Sheeran is also cheering with Ipswich. The players sang his hit to him in the dressing room, now they are planning a party

A 2-0 win over Huddersfield ensured Ipswich would finish second in the Championship, which means direct promotion. After the final whistle, many of the 29,000 fans at Portman Road stormed the pitch and joined the players in wild celebrations.

Sheeran experienced them from a distance, as he was currently performing a concert in Miami, where he also visited the Formula 1 race there. However, he shared on Instagram that he was watching the match – of course in an Ipswich shirt – and after its successful end, he wrote:

“It’s very emotional for me. I remember watching them lose in League One (the third English league) in front of 11,000 spectators in the stadium not so long ago. This is a big thing for the club, the city and football, it shows that with belief and passion anything can happen.”

And he added footage that he immediately connected via video call with the players, who were cheering in the dressing room at the time, and congratulated them.

“Boy, where are you?” one of the football players asks him.

“In Miami. I have to work to sponsor you,” Sheeran jokingly replies. And he adds: “I’m coming back on Wednesday, shall we go somewhere?”

“Of course!” the excited players respond.

The four-time winner of the Grammy Award and one of the most popular pop artists of today has been a fan of the club since childhood, as he grew up in Framlingham, which is located approximately 30 kilometers from Ipswich. He became his official partner before the 2021/2022 season.

“I started sponsoring Framlingham Town under-11s, then I thought what it would be like to support Ispwich too. So I asked them if they needed a sponsor at all, and they said they definitely did,” he revealed to the BBC two years ago.

After a long negotiation, he reached an agreement with the club and placed the name of his current concert tour on the jerseys, as part of which he will also visit the Czech Republic this year: on July 27 and 28 he will perform in Hradec Králové. The complicated + – = ÷ x Tour title reads like the Mathematics Tour and refers to his album titles.

“Ed is a very important figure for our club,” coach Kieran McKenna, who has been instrumental in the promotion to the Premier League, told Sky Sports last September. “He is our most famous supporter, everyone in Ipswich and Suffolk (the county where the town is located) is proud that he has roots here, and he still lives here. We’ve already had some great moments with him arriving at the cabin for us.’

A video of his visit in October went viral on social media, with footballers singing one of his biggest hits, Perfect, to him. “Ed is a completely relaxed guy who always comes over once in a while, chats for a while, says how much he enjoyed the match and how proud he is to be part of the club,” described Czech goalkeeper Václav Hladký, one of Ipswich’s mainstays, in December for the ČTK agency.

“Always, when I wasn’t away for concerts, I went to the matches,” Sheeran explained some time ago. “They had tough years and they didn’t always win, but it was always a nice day off. I once had my friends from a Japanese band here in the studio, I took them to a game too and Ipswich played really well, so they’re big fans now.”

Indeed, the popular singer helped spread the name of the club, which in 1962 dominated the predecessor of the Premier League First Division and later the FA Cup and the UEFA Cup, today’s Europa League, around the world.

Fans at his concerts often wear football jerseys, which you can buy in the official Ipswich store with his name on the back and the number 17, Sheeran himself has already played several concerts in them.

The renowned website The Athletic wrote in November that in the first season of the partnership with Sheeran, the club sold the most home jerseys in history, this record was immediately broken after only four months of the following year.

After promotion to the Premier League, there will surely be even more interest in T-shirts with mathematical symbols. Sheeran has now announced in Miami that he has agreed to extend the partnership with the club for the next season as well, which will last for the fourth year.

Sheeran performed in the Ipswich jersey last spring in England, for example:

At the same time, it copies the impressive rise of the club, which was still active in the third English league in the 2022/2023 season. However, he made it to the Championship last year and is now celebrating his second promotion in a row, which is a respectable feat.

And judging by football enthusiast Sheeran, he will have no modest ambitions in the world’s best league.

“The biggest achievement for me would be if we avoid relegation, but you never know what can happen,” the singer told ESPN, now in Miami. “After all, we’ve already seen that even Leicester managed to win the league.”

With whom, by the way, Ipswich has drawn twice in the current season of the second league and is heading to the Premier League together with him.