Lions front-of-shirt sponsor Howden: Who, how and why?

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March 24, 1973. The date believed to be the first occasion a sports team exhibited a front-of-shirt sponsor – a phenomenon synonymous with professional competition these days, of course.

Eintracht Braunschweig, now a second division football club in Germany but then a Bundesliga one, partnered with alcohol manufacturers Jägermeister on the date above in a match against Schalke 04.

Sketchy evidence does exist of an American football club named Fall River Rovers, on a one-off occasion, playing in February 1887 with Hargreave Manufacturing Company Rovers on their shirts – a small blurb in the Newark Evening News on February 23, 1887 describing so – but in concrete terms, events in Lower Saxony nearly a century later changed things forever.

In the UK, seventh-tier football club Kettering Town were the first sports side to have a shirt sponsor, doing so in January 24, 1976 as Kettering Tyres was emblazoned on jerseys in a match against Bath City.

The FA immediately banned such an arrangement but relaxed the directive a year later, with Liverpool becoming the first top-flight club to have a shirt sponsorship deal in 1979, joining up with Hitachi.

By the 1980s shirt sponsorship snowballed and evolved to become common practice in football, and so the rest of the sporting universe would ultimately follow.

Very often a talking point for viewing fans, front-of-shirt sponsors over the decades of sport’s explosion in popularity have become intrinsically linked with a team’s most memorable moments: highs, lows and everything in between.

Sport evokes emotion and passion, as do jerseys – the sponsors of which remind sports fans of glory in years gone past.

This summer, as the British and Irish Lions tour Australia, their front-of-shirt sponsor is Howden – a global insurance intermediary group founded in 1994.

Sports fans will see Howden across the torso of Lions captain Maro Itoje and his team-mates over the next three weeks and on kit worn by head coach Andy Farrell in the stands during what is sure to prove a pulsating Test series against the Wallabies, exclusively live on Sky Sports. Many may be asking: Who? How? Why?

Sky Sports caught up with Brigitte Trafford, Howden’s group chief corporate affairs officer, to learn more.

“It’s really interesting to start with ‘who’, because when I first joined Howden there was a lot of concern that actually one of the unintended consequences of our sponsorship would be that we’d sell a lot of kitchens…

“It’s been one of my jobs to make sure people actually realise it’s Howden Insurance and not Howdens the kitchen company.

“Who is Howden? Howden is an insurance intermediary and we help individuals through to large multinationals with all of their insurance needs.

“We’re basically what they call a full spectrum insurance broker.”

‘A founder who broke his back playing rugby at 17 – we started as three people and a dog’

A company now growing year-on-year, three decades ago the beginning for Howden was rather more humble.

Indeed, according to those at Howden HQ, the fourth member of the original team was of the canine variety.

“We started 30 years ago as three people and a dog,” Trafford reveals.

“Today we have 22,000 people working in 56 countries, with 10,000 across each Lions nation in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

“We’re the second largest employee-owned business in the UK. Everyone’s heard of John Lewis and the partnership model, but we’ve got something similar: 30 per cent of the equity is owned by our people.

“That, I think, really reflects our culture and how we do business, because it’s our business. We’re not just working for a business.

“Sponsorship has to resonate with the business that you’re doing.

“We see a lot of similarities between what the Lions are doing – the talent, the teamwork, the ambition – and what we’re trying to do.

“Our founder, David Howden, he actually broke his back when he was 17, playing rugby. Although he doesn’t play anymore, he’s still really passionate about it and believes in it.

“For us, it was also about really creating a legacy for the future. We’ve done a lot to make sure we put our name on the shirt and we’re enormously proud of that, but for sponsorship to be effective you can’t just put your name down and walk away. You have to earn the right.”

In terms of what that looks like, Howden have made sure to undertake a proactive approach at community and grassroots levels in rugby.

The company has supported 576 Lions origin clubs through commemorative plaques and organised rugby boot exchanges in several high street branches. School sponsorship, meanwhile, has been extensive.

“We’ve done a lot with the grassroots game in rugby, with the Melrose Sevens and the Rosslyn Park National Schools Sevens,” Trafford says.

“We’ve been really keen to make sure that schools from disadvantaged backgrounds can participate. We want more people playing rugby, but we also want women and girls to participate more.

“From the very beginning, it has been made very clear to me that an important part of this sponsorship was that we would sponsor the first ever Women’s British and Irish Lions tour in 2027.

“The number of girls in the Rosslyn Park Sevens has grown from 200 to 2,000, with 86 female teams oversubscribed for 2025. That’s really good, but we want to make it more accessible, more enjoyable, and actually leave something behind.”

Already sponsors of Ascot Racecourse, major horse races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, the Emirates GBR SailGP Team with Sir Ben Ainslie and the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA), Howden appear a company intent on remaining involved in world sport.

Not only that, Trafford says they want to do so with an out-of-the-box and, at times, quirky element to them.

“At Howden we pride ourselves on having a different approach and so in our activation with the Lions I wanted it to be fun and distinctive, and for people to know we’re insurance and not kitchens.

“Things like May 8 and the unveiling of the mural. It’s something no one else would do: street artists to write up the names of the squad in real time.

“It really captured everyone’s imagination: The Lions, Sky Sports, our ambassadors. That image went everywhere.

“It’s not just about having the logo, it’s actually how we show up.

“In terms of our Sky Sports idents on the coverage, it’s very funny and tongue in cheek. You know, let’s not be a serious voice about insurance. The response has been terrific.

“But we are also working with sporting governing bodies and grassroots athletes. We arrange insurance for 10,000 sports clubs globally across all sports and for over six million athletes around the world.”

When the Lions walk out to face Australia for the first time since 2013 at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane on Saturday, Howden will become just the seventh front-of-shirt sponsor for one of sport’s most famous institutions.

The uniqueness of that fact and this opportunity isn’t lost on those at Howden.

“We’ve been very conscious that it’s a great honour to be on the Lions shirt, and it’s a privilege. It’s not something we take lightly. You have to be respectful and make the most of it,” Trafford says.

“We want fans, our customers and the Lions themselves to feel proud to have us as a partner as opposed to just a name on a shirt.

“Internally, people are very excited. In all the photos and the media of the Lions, it’s got our name and it’s very prominent. People are feeling really proud of that.

“Wouldn’t it now be wonderful if the Lions won?”

British and Irish Lions tour of Australia on Sky Sports

Sky Sports will exclusively show the 2025 British and Irish Lions tour of Australia, with all three Tests against the Wallabies and seven warm-up matches to be shown exclusively live.

Howden Insurance – proud principal partner and front-of-shirt sponsor of the British and Irish Lions. Find out more here.

This news was originally published on this post .

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