Hello. Thank you for clicking on the link and giving us your time. We are the Southampton Aztecs, a futsal club started in May 2021. We're not very old, but we've made a big impact in this past year. We're looking for businesses that would be interested in helping us grow the sport of futsal in the area, provide more opportunities for girls and women to play, and work with us to increase the success of our senior teams on the court. We have a women's team that play at the highest level in the country, in the national league, with games broadcast on BT Sport and YouTube. We are awaiting confirmation of a women's reserve team to begin this season too, and will have a men's team competing regionally.
If you don't know much about us, we outline who we are and what we do below. If you already know a lot about the Southampton Aztecs and want to get straight to business, scroll right to the bottom for prices and packages.
About us
Our home colours are green shirts with white sleeves, with black shorts and black socks. Our away colours are red shirts with white sleeves, and red shorts with white socks. The Mexican theme in the name and the badge is an homage to the wonderful country of Mexico, and specifically the famous Estadio Azteca. Husband and wife William Wilson and Mariana Betancourt founded the team and have run everything behind the scenes. The couple met when Will was coaching in Mexico City, and the family's favourite team is Club América, who play at the Estadio Azteca. Will is the head coach of the women's team, and has worked all over the world in football in; England, USA, Mexico, Canada, Kuwait, Singapore, and Spain. Mariana is extremely talented in the areas of marketing, graphic design, and social media, which you'll be able to see on our social media channels and throughout our website.
Mariana designed the club's badge, which we feel is one of the best around. If you're a potential sponsor who would like some assistance with your branding or logo design so that it would look good upon our kit, Mariana will be able to help with that process.
Our social media channels are:
The team came about after some just play sessions became serious. Good players turned up, and it was apparent there was much potential within the group. An application was sent off to the FA National Futsal Series, and was accepted, with the team founded in May, playing their first competitive game in September, and then winning their first televised game on BT Sport in October. The first half of the year was split into North and South, with the top four from each being pooled together to form the Tier One (a national league, and the highest level in the land, with the winners going to compete in the UEFA Futsal Champions League). The Aztecs finished third in the South, confirming the promotion in typical dramatic style, winning 3-2 after coming back from two goals down, with the winning goal being scored only six minutes from time.
As a brand new team, the Aztecs were fancied as underdogs, but managed to pull off some results and performances against established clubs. The dream continued as the Aztecs now competed nationally, travelling all around the country for games in Preston, Wolverhampton, Gloucester, Derby, and Loughborough. Out of the nine tier one games the Aztecs played, only one of them wasn't broadcast live on either BT Sport or YouTube, with them showing four games of the nine each. Playing against tough opponents every week, being pushed and challenged further than before, the Aztecs again made things dramatic, sealing tier one survival on the final day.
Going into the new season for 2022/23, our women's team will continue to compete in the FA NFS Tier One, with likely seven games on BT Sport, and the other seven on YouTube. In addition to the fourteen league matches will be a brand new cup competition, and the end of season playoffs to determine the league champion, and the relegation to tier two. The current structure for NFS Tier One is that all games are played at central venues, with the fixtures being back to back. It makes broadcasting easier, allowing us to reach a wider audience. The YouTube games can be viewed globally, and due to friends and family across the pond, we've established a growing fanbase in the USA and Mexico, with these fans tuning into the games, watching the highlights, and buying merchandise. The matches will predominantly be played at Wolverhampton University and Hartpury College.
The BT Sport games are typically broadcast during the men's football international break, so as not to compete with the English Premier League. Women's teams play on Saturday, and men's teams on Sunday, with all of the games back to back, in two hour slots. Supposedly viewing figures peaked at 92,000, and it was predicted that the finals weekend may have surpassed 100,000. This makes sponsoring our women's team a very attractive proposition for businesses due to the amount of eyeballs that your logo could be in front of.
When the women's reserve team is confirmed, they will compete in the FA NFS Tier Two South, with games predominantly being held at Bedford. There doesn't appear to be much scope currently for tier two games to be broadcast live, although we will be taking every effort to produce highlights of these games internally.
Our newly formed men's team will be competing in a different league pyramid, called LNFS, backed by the professional futsal league from Spain. The men's team would be playing home and away games in the south west and Midlands. And although few, if any will be broadcast live, we would be looking to make our own highlights from the games.
What is futsal?
If you don't already know, you're missing out. With origins in Uruguay and Argentina, futsal was invented as a form of indoor football (which is the literal translation of the name futbol sala). It is 5v5, with rolling subs, balls with a reduced bounce, a hard service, and goals that are 2m tall and 3m wide. There are no walls, like you see in more typical indoor football environments, meaning players can't smash the ball away, and need to use their skill and intelligence to solve problems. The games are fast paced, full of skill, and full of goals. To give you an idea, our results in competitive games over the season were 2-15, 3-2, 0-6, 5-6, 9-3, 12-2, 3-2, 0-4, 4-3, 1-7, 3-9, 1-8, 2-6, 3-5, 3-3, 3-1. As you can see, double figure scoring is not too rare, and 0-0 games are unheard of.
There are a few rules to distinguish futsal from football, such as rolling subs, four second restarts (the ball has to be back in play within four seconds or else it is awarded to the opposition), a stop-clock that counts downwards and pauses every time the game stops, and a foul count that begins awarding penalties if teams commit too many fouls. These rules serve the game to make it more intense, more high energy, and without time wasting, while preventing it becoming overly aggressive. In many ways, these rules have addressed many of the complaints that we fans have in regards to modern football. The video below may explain it better.
