Deel adds Snoop Dogg, Golden State teams to its partnership lineup

Deel, an HR tech startup with ambitions to go public, is willing to get creative as it seeks to build brand recognition.

The platform recently partnered with Snoop Dogg to help him hire a taste tester for his ice cream brand, Dr. Bombay. More than 300,000 people applied for the role, which was listed with a monthly salary of $10,000 a month. In a Deel ad that was shared around the time the job went live, the rapper lamented that “HR was a mess” before his company enlisted Deel. (The person selected for the job will be announced Oct. 27.)

Deel’s recent partnerships with professional sports teams are less of an anomaly in HR tech marketing. Companies like Paylocity and Paycom advertise their services with teams such as the Philadelphia Eagles, the New England Patriots, and the Los Angeles Football Club.

While Deel is a more recent entrant into the world of sports sponsorships, it’s inked two big partnerships in the last year. In May the HR platform announced a multi-year deal with soccer team Arsenal, the reigning champions of England’s Premier League. And this October, Deel rolled out a new partnership with Golden State, a basketball franchise which includes the Warriors, the Valkyries, and the Santa Cruz Warriors.

Both of these partnerships were personal for Deel’s founders, Alex Bouaziz and Shuo Wang. Bouaziz, who serves as the company’s CEO, recently told HR Brew that Wang considers the Warriors her favorite team. And while Bouaziz counts Paris Saint-Germain as his soccer team, he grew up with admiration for Arsenal, which has long recruited top talent from France, such as former coach Arsène Wenger and former-player-turned-soccer-broadcaster Thierry Henry.

The global footprint of many professional sports teams also makes them a good fit for Deel sponsorships, Bouaziz said. His company, which provides services such as employer of record hiring, international payroll, and visa processing, caters to businesses of this ilk.

“Some of those clubs operate across multiple jurisdictions by design, and some more than others. If you look at a club like Arsenal, you’re looking at scouts in multiple countries very often who want to find the best talent,” he said.

Targeting “high-value” customers. Arsenal and Golden State are both using Deel’s services as part of these partnerships, Bouaziz said. Deel is helping Arsenal migrate its legacy systems into one home for payroll and HR, while Golden State is using a new product that manages AI agents.

While he didn’t disclose the financial terms of the agreements, it’s safe to say Deel is likely making a significant investment to be the preferred HR partner of these teams. The last organization that sponsored Arsenal’s jersey sleeves, Visit Rwanda, reportedly paid 10 million pounds ($13.4 million) to do so, according to The Athletic.

In exchange, Deel gets its name out there. Its logo now features prominently on the sleeves of Arsenal players’ jerseys and will be shown across Emirates Stadium, the team’s home base. And at San Francisco’s Chase Center, where the Warriors play, fans will see Deel’s name throughout the arena, including on the court floor.

“We have a dollar amount and value that we think about from a brand awareness side,” Bouaziz said when asked about the return-on-investment of sponsorship deals like this. Since the Arsenal partnership was announced, he said Deel has fielded requests from people who want to work with them simply because they’re fans of the team.

In the case of Golden State, Deel is now getting similar requests from CEOs and CFOs of large companies who are big Warriors fans—and can potentially bring valuable business to Deel, Bouaziz said. “That speaks volumes for the type of customers that they are able to reach,” he said.