Blues chairman and CEO Mark Ashton has paid tribute to shirt sponsor and minority shareholder Ed Sheeran and the reach he gives the club.
Framlingham-based pop star Sheeran has been sponsoring Town’s men’s and women’s first teams since 2021, although with that arrangement set to end next summer.
Ashton and Ed Schwartz, the CEO of ORG, the US investment firm which manages funds on behalf of the Arizona Public Safety Personnel Retirement System (PSPRS), the club’s majority owner, were speaking at Leaders Week London, which bills itself as "the most significant gathering of the entire ecosystem of global sport”, this afternoon.
Reflecting on Sheeran’s impact, Ashton said: "He is incredible. When we launch a kit and he is live on a stage in Vegas, we have a reach that even Man United and Chelsea would love to have, because he is a world superstar who cares about this football club. He sponsored the club when no one really wanted to.”
Regarding the club’s first summer back in the Premier League and the interest in manager Kieran McKenna, he added: "It has been brutal. It is the biggest and most challenging league in the world. We got promoted. That was great – then the biggest clubs wanted to take our manager from us, which was difficult. I like to say we handled it with integrity.
"I spent a lot of time with Kieran, not trying to persuade him to stay, but talking about Ipswich.
"We talked about the pros and cons of the other clubs, what our analysis is, what we can do and all I could do was give him the facts and he is a young, intelligent man who makes his own decisions. He came back and said ‘no, this is home and where I want to be’.”
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Ashton also urged the Premier League and EFL to agree a new deal regarding TV revenue with talks having been stalled since March.
"I am a capitalist at heart and was on the EFL board,” he continued. "They know my view, I am in favour of parachute payments.
"But I think we need to review the Financial Fair Play regulations, I think they are outdated, and the costs [of competing at the top level] have changed.
"You can see that the Premier League clubs couldn’t spend as much this summer because of Financial Fair Play, I think it needs to be in line with UEFA rules in their competitions but it has to be a flow between the Championship and Premier League.
"I think we need to look at the PL working with the EFL for a new financial deal – whatever it looks like.”
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