São Paulo’s triple champion watch sparks sponsor talks | OneFootball

São Paulo will officially launch this Thursday (13), at a shopping mall in the west zone of São Paulo’s capital, a commemorative watch marking the 20th anniversary of their third world championship title.

The event will feature the presence of idols from that historic title, such as Lugano, Amoroso, and Júnior, and marks the club’s renewed partnership with Magnum, the company responsible for producing the accessory.

As AVANTE MEU TRICOLOR has learned, the launch of the watch rekindles negotiations with Magnum for them to sponsor the sleeves of São Paulo’s jersey.

AMT revealed in November of last year that São Paulo had a deal in place to announce Grupo Magnum as its new sleeve sponsor for the uniform.

The report found that, in addition to being a sponsor, the group would become a partner of Tricolor in the overhaul of the SPFC Bank project, the club’s digital bank, which was discontinued in April of last year (read more below) and was planned to be relaunched next year.

Known for the watch factory that spearheaded the group, Magnum ended up launching its financial institution in December 2021, exactly two years after purchasing the SAF of São Bernardo, a team from the ABC region of São Paulo that has been climbing the ranks and fighting for promotion to Série B of the Brazilian Championship.

Led by businessman Roberto Graziano, a fervent Guarani supporter, Magnum has previously sponsored the jersey of the Campinas (SP) club and even took over the social administration of Bugre in 2014, but the partnership ended the following year after the Deliberative Council blocked the purchase of the Brinco de Ouro stadium.

To remain in football, Magnum ended up taking over São Bernardo.

Disagreements over values and changes in marketing strategies ultimately led negotiations between Grupo Magnum and São Paulo to an unhappy ending. The club even negotiated with a pharmaceutical company, but was also unsuccessful, and the space on the uniform has been vacant since the end of 2023, when Bitso, a cryptocurrency exchange, decided not to renew its contract with Tricolor for the spot on the kit.

Currently, São Paulo raises approximately R$ 100 million annually from jersey sponsorships. A large portion of this comes from Superbet, which in 2025 allocated R$ 78 million to the club. The contract includes an adjustment in 2026.

Recently, Tricolor signed a contract with Cartão de Todos to sponsor the front hem of its jersey. The deal’s financial details were not disclosed.

On the other hand, the club still has three vacant spots: the sleeves, as mentioned, the shoulders (vacant since Viva Sorte left in March), and the back hem (since Blue Saúde terminated the contract at the end of September).

THE END OF SPFC BANK

Quietly, in April 2024, through an email sent to fans who had opened an account with SPFC Bank, São Paulo announced the end of the project, just over a year after it was launched.

The partnership with Logbank provided for the offering of banking services under the club’s brand, which was intended to serve as a new source of revenue.

With the brand registered in December 2021 and the contract with the supplier approved by the Deliberative Council in the same month, the project was first mentioned in January 2022, when president Júlio Casares discussed it in an interview with ‘Globo Esporte’: “Maybe, if I had told you at the beginning of my tenure that we could be on our way to having a digital bank, it would have sounded like an adventure on our part to say that. Not today. Today, it’s a reality, and we’re going to launch it, if all goes well, in March.”

The deadline was not met, and the launch only took place on March 9 of the following year, after one last delay, which was reported at the time by ‘Globo Esporte’. “We had to cancel due to a delay in publishing the apps on the Apple and Google stores,” said Bernardo Biolchini, co-founder and commercial vice president of Logbank, to the portal. “The SPFC Bank platform is 100% operational, and we only postponed the launch due to the incident mentioned above.”

The partner had already been praised by marketing manager Eduardo Toni, in an interview with ‘Máquina do Esporte’, in which he also spoke about expectations for the project: “There is a whole set of Central Bank regulations that must be followed, so we have a partner behind this. We really want to bring benefits to the fans. How do we make one thing talk to the other and benefit users of both platforms? We’re going to offer this kind of integrated service to the fans. We have great expectations for this, especially because our fans embrace and buy into our ideas.”

In fact, in less than 24 hours, the platform reached a thousand clients, and goals of five thousand and eight thousand sign-ups were announced, but the last update reported was three thousand, on March 20. The club did very little to promote the initiative, with most posts made on the official supporters’ program account, which on Twitter has about 3% of the followers of the main account — which made some sense, since the bank was initially restricted to supporters. The last post was on April 24 of last year, a month and a half after the launch. In addition, many fans reported difficulties joining the bank or problems with the platform on social media.

Until 2021, there was a virtual account for São Paulo fans at Banco Inter, then São Paulo’s main sponsor, but without direct involvement from the club. Toni himself admitted that expectations were now higher. For comparison, Palmeiras Pay, launched by the rival in January 2023, recently completed a year with five hundred thousand accounts opened, more than five hundred million reais in purchases in Brazil and abroad, and club revenue of thirteen million reais, according to ‘Globo Esporte’. The Palmeiras bank also boosted the supporters’ program, as it offered up to six months free in one of the plans.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇧🇷 here.