From beer to betting - how have football shirt sponsors changed?

Construction, alcohol and food sponsors are no longer visible on any Premier League shirts, while gambling is more common than ever There was once a time when the shirts of English football's leading clubs were adorned with household brands - but those days are long gone. The Premier League's prestige and global audience is bigger than ever - and lots of the companies who now sponsor shirts don't even operate in the UK, and aren't really even trying to sell anything to fans. So how have shirts sponsorships in the Premier League changed over the decades, and why are gambling firms more prevalent? Premier League clubs'self-imposed ban on front-of-shirt gambling sponsorsis set to come into effect before the 2026-27 season. But as things stand, 11 teams feature a gambling sponsor on the front of their shirts, an increase of three from last season. According to figures from GlobalData, the combined value of shirt sponsorship deals involving Premier League clubs and gambling companies in the 2024-25 season is $135.43m (£101.1m). The other nine clubs are sponsored by companies from four industries - air travel, entertainment, financial services and technology. Rewind three decades to the foundation of the Premier League and none of its 22 clubs had a shirt sponsorship deal with a gambling company. Just over half of the companies which sponsored teams in the 1992-93 campaign were headquartered in the UK, and the majority sold physical products in Britain. Nowadays, none of the front-of-shirt sponsor companies are aiming to sell physical products that fans can buy directly, and only one is headquartered in the UK. Even that one, Liverpool partner bank Standard Chartered, does not allow UK customers to open a current account with it. Industries such as technology, construction and clothing have almost completely disappeared from shirts. Five of the 1992-93 shirt sponsors - Commodore, Fisons, ICI, Mita Copiers and Tulip Computers - have since gone out of business. In the inaugural Premier League season, seven Premier League shirt sponsors companies were based within 100 miles of their club. Of those, four were based within 10 miles, and two - Sheffield United and Ipswich - were located less than a mile away. Now, only one club - Liverpool - are based within 1,000 miles of their shirt sponsor's main base. The average distance between a club and their shirt sponsor's main office in 1992-93 was 1,859 miles. Now it is 4,431 miles. Globalisation and advances in technology have also played a role in shifting the dynamic of modern sponsorships - big business and wider influence is increasingly what sponsor companies are aiming for, rather than the cash from the pockets of the fans in the stands. "In the UK there around 70 million people, but worldwide you're talking about a marketplace of billions," says Dr Joe Piggin, senior lecturer in sports management and policy at the University of Loughborough. "So the economic incentives are there for the companies." As the global financial picture has changed, companies in countries which enjoyed booming economies in the early 90s that have now weakened - such as Japan - have become less common shirt sponsors. Meanwhile, newer money in modern financial strongholds such as the Middle East is being spent on sponsorship deals. Sponsor companies gain far more from partnerships with clubs than just advertising – access to private boxes can be used to host clients, photoshoots with superstar players can be used in corporate material, and relationships can in some cases be used for political leverage. "The Premier League should look after itself," Piggin says. "Not just in terms of the economic sustainability, but in terms of connecting with their local communities." The Premier League itself does not have an official gambling partner, but Uefa announced its first formal gambling sponsor last summer. According to data from Uefa's European Club Finance and Investment Landscape report, gambling firms are also the most common sponsors of top division clubs in Belgium, Greece, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, and Russia. The top industries for shirt sponsorships across top divisions in Europe are: Gambling (15%) Retail (12%) Air travel; automotive; financial services; food and drink (all 10%) In the Championship, gambling is also the most popular category of shirt sponsor with six clubs - Burnley, Middlesbrough, QPR, Stoke, Sunderland, and Watford. There are no gambling sponsors on shirts in League One and League Two. The most common industries in those divisions are energy, automotive, and food and drink. Three Scottish Premiership clubs - Celtic, Dundee United and Rangers - are sponsored by gambling firms. Research shows thatgambling advertisements were shown more than 29,000 timesin the UK during the first weekend of this Premier League season, almost trebling the previous campaign's figure. "Gambling advertising has become almost inextricably linked to football and the industry makes a concerted effort to target young men, which is the profile most likely to develop problems with gambling," says Matt Zarb-Cousin, co-founder of Gamban, software which aims to help users quit online gambling. "There's a generation that's growing up in an environment that associates watching football with betting - they've been conditioned to believe it's a normal thing to do as part of enjoying sport." According to the UK Gambling Commission's latest figures, gambling firms earned revenue of £15.1bn between April 2022 and March 2023. That income has given them plenty to spend on advertising. And even with the front-of-shirt ban looming, some believe they will move their advertising into other areas like pitchside hoardings and maybe even shirt sleeves. "The front-of-shirt sponsorship withdrawal appears symbolic," Piggin says. "I'm quite sceptical about the significance of that move beyond public relations. Under-18s are not allowed to wear shirts with gambling sponsors - meaning young players have featured in games with sponsor-free jerseys. Leicester City's 15-year-old winger Jeremy Monga played wearing a shirt without the club's gambling sponsor on the front when he made his debut against Newcastle United earlier in April None of the Premier League's six wealthiest clubs - Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur - feature a gambling firm on the front of their shirts. Targeting clubs lower down the league, who face a much higher threat of relegation and the potential economic insecurity that comes with that, is a way for gambling firms to associate themselves with the Premier League without having to fork out top-end sums. "It is cheaper than sponsoring any of the top six," Piggin says. "And they also get their brand on shirts in photos of these teams playing the top six anyway. So there would be that legitimacy of 'look, we're in the Premier League, who cares who we're sponsoring?'" Some of the gambling sponsors are based in tax havens such as Curacao and Malta, allowing them to keep more of the profits they make from customers. UK customers are not even able to bet with some of the gambling companies which feature on the front of shirts. These so-called 'white label' firms instead use sponsorship of Premier League clubs to target customers in other markets. The gambling companies which sponsor Nottingham Forest and Wolves are among those targeting customers in Asia A lot of those companies are based in East Asia, and are aimed at customers in China, even though gambling is illegal there. "There are ways around China's gambling ban using VPNs and so on," says Dr Raffaello Rossi, lecturer in marketing at the University of Bristol. "They're advertising in the UK, not China, so the Chinese government can't do anything about it. But still they're reaching the Chinese population because the Premier League is a global phenomenon." The fact that UK customers can't gamble with some of these companies doesn't necessarily mean the advertisement has zero impact on British spectators, however. "It can still trigger someone to start betting because you recognise it's a betting sponsor," Rossi adds.