Wasabi Scores Big with Liverpool Football Club

When Wasabi officially launched for business in 2017, I could have never imagined how quickly we would become the company we are today, just five short years later. Multiple funding rounds, A-list customers and partners, being an answer on Jeopardy last year, and now an aggressive global expansion into London, Paris, APAC, and more, have propelled Wasabi from a cloud storage challenger to a legitimate worldwide brand.

Nothing cements that more than our most recent achievement – we’re proudly the Official Cloud Storage Partner of Liverpool Football Club, the strongest brand and the most followed team in the world’s biggest domestic sports league, with 1.12 billion followers globally (Brand Finance, Nielsen). Additionally, with 19.1 million online followers based in the US, it has a larger following than any individual team in the NFL or NBA (Global Web Index).

The global branding opportunity that comes with partnering with Liverpool FC is immense for Wasabi – something I’m very excited about from a marketing perspective. As Liverpool FC deepens its ties in the U.S. via Fenway Sports Group and looks to supercharge its status as a digital disruptor leading all of professional sports, Wasabi does the same in the UK and other global markets by partnering with LFC and working on exciting activations with the help of our Fenway Sports Management Consulting support team.

So, how did we get here? Let’s dive a little more into our thinking behind the opportunity, value and vision of this partnership.

As a company we’ve really started to think about how to expand our brand quickly through association with sports and entertainment. After all, professional sports sponsorship is powerful because it gives businesses a unique connection with millions of engaged consumers around the world at an emotional level.

Tearing a page out of the B2C marketing playbook isn’t new for us. Since day one, we’ve conducted B2C style marketing in a B2B world to engage with customers, partners, and prospects on a personal level – from our Nate campaign to high-profile sponsorships like this one with LFC, to our very own name – in order to reach people where they are. What better way to capitalize on the emotional connection between sports teams and consumers than to partner with one of the most prolific and influential sports clubs on the continent?

Yes, you will see Wasabi signage in place at Anfield Stadium, but this partnership is not just for marketing splash – it simply makes good business sense.

Sports — all sports, really — are driven by data, from the fan experience to analytics that influence in-game strategy and player development to archive game footage. That data needs to be stored somewhere and easily accessible for those who need it. That’s where Wasabi comes in.

Wasabi already counts many professional sports franchises from five major sporting categories as our customers, so this is a natural and fun extension of our brand. LFC is at the forefront of sports’ digital revolution – always looking for ways to innovate and enhance the technology they use and fully recognizing the importance and value of their data as mission critical to the future of club operations. We look forward to supporting them in this mission.

The announcement of this partnership is an historic moment in the evolution of the Wasabi brand and will be a game-changer in the trajectory of our company. Not only does Liverpool Football Club have a fanbase and global reach that is second to none, but the club is also driven to be a technology trailblazer in a data-driven sports world. We’ve officially graduated from the startup world and have cemented our status as a visionary global company taking the world’s most revered organizations to new heights. I think I can speak for all of us at Wasabi when I say that we’re looking forward to many memorable and exciting opportunities to come alongside the biggest sports brand in the world.

YNWA!