Branded club merchandise has officially jumped the shark ladies and gentlemen.
Football clubs' branded merchandise is nothing new. Schoolbags, lunch boxes, mugs, calendars and wallets; it sometimes seems that there isn't a product in the world that doesn't have a club crest slapped on it somewhere.
The majority of these products are aimed at impressionable children who are drawn to anything associated with their favourite team, but a Norwegian has recently taken a slightly more novel approach to branding.
Sogndal Fotball from the western Norwegian municipality of Sogndal today became the country's first club to launch its own condom.
The condoms, whose packaging comes adorned with the club's logo, will be given out for free to students at the local university in a bid to promote the club and, presumably, safe sex.
"Students are a group we want to reach. Until now they have not been so active, so we want to create a buzz and get them to widen their eyes for Sogndal and club. So then we thought, why not do it with condoms," said Sogndal Fotball's communications officer Hilde Østbø to
local media.
Although he didn't say it in so many words, we'd like to think Hilde was trying to emulate the famous words of Grandpa Simpson: "Think of me when you're having the best sex of your life."
