Over the last few decades, we've seen a number of major drinks companies sponsoring the jerseys of the world's major clubs.
And we're also accustomed to naming rights of that variety when it comes to competitions.
But when did the brewing and drinks industries first see jerseys as a good way to advertise their brands to the masses?
According to Benjamin Roberts' Bottled: English Football's Boozy Story, you'd have to go back a few decades to Germany.
He joined me on Team 33 to discuss the long history of football and booze's intertwined relationship.
You can listen to the full chat on the podcast right below, here, or on iTunes.
"Eintracht Braunschweig, they were a fairly lowly team with not a lot of money and some debts that needed playing," he said.
Jagermeister
"And the proprietor of Jagermeister sort of realised this. He wasn't a football fan by any means. But he realised [the potential] when he was at a party. People kept disappearing and he was wondering what are they doing?
"It turned out they were all going to watch a match on TV in some other room. 'If this is distracting people so much, then maybe I should get in on this'. So he proposed that the club would have the Jagermeister logo on. But the DFB, the German FA, were not keen on this at all. There was no sponsorship on shirts at all at the time.
"So he thought, 'How can we get round this? We can get rid of the deer that was Braunschweig's logo and we can put the Jagermeister stag there instead.' The DFB still weren't happy about this and they imposed a lot of rules about how big the logo can be and so forth. Eventually they managed to get that through and it sort of precipitated other clubs in the Bundesliga taking on sponsorship. Campari sponsored another club not too long after that."
You can listen to the full interview above on the podcast player.
Download the brand new OffTheBall App in the Play Store & App Store right now! We've got you covered!
Subscribe to OffTheBall's YouTube channel for more videos, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for the latest sporting news and content.
