GWM signs multi-year Parramatta Eels sponsorship to chase top-five Australian sales

GWM has announced a multi-year sponsorship of the Parramatta Eels' NRL and NRLW teams, part of the Chinese brand's effort to lift its market share in New South Wales and climb from seventh into Australia's top five automotive brands.

The deal was framed by GWM chief operating officer John Kett around a shared ambition: "For Parramatta, the goal is premiership number five. For GWM, our immediate goal is to become Australia's number five automotive brand. Different scoreboards, but the same ambition to keep climbing," he said in a statement.

Why NSW is the target

Kett told CarExpert the Eels sponsorship is a key part of GWM's push up the sales ladder, with a longer-term ambition to become a top-three brand. The company's national share sits close to five per cent, but in New South Wales it is 3.8 per cent, and that is the country's biggest market.

"We certainly have got a regional focus here in New South Wales. It's probably a market that our brand underperforms relative to the rest of Australia, and it's the highest opportunity," Kett said. GWM said even a small increase in NSW share could deliver a substantial sales boost, with Kett noting that picking up one per cent of New South Wales leaves "a lot of cars sitting there for us".

That gap is the story here. A brand that is near five per cent nationally but below four in the largest state has more room to grow in NSW than anywhere else, so the sponsorship reads as a marketing spend aimed at a specific sales problem rather than a general brand-building exercise.

What the Eels bring

Roy Morgan research released in September 2026 found the Parramatta Eels are the second-most supported Sydney-based NRL club, behind the BYD-sponsored Sydney Roosters. The club reported record membership in 2025 despite finishing 15th of 17 teams in 2024 and 11th in 2025, and it finished 13th in 2026.

On the field, the Eels last won a premiership in 1986 and a minor premiership in 2005, with their most recent grand final appearance a 28-12 loss to Penrith in 2022. The club's NRLW team, formed in 2021, finished runner-up in 2022, losing the grand final 32-12 to Newcastle in its best season to date, and finished eighth of 11 teams in 2026.

GWM joins German apparel brand Adidas as a new Eels sponsor. Parramatta chairman Matthew Beach told members last Friday that having two global brands invest in the club was "a strong endorsement of our vision" and reinforced its position as one of Australia's most recognisable and commercially attractive sporting brands.

The Roosters link is hard to ignore: GWM is backing the club that Roy Morgan ranks behind a rival already sponsored by another Chinese car maker. Sponsoring the second-most supported Sydney NRL club puts GWM in front of a large, concentrated audience in the state it most wants to grow.

What has not been announced

GWM has not disclosed the length of the deal beyond describing it as multi-year, nor its financial value, and no figure has been made public. The sponsorship has also not been tied to any specific vehicle, model launch or consumer promotion; the sources describe it only as a sponsorship of the Eels' NRL and NRLW teams.

For buyers, the practical effect is likely to be visibility rather than anything on the car itself. A sponsorship of this kind raises the brand's profile in Sydney and western Sydney, but it does not change showroom prices, model lines or warranty terms, and none of those were part of the announcement.

Volkswagen plans to send an over-the-air update that limits maximum charge to 80 percent on 22,524 ID.4 electric SUVs, according to recall documents filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The documents state that the batteries in the affected vehicles could catch fire if certain charging conditions are met while the vehicle is above 80 percent state of charge.

The fix is temporary, and the cause is still unknown

The charge cap is intended as a temporary measure while Volkswagen works toward a permanent remedy. According to the NHTSA documents, the company still is not entirely sure why the batteries are catching fire, and limiting charge to 80 percent or less reportedly helps minimise the risk.

Owners will also receive warning stickers to place on the car telling them not to charge beyond that point. The documents indicate that customers may experience degraded range or performance if the recall conditions are present, so there is no clear warning sign that a given ID.4 is affected beyond the recall itself.

That matters because a charge cap is not a repair. It buys Volkswagen time, but it also asks owners to live with less usable battery capacity in the meantime, and the absence of a definitive root cause means nobody can say yet how long that arrangement lasts.

Dealers know now, owners hear later

Dealers have already been notified of the issue, while owner notification is not scheduled until late November. According to a report from InsideEVs, the over-the-air update will have been in place for nearly a month by the time those letters arrive.

Car and Driver contacted Volkswagen for confirmation of the report and said it would update its story when it learned more. The sources do not specify which model years or trim levels fall within the 22,524 vehicles covered by this action, and that detail has not been announced.

A second ID.4 battery recall in the same year

This is not the first ID.4 recall tied to battery fires in 2025. An earlier action in January covered nearly 44,000 vehicles spanning the 2023 to 2025 model years.

Whether the two campaigns are formally linked has not been confirmed. Car and Driver asked Volkswagen whether the recalls are related and was awaiting an answer at the time of its report.

The scale of the January recall, roughly double the number of vehicles in this update, suggests Volkswagen is narrowing its focus to a subset of cars as it learns more, though the company has not said so publicly. For anyone shopping a used ID.4, the practical consequence is a car that may arrive with a software-imposed 80 percent ceiling and a sticker on the charge port, at least until a permanent fix is ready.