Few drinks go better with a firey hot Thai red curry than a cool bottle of Singha beer. Now Singha is hoping to go just as well with luke-warm chicken balti pies, as it prepares to spice up England’s Premier League.

The Thailand-based brewer behind Singha (and Leo, the nation’s favourite) plans to sponsor two English teams this year “to boost its overseas sales and reputation, says group marketing manager Piti Bhirom Bhakdi”, reports the Bangkok Post.

To help serve its growing UK fanbase, the company intends to partner with a British brewery, which will produce 5 million litres of Singha a year. But, the UK market isn’t the target here, reports the Post.

”We will concentrate more on the growing Asian market. We are now studying the possibility to expand our business in neighbouring countries by hiring local manufactures or setting up joint ventures with local partners,” Mr Piti said.

The English Premier League and emerging markets have had a pretty high profile history together, both when it comes to sponsorship, and ownership.

Roman Abramovich at Chelsea and Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan at Manchester City may be the most well known, but let’s not forget Carston Yeung (Hong Kong) at Birmingham, Valeri Belokon (Latvia) at newly-promoted Blackpool, Alisher Usmanov (Russia) at Arsenal, Lakshmi Mittal (India) at QPR, and a succession of faces at beleaguered Portsmouth.

The coming 2010/11 season will see emerging market companies emblazoned across many of the league’s high profile teams. Arsenal and Manchester City do battle in the skies, representing Emirates and Etihad Airways respectively. West Ham will hope to lure the punters to Sbobet – an online Asian handicap betting website (that even offers Burmese as one of its languages).

Chelsea will trot out sporting the logo of South Korea’s Samsung, while Liverpool will now be sponsored by Standard Chartered – a British bank that specialises in local retail markets stretching from Ghana to Indonesia. Even Crystal Palace, who narrowly avoided liquidation earlier this month, will proudly show off the logo of Dubai-based GAC Logistics. (Crystal Palace were in fact the first team to field Chinese players in the English league, so perhaps they’re benefiting from first-mover advantage).

Birmingham City, meanwhile, are breaking with convention in another way. They’ve signed a deal with Chinese sportswear maker Xtep – who will produce the team’s kit for the next 5 years.

Singha, however, has even more reason than most to muscle in on English football. Everton (who have previously had Kejian – a Chinese electronics manufacturer – as their sponsor) will next year continue their deal with Singha’s arch rival, Chang Beer.

Chang’s deal with the Toffeeman has been running since 2004, the latest contract was signed in 2008 and worth around £8m. You can even buy Chang Beer on the club’s website.

But Singha has one key advantage over Chang in its coming battle for ‘reputation’ on the terraces: Everton’s new away kit.

This article was first published on Financial Times by Josh Noble.

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