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This is something that was rumored a couple of months ago, but now it's been made official: Liverpool's kits are being rebranded from Warrior, the American company that signed a then-record deal to make Liverpool's gear, to their parent company New Balance starting next season.
The move comes in the wake of a series of horrifying PR nightmares that Warrior put themselves in through poor decision making and even worse use of social media, gaffes that had a large number of Liverpool fans up in (digital) arms and demanding some sort of response from the club over the actions of this company that they are so closely tied to. A club's kit manufacturer is arguably their most visible sponsor, so even though Liverpool themselves didn't say any of the things that made people so upset, Warrior's actions were still closely tied to the club through that association.
Of course, the officially given reason is rather more innocuous than that; according to the official report released by the Echo, Liverpool and New Balance simply want to use their partnership to "make further inroads into the Asian market," where the athletics company has a large retail presence. The fact that this conveniently solves a potentially major PR issue for both companies is only coincidental, apparently.
As New Balance is the parent company of Warrior, the original terms of the deal signed in 2012 are unchanged. There are three years left after the end of this season, at a £25 million per season figure that was a record at the time, but is starting to look rather ordinary now next to deals signed by other big clubs since then.
Another complaint of Liverpool fans has been that of the designs of the kits. Warrior's styling could be rather... garish when it came to the away and third kits, and even this season when things were toned down, many were dissatisfied by the end product. Gear designed on the New Balance label tends to be a little bit more conservative in appearance, so hopefully the next three years' worth of kits will be a little easier on the eyes.
Liverpool will be the first football club under the New Balance label. There have been no plans announced yet to re-brand shirts for the other clubs under the Warrior label, which include Stoke City, Porto, Sevilla, Shamrock Rovers, and a host of other small teams around the world.
