Luton Town mark long-awaited top flight appearance with biggest ever sponsorship deal

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Luton Town & Utilita
Image credit: Luton Town

Newly-promoted English Premier League side Luton Town has continued its strong bond with British energy supplier Utilita, confirming them as its front shirt sponsor for the 2023/24 season.

The deal will allow Utilita to feature on the front of all three of the Hatters’ playing shirts.

Under the arrangement Utilita, with its charity arm Utilita Giving, they have also committed to donating around $4 AUD to local charities for every hatters shirt sold. This will likely lead to major donations to local groups such as Luton Foodbank.

Utilita is the UK’s leading Smart Pay As You Go Energy Supplier serving over 800,000 customers. Their speciality is pay as you go metering and they were the first company in the UK to do so in 2003.

Utilita has a long history of sponsoring English football sides and has had a relationship with the Hatters since 2015 when the two joined as partners. The relationship was elevated in February 2022 when the Hatters made Utilita their front of shirt sponsor.

In announcing the new deal Luton Town CEO Gary Sweet spoke of the loyalty and alignment between the two partners.

“Loyal relationships in the world of football business can often be difficult to find and then preserve, so we are immensely proud to announce this agreement which will also aid three charities who undertake magnificent support to those in need in our local community,” he said via press release.

“While this represents a landmark shirt sponsorship deal in our long history, we feel it is important to recognise the strength of the relationship we have fostered together with Utilita over the past eight years.

“Therefore, it gives us great pleasure in knowing that a partnership – which began in League Two – will continue in the top-flight next season.”

Jem Maidment, Chief Marketing Officer at Utilita, spoke of their pleasure at sponsoring the new Premier League side emphasising the journey between the two since 2015.

“Luton and Utilita have forged a terrific relationship over the past few years. Both have challenged the status quo, faced adversity, and got stronger with each passing year,” they added via press release.

“Back in 2015 Luton were in League Two, and Utilita had 150,000 customers. Now Luton are in the Premier League and Utilita are one of Britain’s leading energy suppliers, with more than 800,000 customers and rising.

“The Hatters’ journey over the past ten years to the Premier League is possibly the greatest football story of the 21st Century. We consider it an absolute privilege to have our logo on the famous orange shirt as we continue our journey together into a fantastic new era in the club’s history.

“I’m also delighted that Utilita Giving will be working with the club to support households in fuel and food poverty, as we ramp up our commitment to help those that need it most in Luton and the surrounding area.”

This season will mark Luton Town’s first in the top flight since 1991/92 and it is great to see the club maintaining its loyalty and connecting with the sponsors who’ve helped its meteoric rise from non-league football to the Premier League.

The connection with charities and the community focus of Utilita in providing affordable energy access will also be met with applause from fans as many are feeling cost of living pressures.

This new deal is not only a huge win for the community club but also another win for the Luton community who now know they not only have a Premier League side in their town but also one that even with success won’t forget the community who raised it.

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Football West’s Female Football Week draws record engagement from Metropolitan Perth to Remote Kunurra

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Image Credit: Football West

Football West has wrapped up its 2026 Female Football Week with activations spanning metropolitan Perth, regional Western Australia and national online platforms, as participation data from the state’s most remote football association underlined the scale of demand for women’s and girls’ football beyond the city.

Kununurra Soccer Association, situated in the East Kimberley more than 3,000 kilometres from Perth, recorded 47 new female registrations aged 7 to 12 across the first two terms of 2026 through Football West’s Junior Girls United program, representing a 30 percent increase in female membership that coaches Hannah Grominsky and Evie Marchetti described as overwhelming.

“The support from the community has been simply awesome,” Grominsky said. “We’re up to nearly 50 registered girls now. The majority of them have never played before or aren’t part of our association, so it’s great to give them a positive football experience in a comfortable environment.”

The program, supported by the Federal Government’s Play Our Way grant, now runs every Wednesday and has extended football activity into the cooler months of the Kimberley calendar, a season when the association would not traditionally operate. The result is a cohort of players new to the game, in a region where access to organised sport has historically been constrained by geography, infrastructure and seasonality.

Recognition across the state

Back in Perth, Female Football Week’s centrepiece event was the Women in Football Celebrate You Breakfast at the Sam Kerr Football Centre, featuring two panel discussions covering officiating pathways, coaching development and advocacy for women in football.

Subiaco AFC NPL Women’s head coach Christine Coppin, who is one of few women coaching at her level in the region, said events like the breakfast were critical to making the pathway visible for others.

“I’d love to see more women coaches putting their hat in the ring, both at junior and senior levels, realising that there’s more to football than just playing,” Coppin said. “They can stay involved in the sport as they get older in different ways.”

A regional Women in Football Breakfast in Albany drew more than 30 attendees, while a Girls Day Out event in the same city attracted more than 50 participants aged 6 to 16 for a come-and-try introduction to the game, extending the week’s reach into the Great Southern and reinforcing Football West’s stated commitment to building women’s football outside metropolitan areas.

