West Ham, Leeds United and Everton suffer as £60m bounty wiped out – insider column
The Premier League’s worst-kept secret is finally out – the likes of West Ham, Everton and Leeds United will be forced to give up their front-of-shirt sponsorships after 2025-26.
Bookmakers’ logos currently adorn the shirts of eight top-flight sides, Southampton, Fulham, Brentford, Bournemouth and Newcastle United being the other five.
Those deals are worth a combined total of £60m per year, although that figure will fall from next season when Newcastle and Fulham’s partnerships with Fun88 and W88 come to an end.
Going back a few years, the combined total was closer to £80m, but clubs have gradually recalibrated given that this embargo has – as reported by this site in recent months – been in the post for some time now.
For example, Aston Villa and Wolves – whose previous shirt deals were with gambling firms – currently have front-of-shirt deals with companies in other industries but have instead signed sleeve deals with bookmakers.
West Ham, Newcastle, Everton and Brentford’s front-of-shirt deals meanwhile extend to their training kits.
Sleeve and training kit deals are not included in the Premier League’s new ban, nor is pitchside advertising or indeed any other form of a commercial deal.
Significantly, it is understood that none of the clubs whose deals run until next season or beyond will voluntarily abandon them early.
It is the pace and substance of the changes that have been criticised by campaigners and derided by Football Insider’s resident finance guru Kieran Maguire as “tokenism at best.”
Sources have also told this site that the ban is voluntary in name only, with the imminent release of a government white paper on gambling reform meaning the top flight effectively jumped before it was pushed.
So how will the ban affect the Premier League’s commercial ecosystem? Will the removal of one of the division’s single biggest income streams be the cataclysm that the sector’s influential lobbyists would have you believe? In short, no.
When it comes to the next big thing in the sponsorship market, Premier League clubs have kissed a few frogs in the hope of finding a prince – crypto, NFTs and trading platforms to name some of the more recent fads.
But the reality is that gambling sponsors have been the big-ticket item for all but the most elite clubs for 20 years, and they will remain so even after 2026.
Bookmaker logos will simply migrate from the front of the shirt to the sleeve, training kit or pitchside hoardings, and analysts consulted by this site are sceptical that there will be a major drop-off in the long-term value of the market.
In any case, Football Insider analysis shows that the value gap between front-of-shirt and sleeve partnerships has shrunk since 2017 when the Premier League began allowing sleeve sponsors.
In the case of Newcastle United, their sleeve partnership is actually worth more than their front-of-shirt deal.
Granted, that is largely to do with their change of fortunes since the shirt deal was signed in 2017, as well as the fact that the sleeve deal is with Noon, a PIF-owned company – but it is emblematic of a wider trend.
Industry experts have told this site that potential restrictions on so-called ‘white label’ bookmakers – which often circumvent international gambling laws – could possibly squeeze the market.
But the likes of Everton, West Ham and Newcastle will have ample time to prepare if they, like so many others in the top flight have in recent years, choose to get into bed with these companies.
It is easy therefore to understand why so many believe the Premier League’s latest measures lack teeth.
Outside the top flight, sources have told this site that there are no plans to extend the front-of-shirt ban to the EFL, whose financial ecosystem is even more reliant on gambling sponsorship.
In other news, West Ham line up summer deal for Brazilian World Cup star Pedro.