SpudBros are sponsoring Preston North End in the 2025/26 season

Preston North End CEO Peter Ridsdale says the partnership with SpudBros has been ‘better than we could’ve imagined’.

The local potato-sellers turned social media sensations were officially announced as PNE’s kit sponsor for the 2025/26 campaign, back in June. Brothers Jacob and Harley Nelson, guided by their dad: ‘The Spudfather’, took over the flag market’s potato tram in 2020 and rebranded to SpudBros three years later.

They now have 4.4 million TikTok followers, 1 million YouTube subscribers and 850 thousand Instagram followers. Ridsdale, in his interview with the Lancashire Post this week, hailed the impact of the sponsorship so far.

“It’s unique,” said Ridsdale. “What we’ve done, aside from SpudBros, is a lot of the things we gave away to our previous sponsors for free as part of the deal, we’ve actually sold separately - like training kit, and a few other things in terms of sponsorship. So, we’ve already earned as much as we did before, before we come on to what we earn from SpudBros.

“The SpudBros thing is a unique opportunity to monetize, going forward, the relationship. It’s very much all about getting to a particular set of eyes and ears, in terms of the generation who follow them on elements of social media; I used to think TikTok was a watch until someone told me something slightly different.

“We met the father here, briefly, and followed it up with a meeting in Wrexham, at a food factory. We said: ‘We are not leaving until we’ve done a deal with you’ - and they were so excited. It was hammered out that afternoon in a two or three hour meeting and, I have to say, it is better than we could’ve imagined.

“It’s a local company, it’s entrepreneurs... exactly what this country needs: young lads, who are making a name for themselves. The amount of media hits we’ve had, on all forms of social media from all around the world, is unbelievable. And, the interest in Preston North End as a football club, as a direct result of that sponsorship deal, is as good as it gets.

“It’s on the kids’ shirts as well. There was a great piece the day before the Liverpool game... what it did point out was, instead of going for gambling companies who might throw money at you but have no association with the club, it truly is a sponsorship deal, with a football club, with the roots of the city - in terms of the business.

“We are just at the start. On the back of that, I had a meeting last week with somebody who represents quite a number of influencers - some of whom I had heard of, and some of whom I had to be educated on - who are going to be participating in the sponsorship deal going forward.

“And, I’ve just never had so many phone calls saying ‘we want to talk to you’ on the back of the sponsorship deal. I don’t just mean cash, I mean wanting to be associated with the football club. If you throw in the worldwide reaction we got to the Liverpool game, I don’t think we as a football club have ever been as far in people’s minds as we are at the moment. I think it has been a wonderful few weeks to be honest.”

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