Premier League Shirt Sponsorship Problem?
This season’s sponsors are a telling state of the sponsorship market and who can afford to invest millions into sponsorship.
I am a big football fan (arsenal fan) and a student of business - the two worlds collated when looking through the premier league fantasy football app and then spotting the shirt sponsors… it was a little troubling. (Take a look through this season’s kits here)
We have moved away from the domination of crypto brands in the last few seasons and moved towards international gambling.
It’s a powerful trend as many of these sponsors have limited presence in England and are looking to leverage the reported global viewership of ~3.2bn.
Here are some of the main takeaways taking a look through:
11 (of 20) of the main sponsors of the premier league clubs are gambling sponsors (this is agreed to stop from the 2026/2027 season)
Crystal Palance’s sponsor Net88 is not active in the UK (is regulated) and their site doesn’t work
The price of these sponsorships every season is not cheap, the lowest is believed to be north £4m per year, whereas Snapdragon's sponsorship of Man Utd is reported to be £60m per year
Notts Forest's main sponsor is the sleeve of Crystal Palace and is an official brand partner of Chelsea - it also has received warnings from the UK Gambling Commission.
Everton's main sponsor stake also owns its sleeve sponsor kick (twitch’s rival)
Shirt manufacturers is an interesting story
Adidas x7 (11 in total in English pro football)
Umbro x4 (10 in total in English pro football)
Castore x1 *but has the sub-licence to Umbro UK (6 in total in English pro football)
Nike x4 (6 in total in English pro football)
Puma x2 (17 in total in English pro football)
Macron x1 (17 in total in English pro football)
Sudu x 1 (a brand new manufacturer - a company of ex-designers from many of the largest manufacturers)
So does this mean we have an issue with sponsorship in English pro football with large gambling issues across Britain? To me, yes, but would many other industries could afford to cover these costs?
£5m per year in sponsorship is a huge investment (ask struggling car brand Cazoo and other businesses what happened with their huge investment into sponsorship) and the ROI is often questioned at the sponsor’s brand level - the next industry might have to be equally questionable or we may have to see the costs be put back on the fan… and from my experience overseeing hundreds of professional and semi-professional teams needing bailing out by fans crowdfunding, football clubs will need to be saved by their superfans again.
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