We have to talk about…the inception of SUDU
How Wolves become the first Premier League team to shun the major players and create their own kit brand
On 17 August 2024, Wolves opened their 2024/25 Premier League season with a defeat at the Emirates against Arsenal.
Wolves of course were wearing their classic old gold and black kit, but if you looked closely, you might have noticed an unfamiliar logo on their shirts: SUDU.
SUDU? Who on earth are SUDU?
It’s a fascinating story. But first, we have to go back to the previous season.
Soccer jerseys are big business
For years, adidas and Nike have dominated the big clubs, supplying them with their kits and selling ever increasingly expensive replica versions to supporters, who are willing to buy new designs every season. Nike’s 12-year deal with Manchester United, for example will bring in £90m each year, by some margin the biggest deal in the Premier League.
But the big two don’t have a monopoly, lots of other brands have vied for a place on the pitch and in the club stores. In the past, we’ve seen teams sporting the likes of Bukta, Diadora, Errea, Hummel, Joma, Le Coq Sportif, Macron, Mitre, Puma, Umbro and many others. And of course, there are always the newbies who want a piece of the action.
Castore
Recently, one of those garnering attention was Castore, a Manchester-based brand that came from nowhere to supply three of the 20 Premier League teams, as well as both the McLaren and Red Bull Racing F1 teams.
Last season (2023/24) Castore supplied kits to Aston Villa, Newcastle and Wolverhampton Wanderers.
But things didn’t go quite to plan and with Villa players complaining that their shirts weren’t wicking away sweat and having a negative effect on their performance, it was no surprise that the relationship ended abruptly.
Villa replaced Castore with adidas in a deal worth a reported £17m a season, and so did Newcastle.
Wolves also ditched Castore, who had supplied the club for the previous three seasons, but instead of going with adidas, who was their kit supplier prior to Castore, they went with a brand no one had heard of.
No one had ever heard of SUDU because they were literally brand new, having only been formed in 2023.
As for Castore, in order to maintain a presence in the English top-flight, they struck a new deal with Everton.
So how did Wolves choose a complete unknown instead of one of the major players? Well, that’s quite the story.
Who is SUDU?
SUDU is a subsidiary of Levy Merchandising, which in turn is a new offshoot of sports and entertainment caterer, Levy UK and Ireland.
Dig deeper and you’ll find that Levy UK and Ireland is owned by Compass Group, a British FTSE 100 company. Probe more and you’ll learn that Levy UK has been Wolves’ hospitality provider since 2019.
A stakeholder in Levy Merchandising is Fosun Sports Group, which itself is a subsidiary of Fosun, the company that ultimately owns Wolves and associated brands such as Wolves’ esports teams as well as other gaming companies in Asia.
And this is where it gets even more interesting: The CEO of Levy Merchandising is Vinnie Clark, who was previously the head of retail for – yes, you guessed it – Wolves.
Fosun itself is owned by Guo Guangchang who is also listed as a majority shareholder for FC Sportswear. That means he is also effectively the owner of the SUDU brand, which like Castore also happens to be headquartered in Manchester.
The deal, SUDU’s first with any Premier League club, will see the company produce match kits and training apparel for Wolves’ men’s, women’s and academy teams, as well as serving as the club’s technical kit partner.
SUDU’s stated aim is to disrupt the kit supplier market. In Wolves case, it will be responsible for the design and manufacturing of the match kits as well as replica kits, but more than that, it will also be responsible for retailing those products which includes operating the club store at Molineux, Wolves home stadium.
Levy Merchandise’s involvement goes beyond simple retail operations. The company will manage all Wolves’ retail operations, including staff and logistics.
It may well be a strategic alignment, but in the light of all the financial challenges being imposed on top clubs, it does raise questions about revenue redirection.
SUDU aims to be more than a kit supplier. Their newly launched website highlights their ambition to provide a wide range of sportswear and accessories.
SUDU’s design lead Samuela Melidoni, who has previously worked for adidas, has been central to the range’s creation.
As Wolves’ general manager of marketing and commercial growth, Russell Jones, commented:
“This fresh new approach to kit creation is long overdue and we’re delighted that Wolves get to be at the forefront of this innovative approach. For far too long top-tier clubs like Wolves have been held to template designs. This partnership enables us to work with our fans and players to create technical product with our heritage at the forefront of design.”
On 4 August 2024, SUDU revealed Wolves’ 2024/25 away kit. A black shirt sporting a large wolf’s head graphic. With typical hyperbole, they described the design as:
“Boasting a range of cutting-edge features, including eye-catching gradients for a sense of speed, geometry to symbolise strategy and a psychological impact, coming from the wolf head design.”
Wolves replica kits for the 2024/25 season are priced at £58, with pro jerseys costing £80, that’s considerably cheaper than kits for other Premier League teams.
Wolves’ new kits are manufactured predominantly in Bangladesh and Cambodia, where concerns have been raised in the past about terms and conditions for workers.
As a new brand, SUDU clearly need to push their logo as much as possible, which is why it appears no less than six times on the Wolves kit (3 on the jersey, one on the shirts and on the back of each sock).
