A new mobile brand hopes to use a sponsorship deal with the Caribbean Premier League (CPL) to boost its imminent roll-out in the Jamaican market.

XOX, described as a new international mobile brand, is the founding sponsor of the Jamaica Tallawahs cricket team in the CPL, the highly anticipated Twenty20 cricket tournament to be played across the region.

“XOX aims to bring modern, high-tech, and affordable mobile devices to the local market, with an emphasis on smartphones and tablets allowing consumers convenient access to the Internet,” Erick Barclay, business development director for Facey Telecom, told journalists at a press conference on Monday to announce the sponsorship.

Barclay said Facey Telecom, a subsidiary of distribution firm Facey Group, will be working with XOX, but did not give further details on the partnership at the time.

“Facey Telecom is very proud of its Jamaican origins and has a longterm commitment to Jamaica and the Caribbean region. We are delighted to be working with XOX as a new entrant to the market and eagerly await the launch of its first products in the very ner future,” he said at the press conference.

Barclay did not respond to phone and email messages left for him by the Business Observer, seeking additional information, up to press time yesterday.

Facey is a major player in the distributive trade, operating in the telecom distribution, consumer distribution and technology distribution sectors with operations in over 30 countries in the Caribbean, Central America, Europe, and the Pacific.

Its telecom distribution business has physical offices and warehouses in 23 countries, and they sell to another six countries where the company does not have a physical presence. Facey, in 2001, became the exclusive distributor of Digicel’s mobile handsets, airtime, and all its related products.

Not much is known about XOX at the time. And it is unclear whether the company is associated with a new Chinese mobile operator, XOX Mobile, which states on its website that it is “set to offer consumers full-fledged mobile services with unparalleled charging and payment flexibilities”.

What’s clear, however, is that the brand rates highly the value proposition of the inaugural edition of the much-hyped cricket tournament, which will feature a host of the sport’s international stars. West Indians, including Chris Gayle (Jamaica Tallawahs) and Marlon Samuels (Antigua Hawksbill), Australian Ricky Ponting (Antigua Hawksbill), Bangladeshi Shakib al Hasan (Barbados Trident), New Zealand’s Ross Taylor, Shaoib Malik, Umar Akmal (Barbados Trident) and Mohammed Hafeez of Pakistan are among the big name players contracted to play in the six-team competition. Aside from Jamaica, the other competing teams are Antigua Hawksbills, Barbados Tridents, Trinidad and Tobago Red Steel, St Lucia Zouks and Guyana Amazon Warriors.

“The CPL promises to provide a thrilling spectacle of cricket throughout the region,” Barclay observed at the conference.

“The sponsorship provides an excellent opportunity for XOX to promote its arrival in the market and we look forward to a successful tournament over the coming weeks,” he added.

The CPL is scheduled to take place from 29 July to 26 August across all the franchise nations. It follows on the success of the Indian Premier League and other similar championship competitions for Twenty20 cricket.