Amid the sea of Son Heung-min jerseys, there was another piece of clothing that was popular among fans at Tottenham Hotspur’s preseason games in Seoul: Hello Kitty scarves.
Often Premier League preseason tours are seen as a chance to sell shirts, but this year, Spurs’ local opponents in South Korea, Team K League, have decided to play Spurs at their own game.
The K League has teamed up with Japanese entertainment company Sanrio and convenience store 7Eleven to create keyrings, umbrellas, mousemats and other merchandise combining Sanrio’s popular cartoon characters with K League clubs.
Last season’s champions Ulsan HD, who will be taking part in the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup, are represented by the cute white dog Cinnamoroll, Daegu FC and Pohang Steelers are represented by rivals My Melody and Kuromi respectively, and gear for the capital club FC Seoul is covered with images of Hello Kitty.
The collaboration has been timed to coincide with Tottenham’s match against Team K League, an all-star team made up of players from each K League club.
Tottenham Hotspur won that match against Team K League 4-3 on Wednesday night, with Son Heung-min scoring twice in the first half. But while most preseason tours seem to benefit the touring team commercially, possibly at the expense of local sides, this year, the K League has done what it can to make sure Spurs’ visit benefits Korean soccer too.
As well as selling Spurs merchandise outside the Seoul World Cup Stadium, the league also had its own products, from the Team K League shirts used for the match, to the Sanrio collaborative items. It also set up a pop-up shop selling those items at the city’s Lotte World Mall, including photo sticker booths and a giant inflatable Hello Kitty in a soccer jersey.
It is capitalizing on a boost in popularity this season. Some of that might be explained by FC Seoul signing former England midfielder Jesse Lingard, but that doesn’t explain the higher attendances in games that haven’t involved FC Seoul.
Lingard is currently injured and couldn’t take part in the Team K League match, but was spotted at the stadium talking to former Nottingham Forest teammate Brennan Johnson.
Instead, the player that fans were focusing on for Team K League was Yang Min-hyuk, who signed for Spurs just before their preseason tour and is set to join the London-based side in January – a monumental rise for a player who was only on a semi-professional contract at the start of the season.
Yang is currently at Gangwon FC, where he has kept them in the title race midway through the K League season.
Korea’s soccer league runs through the summer, which has made it difficult for some European sides to do preseason tours in the country as local clubs have complained that fixture clashes would take the spotlight off K League games on those dates. That, combined with Juventus’ disastrous trip to Seoul in 2019, have meant that the K League and touring European sides have not always seen eye-to-eye.
But this summer at least, Korea’s local soccer league has found a way to benefit from Spurs’ visit.
Tottenham Hotspur finish their trip to Korea with a match against Bayern Munich in Seoul on Saturday.