Recognising those who make it happen

The week’s awards, nominated by the WA public, recognised five individuals whose contributions to female football across the state were judged most significant over the past year. Cassandra Paxman of Albany Rovers FC was named Coach of the Year, Georgia Whitelaw of Great Southern JSA and Albany JSA took Referee of the Year, Karen Harris of Carramar Shamrock Rovers FC was named Volunteer of the Year, Georgia Aiesi of Mandurah City FC received the Player of the Year award, and Melissa Spillman of Football Futures Foundations was named Community Champion of the Year— a recognition she also received at the national level.

Football West Female Football and Advocacy Manager Sarah Carroll said the week had reinforced both the momentum and the responsibility facing the sport.

“Female Football Week continues to showcase the incredible passion and growing appetite for the women’s game,” Carroll said. “It’s a reminder of how important it is that we keep working together to drive the game forward.”

The contrast between a packed breakfast at the Sam Kerr Football Centre and a Wednesday afternoon program in Kununurra working around wet season schedules captures something essential about where women’s football in Western Australia actually lives. The growth is real, and it is happening in places the cameras do not always reach.

Tasmania’s State Budget Commits $350,000 to Football Facility Planning as $80 million Home of Football Moves Closer to Reality

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Image Credit: Football Tasmania

The Tasmanian State Government has committed $350,000 in seed funding for the next stage of planning for Football Tasmania‘s proposed Home of Football, moving the state’s most significant football infrastructure project closer to construction and signalling political recognition that demand for rectangular facilities in Tasmania has outgrown what currently exists.

The funding, confirmed in the 2026-27 State Budget handed down last week, sits within an almost $200 million investment in sport and recreation across the budget and forward estimates: a package the government describes as designed to improve access and participation for Tasmanians of all ages. The football allocation is listed alongside a $25 million community sporting infrastructure commitment at Kingborough, $12.5 million for new multipurpose indoor sporting courts at New Town Bay, and $8 million for the Domain Tennis Centre redevelopment.

Football Tasmania CEO Tony Pignata OAM welcomed the commitment as an acknowledgement of the structural gap between participation numbers and available infrastructure, particularly in the state’s south.

“The State Government’s delivery on this commitment shows us that they understand that demand outstrips supply for rectangular facilities in the state,” Pignata said. “If we are to continue to grow and develop future Matildas and Socceroos, we need to invest in the infrastructure our game so desperately needs.”

The proposed $80 million facility would include six full-sized pitches, three synthetic and three turf, alongside four five-a-side pitches, modern changerooms for both men and women, and dedicated training facilities. The design is intended to serve every level of the game simultaneously, from grassroots junior competitions through to national-level tournaments.

From grassroots to A-League ambitions

Football Tasmania has framed the facility’s purpose across a deliberately wide range of uses. At the community end, it would provide a permanent home for junior games and regional tournaments that currently compete for limited rectangular ground availability across the state. At the elite end, it would create the capacity to host national competitions including the Emerging Matildas and Emerging Socceroos Championships, flagship state competitions such as the Statewide Cup finals, and potentially, in time, an A-League team.

That last ambition is the most significant and the most distant. Pignata was measured but direct in raising it, situating a Tasmanian A-League club alongside the NBL’s Jackjumpers, the WNBL’s Jewels and the AFL’s Devils as part of the state’s emerging identity as a home for national sporting competition.

“One day down the track, we anticipate this would become home to our very own A-League team, so that we take our rightful place in the nation’s elite competition,” he said.

The pathway from planning funding to A-League admission is long and would require sustained political and commercial support well beyond the current commitment. But the logic is consistent with how football infrastructure investment has worked elsewhere in Australia. The facility comes first, and the competitive pathway follows. Without a purpose-built ground that meets the standards required for elite competition, the conversation about an A-League team cannot begin in earnest.

The equity dimension

The inclusion of modern women’s and men’s changerooms in the facility’s design carries more weight than it might appear. Community and semi-professional football facilities across Australia have historically been built to male standards, with women’s changerooms added as afterthoughts or not included at all. That inadequacy has been consistently identified as a barrier to female participation and to the hosting of women’s competitions at venues that cannot accommodate them properly.

A purpose-built facility that treats women’s infrastructure as a design requirement rather than a retrofit positions the Home of Football to serve the growth of women’s football in Tasmania in a way that existing facilities cannot. The state recorded 41,395 registered football participants in 2025, a number that has been growing and that the current rectangular facility stock was not built to support at this scale.

Additionally, the government’s Ticket to Play program, which provides eligible children with two vouchers worth up to $100 each for sporting participation, and the Ticket to Wellbeing program offering $100 vouchers to eligible seniors, represent indirect but meaningful support for football participation across the state’s communities.

Pignata also acknowledged outgoing Football Tasmania President Bob Gordon, who he said had dedicated almost a decade to the organisation and had been instrumental in lobbying for this and other facilities across the state.

The $350,000 planning commitment is a beginning. The $80 million facility it is intended to progress remains subject to further government investment and development approval.

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