Crystal Palace have now announced that Temporal will be the new front-of-shirt sponsor from the start of next season.
The Eagles revealed in an official statement that a multi-year deal has been struck with the software platform, who already work closely alongside OpenAI, Netflix, JPMorgan Chase and Vodafone.
With Temporal not exactly a household name in England, We Are Palace reached out to financial expert Adam Williams for information on this new shirt sponsor coming to Crystal Palace.
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Exclusive: Expert shares why Crystal Palace’s Temporal deal is a “smart” move
The Head of Football Finance and Governance Content at GRV Media said: “There are a flood of teams seeking new sponsors because the Premier League has outlawed gambling on the front of shirts. What Crystal Palace have done here is beat the rush and signed a deal early – that’s smart, because otherwise you can quite easily find yourselves in a buyer’s market which drives down prices.
“As a club, they are an attractive commercial partner. They have a carefully defined brand and recent success on the pitch, with more potentially on the way ahead of the Conference League final. Temporal are paying to be associated with that success and – if Palace get into the Europa League via the Conference League – the exposure to a deeper audience than they would get with another Premier League team of the same sort of stature. Their commercial income was £32m last season, and I think the next target will be to hit £50m and get financially closer to the kind of ‘best-of-the-rest’ class of clubs such as Newcastle and Everton.”
Williams – who has also addressed whether Crystal Palace get any bonus payments for Ebere Eze winning the Premier League – added: “As for the sponsor itself, I can’t say it’s a company I’ve heard of until today. Some cursory research shows that they raised funds at a $5bn (£3.7bn) valuation last year. That sounds impressive, but the AI fundraising market is a bit of a casino, to be honest. No one really knows which of these companies are the real deal. The valuations that start-ups are getting are, in my view, crazy and speculative. But I don’t have any more reason to doubt Temporal than I would another company, and I think it’s a plus for Palace that they are partnering with a company in this industry.
“We’re clearly going to see a lot more partnerships like this as the Premier League moves away from gambling and towards a more sophisticated commercial strategy – and ‘partnerships’ rather than ‘sponsorships’ is the operative word here. It’s a two-way street. Palace will be able to use Temporal’s tech and borrow their expertise to streamline their commercial operations, and maybe even some sporting stuff too.”
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