Wolves also debut a new shirt sponsor
Despite the upcoming ban on betting sponsorships on the front of shirts, Wolves have opted for a partnership with online betting platform Debet in a two-year deal reportedly worth around £7 million.
This replaces the previous shirt sponsor AstroPay. The payment solutions provider’s deal had been valued at £8 million per year and expired at the end of the 2023/24 season.
Although front-of-shirt betting sponsorships may be commonplace in English soccer, Wolves’ agreement with Debet has attracted criticism as the Vietnamese company has been accused of posing as a bookmaker from Germany as well as breaching image rights of soccer players to promote its brand in the Far East.
As of July 2024, Debet’s UK website is under construction and “will be live very soon.”
Additionally, Wolves confirmed that sports retailer JD will be their shirt sleeve sponsor. The multi-year deal covers men’s and women’s first teams, as well as academy.
Wolves also named BetMGM as the club’s official European betting partner, after signing a two-year renewal with LeoVegas who were the team’s sleeve partner for the 2023/24 season.
SUDU have ambitions beyond Wolves
A visit to SUDU’s website shows they don’t just produce football kits for Wolves, they also have a 15-piece apparel collection, including the SRM 01, SUDU’s first running shoe.
Beyond the launch of its Run menswear collection, SUDU also plans to launch three other categories to market: Play football, Train fitness and Rest lifestyle, as well as creating women’s specific product collections across categories which are expected to launch from early 2025.
Who is Guo Guangchang?
The chairman and co-founder of Fosun International, 57-year-old, Guangchang is the 45th richest person in China with a reported net worth of $3 billion.
According to Technosports (24 August 2024) Guangchang is the Premier League’s 7th richest owner. They put his fortune at £5.2 billion.
Born into a farming family in Zhejiang province in 1967, Guo graduated from Shanghai’s Fudan University with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy in 1989. After spending three years in the Communist Youth League, in 1992, with four other Fudan graduates, he founded, Guangxim Technology Development Company, the predecessor of Fosun.
Fosun International went public in July 2007 in Hong Kong with a $1.5 billion IPO backed by Saudi Prince Alwalweed bin Talal, Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing and the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation.
Guo himself is based in Shanghai and is married to Jenny Jinyuan Wang a prominent Shanghai news anchor and burgeoning art collector, who also heads the nonprofit Fosun Foundation.
Fosun co-founder Liang Xinjun is also a billionaire.
Today, Fosun’s investments range from steelmaking to mining, tourism and pharmaceuticals. With assets ranging from the Club Med holiday group and Portugal’s biggest bank, Millennium BCP, to prime New York property, the company has 108,000 employees.
In 2023, Fosun’s revenue grew 8 per cent to £21.71 billion with operating profits of £540 million.
The Wolves connection
Having formed a relationship in 2014 with Europe’s most powerful soccer agent, Jorge Mendes, Fosun set out bold ambitions to move into the world of soccer when they announced they would create an agency to expand soccer in China and help players build careers.
“Our goal is to build a complete system in global football world with different levels of clubs and training facilities.”
Initially, Fosun considered buying Spanish club Espanyol, as well as looking at clubs in Portugal and Italy.
But in May 2016, they learnt through Jorge Mendes that Wolverhampton Wanderers, was on the market for around £40 million. The Midlands-based club were struggling both financially and on the soccer field.
Within a month, Fosun had decided to acquire Wolves, finally purchasing it in July 2016 for a reported £45 million from previous owner Steve Morgan and made it part of its ‘Happiness’ sector.
Other business in their ‘Happiness’ sector include Ahava (skincare) Club Med, Lanvin, Silver Cross (prams and strollers) and Wolford (Austrian lingerie company).
In return for his guidance, Fosun promised Mendes significant reward. One of their first decisions was to appoint Nuno Espirito Santo as manager. The Portuguese former goalkeeper had helped launch Mendes’ career as an agent.
Almost immediately, Wolves began signing new players, the majority of them Portuguese and represented by Mendes.
Some rivals raised concern as to how a previously unfashionable club like Wolves could attract such talent and claimed their relationship with Mendes gave them an unfair advantage.
In April 2017, the English Football League said it had examined Mendes’ relationship with the club and found it was not a breach of its rules forbidding an agent from having an executive role at a club or controlling its strategy. It said in a statement at the time that Mendes “holds no role at the club.”
By 2018, just two years after being bought by Fosun, Wolves were promoted to the Premier League and even if last season’s performance was disappointing, Wolves comfortably secured their sixth consecutive season in the top flight, even if Espirito Santo’s reign was brief.
In a letter to supporters just before the start of the 2023/24 season, Wolves chairman Jeff Shi stressed the owners’ commitment to the club. He said:
“Fosun remains committed to Wolves and has never had any plans to sell the club. The club is a long-term project and an important one for Fosun.”
Is this a way of circumventing the Premier League’s Profit & Sustainability Rules?
Originally known as financial fair play regulations (FFP), the spending habits of England’s top flight football clubs have to abide by the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules (PSR).
