Visit Ghana Meets Sunderland: Why This Sponsorship Could Be Bigger Than Football

I had said that throughout the month of September, I would focus my writing on the Ghana Premier League and examine our domestic game through the lens of marketing, particularly the 4Ps of Product, Price, Place and Promotion. That remains the plan, but every now and then, an issue comes along that is too important from a marketing perspective to ignore, and the recent Visit Ghana sponsorship of Sunderland AFC is one of those issues.

I have listened to the arguments from sports commentators, football analysts and other stakeholders, and there are certainly different opinions about the decision, the value of the partnership and the way the initiative has been communicated. However, I want to look at this conversation from a slightly different angle. I am approaching it purely from a marketing and destination-branding perspective.

The question I am interested in is not simply whether Ghana should have chosen Sunderland, whether the sponsorship is expensive, or whether football is the right platform for tourism promotion. My question is much more fundamental: what can Ghana potentially gain by putting “Visit Ghana” on the front of a Premier League club's shirt, and how can we turn that visibility into measurable economic value?

Because if we look beyond the football shirt, what Ghana is really purchasing is attention, association, storytelling and access to a global audience.

And that is where this conversation becomes fascinating.

Tourism is not a small part of Ghana's economic story. The Ghana Tourism Authority's 2024 Tourism Report recorded 1,288,804 international arrivals in 2024, representing a 12 percent increase over 2023. The Ghana Statistical Service has also provided an important indication of the economic value of international visitors, reporting that, between the last quarter of 2022 and the third quarter of 2023, Ghana recorded 901,448 inbound international visitors who spent an estimated GH¢15.42 billion. Overnight visitors alone accounted for approximately GH¢15.18 billion of that expenditure.

These numbers should immediately change the way we think about tourism marketing.

Tourism is not simply about convincing someone to come and take photographs at Cape Coast Castle, visit Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park, experience our beaches or enjoy Ghanaian food. Tourism is an economic activity that creates demand across accommodation, transportation, restaurants, entertainment, retail, tour operations, cultural attractions and numerous other businesses that form part of the visitor economy. The Ghana Statistical Service itself describes tourism as a driver of jobs, investment and growth, while its research shows that international visitors spend money across accommodation, food and beverages, transport, recreation, culture, shopping and other services.

So when Ghana markets itself internationally, we should not only be asking how many people saw the advertisement.

We should be asking what happens after they see it.

That distinction is extremely important.

A tourism campaign is successful when awareness becomes curiosity, curiosity becomes consideration, consideration becomes travel, and travel becomes expenditure.

That is why I believe the Sunderland opportunity deserves more thoughtful consideration than simply judging it by the amount of money reportedly involved.

Reports have put the value of the proposed partnership at around £10 million, although there has been public discussion about the precise structure and funding of the arrangement. Whatever the final commercial structure may be, the important marketing question is whether Ghana can extract sufficient value from the platform to justify the investment.

And I believe there is a very strong argument that it can, if the partnership is executed properly.

Why Sunderland?

One of the most interesting aspects of this partnership is the choice of Sunderland.

At first glance, someone might ask why Ghana would choose Sunderland when there are bigger and more globally recognised clubs in English football. That is a legitimate question, but I think it misses something important about destination marketing.

The most famous platform is not always the most strategically relevant platform.

Sunderland has a history that connects it to Ghanaian football culture.

Ghanaian footballers have previously worn the Sunderland shirt, including names such as Asamoah Gyan, Sulley Muntari, John Mensah and Salis Abdul Samed, while other players with Ghanaian heritage have also had connections with the club.

For Ghanaian football followers, therefore, Sunderland is not an entirely unfamiliar name.

Asamoah Gyan's period at Sunderland remains particularly significant because of the emotional connection he created with the club and its supporters. His time at the Stadium of Light may have been relatively short in footballing terms, but his goals, personality and profile created a connection between Ghanaian football culture and Sunderland that goes beyond a conventional player transfer.

That history matters.

Marketing is fundamentally about associations, and strong brands are often built by connecting new messages to associations that audiences already understand.

When a Ghanaian supporter sees Visit Ghana on the shirt of a club that has previously had Ghanaian players, there is already a cultural bridge available. The message does not arrive in complete isolation.

It arrives with context.

It arrives with memories.

It arrives through football.

And that makes Sunderland potentially more than a media platform; it can become a relationship platform between Ghana and a football audience.

There is another important factor.

