Football Sponsorship: Where The Big Money Is
Any sponsor will tell you there is always a risk when sponsoring a sports team. For instance, the team might need to do better or have unforeseen points deducted, lowering their place in the league table. Even bad weather can prevent fans from visiting their favourite teams’ live games, and all of these unforeseen circumstances can result in sponsors losing a lot of money.
Shirt Sponsorship Deals
Within sports marketing, being a successful sponsor can gain the sponsor new clientele and increase standing in popular culture. The association with a successful premier league team or individual players represents a sizable chunk of revenue whilst playing a role in the successful growth of clubs.
Today, we will look at a few bigger shirt sponsorship deals and how sponsors target new audiences.
Sponsorship Investments and its Relationship With the Gambling Industry
One of the larger sponsors for sporting events worldwide is the gambling industry, although it is on the cards that gambling sponsorship will finish at the end of the 2025/6 season.
Due to the extraordinary global popularity of football, the eight Premier League clubs with gambling-related firms as sponsors have a combined estimated value of £60m each year.
A Fruityking.co.nz spokesperson said “that all existing and new shirt fronts gambling sponsorships would be allowed until then. As it is, clubs will continue to feature gambling brands in other areas like LED advertising and shirt sleeves, which means the eight Premier League clubs with gambling firms as sponsors will be looking for new sponsors soon”.
The Teams who currently have gambling companies as shirt-front sponsors are:
West Ham – Sponsored by Betway
Southampton – Sponsored by Sportsbet
Leeds – Sponsored by SBOTOP
Newcastle – Sponsored by Fun88
Fulham – Sponsored by W88
Brentford – Sponsored by Hollywoodbets
Everton Sponsored by Stake
Bournemouth – Sponsored by Dafabet.
Other Premier League teams rake in millions each year. Chelsea, Tottenham and Liverpool bring in around 44m and are sponsored by Three, the life insurance company AIA, and the financial firm Standard Chartered, respectively.
However, it is in Spain and France that the largest sponsorship deals are made.
Barcelona (€62.5)
Spotify replaced Rakuten with a higher four-year sponsorship deal reputedly worth €270 to Barcelona even though the club is in debt to the tune of €1.35 billion.
However, considering that until recently, Barcelona refused to have a shirt sponsor, it makes you wonder what type of management it took to get the club into such financial difficulties.
Paris Saint-Germain (€65m)
PSG recently began a three-year shirt-front sponsorship with Qatar Airlines, replacing the French hospitality group Accor. Both deals were good, although the deal with Qatar is considered higher, with reports from France valuing the sponsorship at between €60 – 70 million a year.
Real Madrid (€70m)
No other club can top Real Madrid in the sponsorship stakes. Real Madrid’s deal with Emirates reflects their commercial value, unlike some ‘new money’ clubs that enjoy inflated sponsorship deals as their owners circumvent the Financial Fair Play rules.
