Ipswich Town has confirmed that software vendor Halo will be its front-of-shirt sponsor for the 2025/26 season, taking over from minority owner Ed Sheeran.
Sheeran’s Mathematics Tour logo has featured on the Tractor Boys’ shirts for the past four seasons, but the global phenom decided that it was an ideal time to ‘pass the torch over’.
“I’ve known the Halo guys for a while,” said Sheeran.
“Obviously they’ve done the (sponsor on the) arm and I was very, very clear to everyone at Ipswich that we didn’t want another betting company on the shirt.
“We also wanted to keep it Suffolk, keep it local. I’m a big fan of what Halo is doing for young people locally and also it’s a massive disrupter within the tech industry.
“It’s just good to have a great Suffolk brand on it going from the Mathematics Tour onto Halo.”
Paul Hamilton, Halo CEO (L) & Ed Sheeran (R)
The agreement with the Stowmarket-headquartered firm will run for the next three years and is the biggest in the club’s history.
It will see the service-management specialists sponsor both the men’s and women’s first-team shirts.
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Paul Hamilton, CEO of Halo, added: “We are absolutely delighted to have taken our partnership with Ipswich Town to the next level.
“It’s an honour to follow Ed Sheeran as front-of-shirt sponsor, having been sleeve sponsor during the last two seasons. We’re looking forward to seeing the Halo logo on the shirts for the next three years at least, which we hope will be another exciting period for the club.”
Halo is the second-largest software vendor in the UK behind Sage, with a reported market value of around £1.5bn.
Under the leadership of its ‘unusual and technical’ CEO, the firm rocketed to revenues of £73m in 2024, but Hamilton insisted in an interview with IT Channel Oxygen that he has no interest in the money.
“I’m quite unusual,” he said. “I’m very technical but I also enjoy the people and culture challenges of scaling a business – like how you get 200 people to work effectively and productively together.
“A lot of tech founders can’t handle the people side, so they end up selling out quite early.
“But I’ve just never been interested in the money. What would I do with a few million quid?
“The actual problem-solving bit is worth way more to me – hence the never selling out and ten-year guarantee.”
The 44-year-old initially founded the company in 2004 with Alan Rogerson and it initially launched as Net Help Desk.
The duo wanted to offer companies bespoke software packages and managed to create a sellable solution.
It hired its first employee seven years later before rebranding as Halo in 2020.
The business then moved into its current office in 2021 and now has a 150-strong workforce, which Hamilton is ambitiously planning on increasing to 1,000 within the next five years.
Aside from the sponsorship of the company’s local football team, it also has partnerships with McLaren’s F1 team and the World Championship snooker.
Ipswich Town’s commercial director, Andy Wooldridge, said: “It’s been a pleasure to work with Paul and his team as a principal partner and sleeve sponsor during the last two seasons. It’s a relationship that has really blossomed between both organisations.
“For Halo to now be our front-of-shirt sponsor in a record deal is testament to the growth of our partnership scheme and shows our commitment to working with Suffolk businesses who share our goals and ambitions.
“Halo is experiencing very fast growth and we are delighted that we can use our global reach to support them in their exciting plans.”