Currently, clubs are allowed maximum losses of £105m over a three-year rolling period. However, the limit is actually only £15m but it can be stretched to £105m if the club’s owners are willing to cover £90m. However, this extra investment can only come in the form of owners expanding their portfolio of shares in the club rather than simply loaning the money.
Any costs relating to the stadium, training ground, women’s team or academy are not considered.
In November 2023, Everton became the first club to fall foul of the new regulations when they were slapped with the largest points deduction in the competition’s history for breaching PSR.
An independent review of the club’s accounts ending with the 2021/22 campaign found that Everton had exceeded the allowed threshold of £105m by £19.5m.
The Toffees have fiercely railed against their ten-point deduction and were incensed further when the Premier League charged them again with another breach in January 2024. The initial ten-point punishment was later reduced to six, but uncertainty remains in the air at Goodison Park.
Is the SUDU deal, a model for the future?
People have said this is a bold ‘break the mould’ deal — and Wolves may well be the first major soccer team to reject the lure of the big brands and effectively create its own ‘in-house’ kit brand. Of course, it’s not under the club’s ownership, but remember both SUDU and the football club are ultimately owned by the same company.
Clearly, creating an apparel brand from scratch, takes considerable time and money, so one has to assume this was being planned for a while. And whilst the brand has a guaranteed market among Wolves supporters, supplying only one team surely can’t be financially viable, especially as Wolves are not one of the Premier League’s glamour clubs. SUDU must have intentions of supplying other teams in the future.
Having responsibility for both the kit and how it’s sold is another innovative idea. Almost always, the club would be responsible for running it’s own store.
Wolves previous deal with Castore brought in around £3 million a year, which in Premier League terms is tiny.
What is not clear in this deal is whether SUDU are paying Wolves to supply their kits and run the clubstore. One has to assume that some money is changing hands between the two entities.
The question that has to be asked is whether SUDU are over paying Wolves in order to boost the club’s revenue, which of course would help with their PSR.
Remember, this all relates to club revenue and cannot be artificially inflated simply by the club’s owner injecting funds into the revenue stream.
Newcastle for example is in theory one of, if not the, wealthiest clubs in the world. However, despite being backed by Saudi Arabia, the club cannot just go out and buy the most expensive players as their income would not allow this in today’s PSR world.
And what about Castore?
Losing three Premier League teams in one season must have been a huge blow to Castore, especially in the way they lost the Aston Villa contract. So where does that leave the fledgling brand?
Well, they have replaced Hummel as Everton’s kit supplier, who are now their only Premier League presence. They also supply Championship teams Burnley and Preston North End, League One outfit Mansfield and MK Dons of League Two, as well as retaining Rangers of the Scottish Premier League.
Kit deals are big business
It’s no surprise that the six most lucrative kit deals in the Premier League involve the six biggest clubs
Manchester United & adidas (2023–2035) — £90m per year
Manchester City & Puma (2019–2029) — £65m per year
Liverpool & Nike (2020–2026) — £60m per year (Liverpool have reportedly agreed to switch to adidas with a five-year deal once their contract with Nike is up)
Chelsea & Nike (2017–2032) — £60m per year
Arsenal & adidas (2019–2024) — £60m per year
Tottenham & Nike (2018–2033) — £30m per year
Beyond the Top 6, the value of kit deals drops considerably.
Wolves deal with Castore, for example, was only worth £3m per year.
Premier League kit suppliers 2024/25
Seven different companies will supply kits. With seven teams, adidas have the most, with Nike and Umbro both having four.
adidas: Arsenal, Aston Villa, Fulham, Leicester, Manchester United, Newcastle and Nottingham Forest
Nike: Brighton, Chelsea, Liverpool and Tottenham
Umbro: AFC Bournemouth, Brentford, Ipswich and West Ham
Puma: Manchester City and Southampton
Castore: Everton
Macron: Crystal Palace
SUDU: Wolves
About the author
Based in Sussex-by-the-Sea, on England’s south coast, Gary is a creative writer and image-maker. He specialises in creating out of the ordinary portraits of musicians and people with interesting faces, as well as photographing some of the world’s finest flowers and gardens, not forgetting an array of automotive exotica.
On the writing side, he has used his research skills to author deep dives into some noteworthy songs beginning with Bryan Ferry’s ‘These Foolish Things’ ‘Ghost Town’ by The Specials, ‘Real Wild Child’ by Ivan and ‘All The Young Dudes’ by Mott the Hoople.
He has also written a biography of Robert Palmer and the stories behind Whitesnake’s blatant Led Zep rip-off, ‘Still Of The Night’, Harry Styles’ anthem to positivity, ‘Treat People With Kindness’ and the little-known Queen track ‘Cool Cat.’
Most recently, Gary has penned the fascinating story behind George Orwell’s dystopian novel ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four.’ as well as ‘Believe It Or Not’ a look into the rise of fake news.
All these can be found here on Medium, along with his reviews of gigs and events and chats with musicians including the likes of Royal Blood, Joe Satriani and Wolf Alice.
