Joseph Muscat’s Superb Sponsor: How a Mysterious Group is Rebranding Malta’s Political Comeback

# Joseph Muscat’s Superb Sponsor: The Hidden Hand That Still Shapes Malta’s Game

Valletta’s golden evening light was still bouncing off the Upper Barrakka balconies when a WhatsApp forward pinged across the island last week: “Check out who’s bankrolling the former PM’s new Dubai-style think-tank.” Within minutes the same screenshot—an impeccably designed LinkedIn announcement—had reached Gozo group chats, fishing-village bars and the kitchen tables of three-generation families in Żabbar. The name on the masthead: Joseph Muscat. The single line that stopped thumbs mid-scroll: “Principal sponsor – Superb Group.”

Cue the island-wide eyebrow raise. In Malta, where politics is the unofficial national sport and everyone has a cousin who once dated a minister’s driver, the phrase “superb sponsor” is practically a cultural Rorschach test. Some immediately pictured a shadowy offshore trust; others recalled the 2019 “Superb” ferry that Muscat inaugurated to fanfare just weeks before the Daphne protests exploded. Either way, the word carries the whiff of swagger we Maltese instantly recognise: the glitzy billboard that lands overnight, the fireworks that out-shine the parish feast, the contract signed in a Paceville VIP booth at 2 a.m.

So who, or what, is Superb? Company-registry sleuths point to Superb Group Ltd, incorporated in 2021 with a €2 million share capital and a registered address in Ta’ Xbiex that looks suspiciously like a brass plate on a law firm’s door. Its core activity is listed as “business consultancy and investment holding,” but locals know the group has quietly bank-rolled everything from a Sliema co-working space festooned with neon slogans to the summer-long “Superb Fest” DJ marathon that replaced the traditional hamlet feast in sleepy Qala. In other words, the perfect Maltese hybrid: part tech-bro incubator, part village festa on steroids.

Culturally, the timing is exquisite. February is when Malta shakes off its winter lethargy with carnival doughnuts and political speeches in village squares. Muscat, self-exiled from front-line politics yet omnipresent on TikTok, understands that nostalgia is our strongest currency. By hitching his comeback wagon to a brand named “Superb,” he invokes the same linguistic muscle memory as “Gieh ir-Repubblika” medals and “Made in Malta” stickers on Gozo cheese. It’s the adjective our mothers use for perfectly al-dente timpana and the hashtag influencers slap on sunset yacht pics. Superb = Maltese excellence, no questions asked.

But the community impact is where the story turns from cheeky PR to national parable. In Qala, the parish priest reluctantly allowed Superb Fest to take over the village football ground after the group donated €50,000 for new floodlights. Two weeks later, the traditional brass-band march was rescheduled to avoid clashing with Belgian techno DJs. Older villagers still sip their Kinnie on the bench and mutter “żmien differenti,” but the teenagers? They’re volunteering as bar staff, earning €10 an hour—triple the usual summer pocket money. Superb, it seems, is exporting Malta’s greatest commodity: the ability to monetise our own contradictions.

Environmentalists are less amused. BirdLife Malta notes that Superb Group’s planned “innovation marina” in Marsaskala will moor 40 super-yachts directly over a seagrass meadow. Yet even here the group deployed the Muscat playbook: a glossy render captioned “A Superb Future for Our Coast,” plus a €250,000 pledge for local school STEM labs. The mayor, caught between angry activists and the promise of year-round berthing fees, shrugged the quintessential Maltese shrug: “We’ll monitor the situation.” Translation: we’ll wait till the outcry dies down and the jobs arrive.

Will Muscat’s gamble work? Step into any Valletta café and opinions fly faster than pastizz crumbs. The old-timer reading *It-Torċa* insists the Superb link is proof that “they” never left. The Erasmus student live-tweeting her Erasmus year calls it “disruptive soft power.” Meanwhile, the bartender cleaning beer taps just wants the tips from tonight’s Superb-sponsored pub-crawl. That, perhaps, is the most Maltese response of all: keep serving, keep cashing in, keep dancing while the fireworks crackle overhead.

Because on this island, superb is not an adjective—it’s a business model. And business, like the tide lapping our ancient harbours, always finds a way back to shore.