If you like that, here are some of our better goals for you to enjoy, to get to know the team!
Not bad, right? Perhaps you'd like your logo on these kits.
New Kit
It's important to us to look good and feel good when we play. That's why we've chosen Adidas as our kit supplier. The team has to travel the country, and needs to feel comfortable and confident when racking up the miles. We stop at plenty of service stations and hotels, and with the merchandise we have, you can see it turning heads. It's also part of our strategy to establish a fan base. Fans like cool football shirts, and a brand like Adidas does that. If you want to be a kit sponsor, your logo will be sold on our shirts in the club shop, which you can view here.
Not only could your brand be seen by thousands of viewers in the UK and overseas, but it could also be worn on the shirts of fans, which will be available to purchase from the club shop.
If we are able to get new sponsors over the summer, this [below] will be the kit for the coming season. We hope to be able to have two year cycles for kits, unlike in modern football, as to help the fans and the running costs of the team, as well as building long term partnerships with our sponsors. The green (home) and red (away) will continue to have the white sleeves. We haven't ordered goalkeeper samples yet, but the home will be white and the away will be black.
As modelled by Rebecca Moody (green) and Amy Maidment (red). We're looking at four main kit sponsors; front of shirt, back of shirt, right sleeve, and back of shorts.
That's how they look as kits. Can you visualise your logo on there? We also went outside into the city to show how these kits would look as casual wear for fans.
As you can see, these shirts look good. There's a lot of commercial potential as fans can wear them out and about casually. They look smart, which is key for us as we try to grow the Southampton Aztecs brand. It's important for us to increase our off-court presence, as this will in turn increase our on-court performance. The two are linked and feed each other. Perhaps you or your business would like to be part of this. And if you'd like help to make your logo more football shirt appropriate, we'll help reshape the design so that it fits the space and matches the kit.
How We Work
We do lots during the week to build up towards the game, informing fans of where and when we'll be playing.
Posters such as these are plastered all over our social channels in the days preceding the matches. Your logo would be featured on here.
On the day of the game, we announce the squad list, complete with names, numbers, and nationalities. Your logo would be included on here.
Before every game is an official team photo, and a captains photo taken by the league official photographer too. The FA NFS Tier One games all have official league photographers, who take excellent action shots of the players.
After each game, we produce a final score poster, and a player of the match poster. The player of the match poster would feature team sponsors, plus any individual sponsors the player has.
Within a few days of the game finishing, highlights are produced. Sometimes we do this, and sometimes the league does this, depending upon who broadcasts the game.
Here's our own highlights, which are uploaded to YouTube, and our other social accounts.
Below are the league's own highlights for when the games are on BT Sport.
If you'd like to see how a game on BT Sport looks, click here to view our first competitive victory during our 3-2 TV debut versus Coventry, which we won in dramatic style, coming back from losing 2-0, and winning the game with less than 120 seconds to play. All of this is then summarised in our match reports.
The Packages
In a nutshell, futsal is expensive, and so is travelling the country to play. Fortunately, thanks to the NFS deal with BT Sport and their ability to broadcast on live TV and on YouTube, we'll have our games played in front of an increasing number of eyeballs each year. We've looked at the likely costs for next season, and have come up with options that we feel are appropriate in terms of both what we need, but also the exposure that our team can provide you and your business.
Women's team and men's team packages would be separate, as the women's team play in the top league in the country and have their games on BT and YouTube. We'll start with the women's team, which would be both the first team and reserve team. Each item will come with a price range. We know times are tough for everyone right now. Payment can be made in instalments or in one lump sum at the start of the season. We would like for companies to partner with us for two years. The costs below would be paid to the club per one year.
Front of shirt sponsor: £2,800 - £4,000.
Back of shirt sponsor: £1,800 - £2,000.
Right sleeve sponsor: £1,000 - £1,200.
Shorts sponsor: £800 - £1,000.
As mentioned before, these would come with inclusion on all of the social media posts, photos from every game, live BT Sport and YouTube broadcasts, highlights, match reports, and also social media shoutouts.
If you'd like to help out in other ways, we have two more team options, and these would not be available in instalments.
Training shirts: £900 to have your logo on the front of all of our training shirts.
Travel shirts: £900 for the players to wear a shirt with your logo on it to and from games, stopping in hotels, service stations, and arriving to the games.
If you want to sponsor an individual player, you can do this for £400. Your logo will be included on any social media or website photo or video that mentions the player, such as goals, player of the match posts, and any individual highlights. See the below video for an example.
The above video of Rebekah Tonks nutmegs was a reply tweet to the account These Football Times asking for the best nutmegs people had seen. We responded with this short video, which has so far been viewed 479 times. If you were to sponsor Rebekah Tonks, we would include your logo in the clip and tag your company in the tweet. If you are interested in individual players, reach out to us to see who is available or to suggest one you're keen on. The players will also be advertising for sponsors themselves.
If you'd like to help support our newly formed men's team, the packages are below. We're looking for companies that would ideally like to be with us for two years. The costs below are per one year.
Front of shirt sponsor: £800.
Back of shirt sponsor: £500.
Sleeve sponsor: £400.
Shorts sponsor: £400.
Training shirt sponsor: £500.
Individual player sponsor: £300.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. If you have any questions and would like to get involved, please contact Will on AztecaFootballLTD@gmail.com or 07832114823.