Bristol City, Bristol Bears rugby, and the Bristol Flyers basketball team all have a new shirt sponsor: Huboo.
Bristol Sport, the umbrella company that owns the local sports teams, announced the news today. The deal makes Huboo the principal shirt sponsor for all the above teams, including the women's sides. It's the first time all Bristol Sport clubs have had the same shirt sponsor. It's also a move away from the gambling companies that have sponsored Bristol City for the last four years.
But what is Huboo and what does it do? Read on for everything we know about them.
Read more: Bristol City, Bristol Bears and Bristol Flyers reveal new local sponsor for the 2022/23 season
What is Huboo?
Huboo describes itself as a "fulfilment provider" - essentially, it helps online businesses pack and deliver products around the world.
It was founded in 2017 and has since grown to 550 employees. In that time the company's headquarters has moved from Bath to Bristol, with other fulfilment centres in the Netherlands, Spain, and Germany. It says it wants to expand to five more countries this year.
Read more: Bristol City's dismal defensive record reveals an uncomfortable reality for Nigel Pearson
Is it a local business?
Huboo's head office is on Corn Street in town, and its CEO, Martin Bysh, says this is the "heart" of the company.
It says it employs around 400 people in the Bristol area between its office and its warehouses, one of which is in Emersons Green and another of which is in Avonmouth. Bish says he expects this number to be closer to 1000 by the end of 2023.
Huboo was also crowned large business of the year at the Bristol Live business awards in 2021, and it is keen to show off its exciting-looking events space in its Corn Street office.
Bysh has, however, spoken controversially against people working from home. He told Business Live in January: "It’s human nature. You give someone a privilege for any length of time and they then consider it a right. They forget that it is a privilege.
“During the pandemic people were forced to stay home. It seems to be for a certain class the lesson they have learned is that staying home is really nice, and they’re going to do it forever now and feel they should do as they are entitled to because of work-life balance.
“It’s actually where work-life balance falls. It’s a ridiculous thing, ‘I don’t have work-life balance unless I am home four days a week’.
Read more: Leicester City and Southampton in transfer hunt for Bristol City wonderkid
“But the reality is that only happened because other people were working in warehouses packing stuff for you, collecting your bins, driving your buses." He added: “My guys in the warehouse aren’t going to be able to request to work from home, because there would be no job for them.
“This is a horrible imbalance. This is not a direction we should be going in as a society I think.
The fact is there is a debt owed to those people that have worked for the last 18 months, and the way it is being paid is to demand more. This to me is very ugly.”
Read more: Pearson's patience has run thin so what are the Bristol City manager's short-term solutions?
When does the sponsorship begin?
The sponsorship deal will take effect from the beginning of the 2022/23 season - in June 2022, specifically. Bristol Sport and Huboo have not disclosed the length of the partnership.
How do you pronounce Huboo?
Huboo is pronounced like it's spelt - "hub-oo" - as opposed to "who-boo".
What do you think? Sign in and join the conversations in the comments below
