As if you hadn’t noticed, Everton have played their last few games proudly wearing the esteemed marque of the ‘Angry Birds’ game upon their royal blue sleeves.
The club have entered into a partnership deal with Rovio, the Finnish company responsible for developing the bird-hurling game we honestly thought people had stopped playing entirely somewhere around the 2014 point.
👕 | A first look at our sleeve sponsor, @AngryBirds, as part of our new partnership with @rovio… #RedIsABlue pic.twitter.com/bgLg74ov6W
— Everton (@Everton) September 17, 2017
As well as a succession of choice Evertonian/avian (Evertavian?) social media output, it turns out that Rovio are also keen on pumping out an Toffees-themed spin-off version of their core game.
3-0. No muss, no fuss. @Everton #EFC #COYB #RedIsABlue pic.twitter.com/jGSU5p7oX1
— Angry Birds (@AngryBirds) September 20, 2017
Nattering to Press Association Sport, Ville Heijari, chief marketing officer for Rovio Entertainment, spake thus:
We have a history of doing Angry Bird homages of real-life characters so obviously now we are in collaboration (with Everton) we can work together to bring interesting characters and profiles into the games.
Potentially Wayne Rooney would be involved. It is not just enough that we reach mobile players; we want to reach sports fans, television spectators, so it is a big audience we are going after.”
There’s a Coleen/Angry Birds joke in there somewhere but, alas, we fear we might have been beaten to the punchline by one thousand social media banter-bible accounts.