BROOKLINE, Mass. – An amateur soccer team’s pact with an adult tube site has turned out better than the team could have imagined.
Without a doubt, adult entertainment destination RedTube wanted to create a stir when, in 2016, it offered to sponsor Washington Square Football Club (“football club” in the European sense). The all-male team, whose members range in age from 22 to 29, jumped at the opportunity.
In fact, they instigated the deal. According to British tabloid The Sun — which thrives on controversy and turned the team into an international sensation with its coverage a year after the contract was signed — the guys proposed the idea to RedTube via Twitter during a night of semi-drunken revelry. They thought the idea a great joke.
RedTube took them seriously, providing striking scarlet-and-white jerseys emblazoned with a Nike swish and the name “REDTUBE” in gigantic letters that span each man’s chest armpit to armpit. There’s no mistaking who sponsors the team.
“It’s a bit odd to have it and some people think it’s controversial, but let’s be real here: It’s a men’s league club and we have done something that is unique,” team captain Jon Klippert told the American Pyramid blog, which picked up the story from The Sun and another U.K. publication, the Mirror.
Evidently, the union of porn and soccer is quite titillating to the Brits.
In addition to supplying snazzy uniforms, RedTube also covers some equipment costs and field fees.
“We’re amateurs,” Klippert told the Boston Globe, a latecomer to the controversy. “We’re not paid professionals, and we’ll get some revenue. Now my guys don’t have to pay money, which is what my goal was.”
Klippert said although the team did discuss potential negative reaction in the community, ultimately members decided a porn sponsor was no worse than any other frowned-upon commercial entity.
“Sure, there are going to be people frowning upon what we do, and I respect that,” he told the Globe. “But some people use gambling websites [as sponsors] and some frown upon that.
“[Porn isn’t] something we believe in or that we’re trying to force on people,” he added. “It’s a name on a shirt, and that’s a revenue stream. That was more important to us.”
The revenue stream has turned into more of a small river. The team established a website to sell branded merchandise including singlets, hats and jerseys, and sales exploded.
“I have people that I’m shipping jerseys to in Malaysia, Australia, all over Europe,” Klippert said. “What we’re doing is shining a light on something that people don’t pay attention to, and that’s amateur soccer.”
Not all soccer teams have experienced such success with a porn sponsorship. Last year in England, University of Kent’s Rutherford Raiders football club was told it would be banned from campus if it wore uniforms emblazoned with Pornhub’s logo after securing a sponsorship from the tube site.