Sunderland is currently back in the Premier League, following promotion and an impressive seventh-place finish in the 2025/26 season, which also secured European football for the club. That means Ghana is attaching the Visit Ghana brand to a club whose visibility has increased considerably at precisely the moment when the Premier League remains one of the most powerful sports entertainment properties in the world.

This creates an interesting marketing opportunity.

Ghana is not merely putting its name on a football shirt.

It is placing its destination brand within a global entertainment ecosystem.

The shirt is not the campaign

This is where I believe Ghanaian marketers need to be careful.

The biggest mistake would be to treat the Sunderland shirt as the campaign itself.

The shirt is the media asset.

The campaign has to be much bigger.

If “Visit Ghana” appears on television during Sunderland matches, on photographs shared across social media, in news stories, in matchday content and across international football coverage, Ghana gains something incredibly valuable: repeated exposure.

But exposure alone does not generate tourism.

The real opportunity is to use the sponsorship as the beginning of a broader content and conversion strategy.

Imagine a Sunderland player visiting Ghana and producing a documentary about the experience. Imagine Sunderland supporters being given curated Ghana travel packages. Imagine the club producing content around Ghanaian football heritage, Ghanaian cuisine, music, culture and tourism. Imagine supporters being encouraged to travel to Ghana during major festivals. Imagine travel companies, hotels, airlines, restaurants and tour operators being integrated into the campaign.

Imagine Ghanaian tourism experiences being packaged specifically for the Sunderland audience.

That is when this becomes interesting.

Because suddenly, the football sponsorship becomes a distribution channel for a tourism ecosystem.

The objective should not be to make people remember the words “Visit Ghana”.

The objective should be to make them say:

I want to visit Ghana.

There is a huge difference between those two outcomes.

Ghana is selling an experience, not a destination on a shirt

Ghana has an extraordinary tourism proposition, but our challenge has often been how effectively we package and communicate that proposition to different international audiences.

We have beaches, heritage sites, festivals, food, music, fashion, wildlife, adventure tourism, business tourism and a powerful historical connection with the African diaspora. Ghana has also demonstrated that it can successfully use cultural campaigns to attract international attention, with initiatives such as the Year of Return and Beyond the Return deliberately positioning the country as a destination with cultural and historical significance. The Ghana Tourism Authority continues to describe its role as promoting Ghana locally and globally and using destination marketing to attract visitors from different markets.

The Sunderland partnership can therefore be viewed as another instrument within that larger destination-branding strategy.

And there is a particularly interesting opportunity here because football itself is a tourism product.

Football supporters travel.

They travel to watch their teams play. They travel for tournaments. They travel for stadium tours. They travel to experience football culture. They travel because they want to feel connected to something larger than themselves.

Ghana can tap into that psychology.

What if Ghana became not just a place Sunderland supporters saw on their television screens, but a place they wanted to experience?

What if the partnership eventually produced Sunderland supporter trips to Ghana?

What if Sunderland fans came to Accra, Kumasi or Cape Coast, experienced Ghanaian football, visited heritage sites, ate Ghanaian food and returned home as unofficial ambassadors for the country?

That would be a very different measure of success from television exposure.

There is also a diaspora opportunity

Another reason this partnership interests me is the potential connection between football, Ghanaian identity and the diaspora.

Ghana has already demonstrated that there is significant international interest in its heritage and identity. The Year of Return and Beyond the Return initiatives have shown the power of destination marketing that goes beyond beaches and hotels and instead speaks to identity, history and belonging. The Ghana Tourism Authority says the Year of Return attracted more than 1.18 million visitors from the African diaspora and beyond.

Football can operate in a similar way.

A Ghanaian living in the United Kingdom does not necessarily need to be convinced that Ghana exists.

The opportunity is to remind them that Ghana is a place they can experience, reconnect with and spend time in.

For someone of Ghanaian heritage who follows football, the combination of Ghana, Sunderland, the Premier League and Ghanaian football history creates an unusually strong emotional proposition.

That is powerful destination marketing.

And Sunderland's previous connections with Ghanaian players make that proposition even more interesting.

The real opportunity is economic

At the centre of all of this must be economics.

Ghana should not evaluate this partnership purely through impressions, television reach or social media views.

We should be asking whether the partnership increases tourist enquiries, hotel bookings, airline bookings, tour package sales, attraction visits, spending and repeat visits.

We should know how many people searched for Ghana after seeing the sponsorship.

