The Pyramid partners with Peterborough United

What the partnership is

The agreement runs for two years and covers two pieces of inventory at the Weston Homes Stadium. The first is a static board behind the goal, carrying The Pyramid masthead, the website address and QR codes at either end. The second is the LED perimeter system, which runs the masthead and the line Football finance all the way down in sequence through the match.

Both went live on Saturday 19 September for Peterborough United's League One fixture against Doncaster Rovers and appeared again on the Tuesday for the EFL Trophy tie against Colchester United, which Peterborough won 3-1.

Peterborough are in their fifth consecutive season in League One. They averaged 8,125 for home league matches last season and drew 10,848 for the visit of Sheffield Wednesday earlier this month. It gives The Pyramid advertising exposure at a significantly larger venue and audience than its first two club partnerships.

Why Peterborough

We started buying pitchside advertising in August, at Boreham Wood in the National League and Corinthian-Casuals at tier nine. Peterborough takes that to a third level of the pyramid, and into the EFL for the first time.

That spread is deliberate. The Pyramid's coverage runs from the Championship to tier ten, and the readership we are trying to reach is spread across it — supporters, people who work in the game and anyone who wants to understand where the money actually goes.

There is a second reason. We have spent a good deal of time this year writing about what football sponsorship and advertising are actually worth.

In August, we asked two clubs in the same division what they charged for front-of-shirt sponsorship and received quotes of £50,000 and £15,000. We have written about the shortfall left as gambling money comes off Premier League shirts, about clubs at tier six selling commercial inventory and about a Fortune 500 company investing in a sixth-tier women's team.

It seemed reasonable, having written about the market, to become a buyer as well as an observer — and to find out what it looks like from the other side of the transaction.

We set out what we learned from the first two deals in Is Football Sponsorship Actually Worth It?. Peterborough is the first time we have bought at EFL level, and we will report on what that does in due course.

On independence

The Pyramid's editorial coverage includes Peterborough United in exactly the same way as any other club within our coverage: from the filed accounts, corporate record and public statements, without favour.

A commercial relationship with a club we write about creates an obvious question, and the answer is the one we have applied at Boreham Wood since August. The partnership has no bearing on what we publish. Nothing about it gives Peterborough any say over our coverage of the club, League One or anything else.

Whenever we write about Peterborough United, the piece will state plainly that The Pyramid is a commercial partner of the club, so readers can take that relationship into account for themselves.

That is the same standard we would expect of any publication writing about a business with which it has a commercial relationship, and we would rather state it here than have someone else point it out later.

What happens next

The partnership will run for two years at the Weston Homes Stadium. The QR codes on the static board lead to The Pyramid newsletter, which remains free.

Peterborough also gives us a useful comparison point. We now have advertising at tier three, tier five and tier seven. As the season develops, we will be able to compare what those different audiences actually deliver rather than simply assuming that bigger automatically means better.

Our thanks to everyone at Peterborough United for making it happen, and to the supporters who have already found us through the boards.

If you are one of them, welcome — the accounts are more interesting than you might think.