Sunderland chairman Ellis Short is convinced their sponsorship deal with Invest for Africa can be a huge success.

The Black Cats hope the partnership will open up a vast new fan-base and help them to maximise new revenue streams.

Short said: "Commercially, this is a good deal for us, but more importantly than that, it expands our presence, it expands our fan-base potentially.

"In the modern world of football, we are going to be living with financial fair play, so our spending will be limited by what we bring in.

"The Premier League is a global business watched by billions worldwide. The reason that the TV revenues are so high and continuing to grow is a reflection of the fact that all these people globally watch it.

"To thrive going forward, we need to be able to grow revenue, and to grow it locally doesn't make any sense.

"This is where our fans are, this is by far the most important area for us, but even the UK with 60 million people isn't enough when you are looking at TV revenue generated by billions.

"Africa, as has been said many times today, is a very fast-growing continent with 300 million people watching Premier League matches.

"If we can become a very popular team on that continent, it's probably better than being the 100th most popular team in the richest economy in the world."