We should know how many people visited the Visit Ghana website from the United Kingdom.

We should know how many tourism packages were sold.

We should know how many Sunderland supporters travelled to Ghana.

We should know how many additional hotel nights were generated.

We should know how much additional visitor expenditure was associated with the campaign.

Because if Ghana is serious about modern destination marketing, measurement cannot be optional.

The good news is that Ghana already has a substantial tourism market to build on. The 2024 Tourism Report recorded nearly 1.29 million international arrivals, while the Ghana Statistical Service's international traveller survey demonstrated the substantial expenditure associated with inbound visitors.

The opportunity, therefore, is not to create demand from nothing.

It is to expand demand, improve conversion and increase the value of every visitor.

But there is a bigger question we must ask

There is a temptation whenever a sponsorship like this emerges to focus entirely on whether Ghana is spending too much money.

That question is important.

But from a marketing perspective, there is another question that may be even more important:

What are we going to do with the attention?

If we spend millions putting “Visit Ghana” in front of an international football audience but fail to provide compelling tourism packages, efficient booking systems, attractive experiences, reliable transportation, excellent hospitality and a seamless visitor journey, then we will have paid for awareness without adequately building the product behind the awareness.

And that would be a mistake.

The Ghana Tourism Authority's own research points to the importance of improving visitor experience, expanding accommodation, strengthening infrastructure and ensuring that tourism expenditure benefits local businesses and communities.

This is where marketing meets reality.

You can create the world's best campaign, but if the customer arrives and the experience disappoints them, the campaign eventually works against you.

Destination marketing cannot be separated from destination management.

If we tell the world to visit Ghana, Ghana must be ready to receive them.

What could success look like?

For me, the real success of the Sunderland partnership would not simply be seeing “Visit Ghana” printed on a Premier League jersey.

I would want to see Sunderland supporters travelling to Ghana.

I would want to see Ghanaian hotels benefiting from increased bookings.

I would want to see tour operators creating Sunderland-linked Ghana packages.

I would want to see Ghanaian restaurants, fashion brands, musicians, creatives and cultural institutions integrated into the campaign.

I would want to see Sunderland producing content from Ghana.

I would want to see Ghanaian tourism experiences appearing on Sunderland's digital platforms.

I would want to see Ghanaian heritage being introduced to a new international audience through football.

I would want to see data demonstrating that searches for Ghana increased, enquiries increased, bookings increased and tourism expenditure increased.

And ultimately, I would want to see the campaign become bigger than the shirt.

Because the shirt will eventually change, but the relationship should not have to end when the sponsorship ends.

That, for me, is the real test.

Ghana should think beyond the sponsorship

There is an opportunity here to create something much more sophisticated than a conventional sports sponsorship.

Ghana could use Sunderland as an entry point into a broader programme connecting football, tourism, culture, business and destination branding.

The country could build a long-term relationship with Sunderland supporters, football communities in the United Kingdom and the wider Premier League audience. It could create football tourism experiences, heritage tours, diaspora packages and cultural exchanges that continue to generate value long after the initial sponsorship period.

The Premier League gives Ghana access to attention.

Sunderland gives Ghana a club with an existing Ghanaian football connection.

The Visit Ghana brand gives the partnership a clear destination message.

The question now is whether we can connect all three strategically.

And perhaps this is the most important lesson for Ghanaian marketers.

Marketing is not simply about being seen. It is about being remembered, considered and eventually chosen.

Putting “Visit Ghana” on a Premier League shirt can help Ghana be seen by millions of people.

But the real marketing work begins after they see it.

We have to give them a reason to search.

We have to give them a reason to dream.

We have to give them a reason to book.

And when they finally arrive, we have to give them a reason to return.

That is how a sponsorship becomes a tourism strategy.

That is how visibility becomes economic value.

And that is how a football shirt can potentially become much more than advertising space.

It can become a gateway to Ghana.

As someone who works in marketing, branding, communication, strategy and research, I find this particular partnership fascinating because it forces us to think beyond traditional advertising. The most successful destination brands are not built simply by telling people where to go; they are built by creating associations strong enough to make people want to experience the place for themselves.

So, while the football conversation continues, I will be watching the marketing story very closely.

Because ultimately, the question is not whether the world will see Visit Ghana on a Sunderland shirt.

The question is whether, after seeing it, the world will actually want to visit Ghana.

And that is where the real campaign begins.