A seventh-tier London football team has secured sponsorship from a tech giant as investment in women’s sport continues its rapid growth.
Camden Town WFC, who play in the Greater London Women’s Football League, have struck a sponsorship deal with Adobe which has opened countless doors, both commercially and competitively.
When club chairman Richard Mahoney was approached by the American software developers, who are responsible for creative programmes such as Photoshop, he could scarcely believe his luck.
He said: “When I first joined the club, I used to have to bang on pub doors to get £200 worth of sponsorship revenue to buy the boots and socks we needed.
“Four years later you have one of the biggest companies in the world banging on our door wanting meetings with us, asking us what they can do to help with our ambitions and our plans.”
For brands, there is a tangible benefit to investing in women’s sport.
A recent study conducted by sport business company Sport Industry Group (SIG) found consumers think overwhelmingly positively of businesses invested in women’s sport.
SIG’s 2025 Sport Industry Report, a comprehensive report on the health of the sport industry, found 72% of sports fans believe sponsoring women’s sport reflects well on brands.
An even greater proportion feel that brands should invest more in women’s sport (75%) and the media should do more to promote it (74%).
While the WSL remains domestic football’s flagship competition, its boom in popularity has been felt equally at grassroots level.
Adobe became the Women’s FA Cup title sponsors in 2023 and initially approached Camden Town with the intention of making a documentary covering their 2024/25 Cup run.
The company also agreed to supply the club’s kit for the season, an eye-catching blue and pink design incorporating a map of Camden.
The kit is also among the first to be manufactured specifically for female players, which Mahoney believes highlights Adobe’s commitment to their project.
As Camden push for a third promotion in as many seasons, business is booming off it. Their documentary series Field of Dreams garners hundreds of thousands of views per episode, giving the club crucial brand visibility.
For Mahoney, Camden is going from strength to strength both on and off the pitch, setting two attendance records and improving average attendance by 55%.
The partnership is a two-way street – in exchange for their support, Camden produce content promoting Adobe Express, a consumer video and photo editing app.
Mahoney said: “We are still not anywhere near where we need to be, but we are punching way above our weight when it comes to things like that when it comes to things like that, whether its social media views, likes, comments, attendance at games, retail revenues we get from merchandise we sell, all that kind of stuff.
“That is due in no small part to Adobe coming on board.
“It has to be win-win. What we do for Adobe is equally as good for their brand as it is for ours.”
He believes that the partnership between Camden and Adobe has set the standard for sponsorship at non-league level, and has already seen rivals attempting to imitate Camden’s content style.
Mahoney said: “We always look sideways at our rivals whether its teams in our league or above or below us. They have clearly seen what we’re doing and are posting quite similar stuff.
“You can recognize the wording we use in our posts, and its nice because its complimentary. Everything improves as a result of that.”
With such a bright future in women’s sport, Mahoney hopes more companies will see Adobe’s example and follow suit.
He said: “Most sensible economists point to women’s sport becoming a billion-dollar industry anywhere between 2030 and 2032.
“We are about to see this January the first million-dollar transfer in the women’s game, and the numbers are just going up.
“Relative to men’s football the numbers are quite small, they aren’t massively impressive, we aren’t shouting from the rooftops about them, but what is impressive is how quickly they have grown.
“I would expect a lot more bigger brands, especially ones that are female led or really want that kind of exposure and eyes on women’s sport to be jumping on the bandwagon at rapid rates.
“Adobe are the first of many and I see it mostly in the next five or six years, as we get closer to the 2030’s that is where the bigger numbers will start to hit.”
Camden’s existing deal with Adobe may only be for this season, but with another promotion not unlikely, it is hoped the partnership will develop into a long-term project.
Picture credit: Martin Suker Photography
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