British esports organisation Guild Esports has restructured its agreement with David Beckham’s image rights firm Footwork Productions.
As a part of the new agreement, Guild Esports will provide Footwork Productions with 20% of its merchandising and sponsorship revenue. This is instead of a guaranteed minimum fee that was agreed at the start of the partnership.
Guild Esports notably enlisted David Beckham as its brand ambassador, with Beckham holding a ‘significant minority stake’ in the company since 2020. The existing agreement saw Guild Esports agree to pay Footwork 15% of its merchandising and sponsorship revenues, with a minimum total amount of £15.25m over the five-year duration.
Guild Esports also announced that the first two instalments were paid, and the third annual payment of £3m will be paid at the end of this year. The remaining two payments were set to be £3.5m and £4m.
The new agreement will save Guild £7.5m, since the organisation will no longer need to pay annually. However, the amount of merchandising and sponsorship revenue to be received by Footwork was increased to 20%. The company announced that David Beckham will continue to act as an ambassador for Guild Esports.
The new agreement does provide greater financial liquidity, with the company reducing the initial fee significantly. However, the need to renegotiate the deal and forfeit more merchandising and sponsorship revenue does raise questions regarding Guild’s finances.
Guild Esports has struck a couple of important partnerships this year, notably with Samsung and Sky UK, but the company also made headlines by reporting a £4.96m loss for the six-month period ending March 31st 2022. On top of that, Guild reduced its number of employees at the time from 45 to 30.
David Beckham and his company have not made an official comment on the new agreement as of this writing.
