cap-table, they went on a tear signing a series of impressive sports partnerships.
March 2019: They announced a very bold 8-year sponsorship deal with Andy Murray paying him £1m/year for 8-years and a significant stake in the business
December 2019: They announce a 3yr deal with West Indies Cricket to be their exclusive kit supplier
This then led to a further £7.5m fundraise in late-2019 adding a raft of unnamed investors to the table.
Since then? The growth hasn’t stopped.:
May 2020: Castore announce a 5yr/£20m deal with Rangers, being their kit supplier
November 2020: Castore replaced Adidas as the kit supplier for Wolverhampton Wanderers paying £1m/year
December 2020: Castore replaced Nike as the kit supplier for Saracens Rugby Team paying £200,000/year
March 2021: They announce a multi-year deal with McLaren to be their supplier for all McLaren gear
There are more too. This summer every England Cricket player will wear Castore. Every GB Tennis player will wear Castore and from September, Sevilla and Bayer Leverkusen will use Castore as their exclusive kit supplier.
There has not been a British clothing brand with such aggressive growth in decades.
It’s high-end, but the founders have engineered that by design.
“We need to have world class athletes wearing our products on a global stage. And we need for that to happen consistently”
That’s a quote from Phil Beahon, Castore’s Co-Founder in November 2021.
Revenue numbers are hard-to-find but in 2019, Castore were projected to make £15m in revenue. In 2020, the revenue projection was £37m.
This financial year, the projected revenue is £100m.
They are well on their way to illustrious success.
Away from high-end sport, look out for their exclusive collection with Reiss. Some of their pieces are fresh af!
🎽 Manchester United have entered the blockchain space by announcing a very lucrative sponsorship deal with Tezos. Tezos will pay Manchester United £20m/year for the next six years to sponsor their training kit. United’s previous deal was £15m/year for 8 years with AON which came to an end recently.
📺 Future, a digital fitness company which pairs members with fitness coaches and tracks your workouts through smartwatches raised a £55m Series C funding round this week. The round was led by Private Equity firms but also saw some athletes joining the cap table. Kevin Durant was involved in the round (of course), but so too was Rory McIlroy. I have written about Rory’s vast growing investment portfolio here.
🎮 The SuperBowl is coming in the next few weeks. Last year, CBS managed to sell all their advertising units and sought $5.5m for a 30-second ad slot. This year? NBC have revealed that it has sold all advertising slots across the entire match breaking new revenue records in the process. They indicated that they were able to sell some 30-second advertising slots for as much as $7 million!
Big business.
I leave you this week with one of the best conversations I’ve watched in months. Ariel Helwani is in my opinion, one of the best sports journalists in the world and this week he had Eddie Hearn on his weekly show.
In just 35 great minutes they discussed:
If UFC fighters are underpaid
Typical percentage splits Hearn and Matchroom acquire with their fighters
The Fury and Whyte Purse Bid
Anthony Joshua “stepping aside”
Jake Paul ensuring Katie Taylor making £1m for her upcoming fight
+ more.
Brilliant conversation about the business behind combat sports from the best promoter in the game.
I’ll see you next week.