Davies signs five-year endorsement deal with BMO

TSN Senior Correspondent

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Canadian men’s national soccer team player Alphonso Davies has signed a five-year sponsorship with Bank of Montreal, giving the bank a tie to one of Canada’s most recognizable young sports superstars.

“Alphonso is a rising star on the world stage,” Cam Fowler, BMO’s chief strategy and operations officer, said in an interview with TSN. “He’s a champion and well recognized now. We think he has the real potential to get to transcendent levels like Sidney Crosby, Steve Nash, Clara Hughes, and Penny Oleksiak.”

Nick Huoseh, Davies’ Edmonton-based agent, said he had been negotiating with BMO for the past year.

“They have big plans for Alphonso, and this just made sense,” Huoseh said. “When Alphonso opened his first joint bank account with his mother when he was 15 after he had signed with the Whitecaps, it was with BMO.”

Neither Fowler nor Huoseh disclosed financial terms.

The deal with the 21-year-old Davies gives BMO a powerful marketing tool ahead of the next two men’s World Cups. Canada’s men’s team has qualified for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar – Canada’s first appearance in the tournament since 1986 – and will automatically play in the 2026 World Cup as one of the three host countries alongside the U.S. and Mexico.

BMO plans to feature Davies in television and social media advertising campaigns.

“Alphonso has a spectacular following on social media and a youth-skewed base,” Fowler said. “He’s recognized as a positive role model.”

Fowler said Davies, who plays left back for Germany's Bayern Munich, is the first athlete BMO has signed to an endorsement since Ian Miller, who won a silver medal in equestrian at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

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