Premier League Clubs Replace Gambling Shirt Sponsors
Eight Premier League clubs opened the 2026/27 season with new front-of-shirt sponsors after a voluntary ban on gambling branding in that position took full effect, but several clubs have simply moved their old betting partners a few inches down the sleeve instead.
The ban, agreed by clubs in 2023 with a three-season transition window to run out existing contracts, means no Premier League shirt front can now carry a sports betting or casino brand.
Financial services and technology firms have been the biggest beneficiaries of the resulting sponsor hunt.
👏👏👏 No more betting main sponsors in the Premier League pic.twitter.com/ayegjP6SSK
— Footy Headlines (@Footy_Headlines) July 21, 2026
Financial Services and Tech Move In
Everton replaced crypto casino Stake with financial trading firm CMC Markets, in a deal reportedly matching the roughly £10 million a year the club had earned from Stake. Brentford handed its front-of-shirt spot to recruitment platform Indeed, which had already been its training-kit sponsor.
Nottingham Forest swapped Bally's for financial services platform Marex, while Fulham replaced SBOTOP with ClickHouse, a Silicon Valley data infrastructure company, and Crystal Palace moved from Net88 to the software firm Temporal.
"There's a unique opportunity to become a sponsor of such an institution, and we just couldn't pass it up," Tanya Bragin, ClickHouse's vice president of product and marketing, told CNBC.
Bragin said having several clubs search for sponsors simultaneously created "a buyer's market" that gave incoming brands more negotiating leverage, though she said ClickHouse's own terms remained competitive.
Not every swap favoured technology and finance. Aston Villa replaced Betano with Visit Rwanda in a deal reportedly worth around £20m a year, matching what Betano had paid, while Bournemouth promoted its existing stadium sponsor Vitality to the shirt front at a reduced £4-5m, down from the roughly £8m BJ88 had been paying.
Sponsorship Values Held, Demand Didn't
The Sponsor's fifth annual Fair Market Value (FMV) Index, published in June 2026, found that league-wide sponsorship values held up better than expected despite the ban, with the sharpest declines concentrated at clubs also struggling on the pitch.
Tottenham Hotspur's front-of-shirt FMV fell 40% to £29.8m, down from £49.3m in 2024, a drop the index tied to consecutive 17th-place finishes and the loss of European football rather than the gambling ban itself.
Chelsea's valuation fell £16.7m to £33.6m, and the club has now started three straight seasons without a permanent shirt sponsor as it holds out for a partner that meets its valuation.
By contrast, Arsenal's FMV rose 19% to £59.2m on the back of its title win, and Manchester United's climbed past £60m after Champions League qualification under Michael Carrick, second only to Liverpool's £61m.
The index's conclusion was that the gambling ban produced "a collapse in demand" rather than a collapse in value, since the pool of sponsors willing to pay £5-25m a year shrank once betting brands left the market.
Betting Brands Move to the Sleeve
The front-of-shirt ban only covers that one panel. Aston Villa kept Betano on its sleeve for a reported £6m a year, and Everton kept Stake there after installing CMC Markets on the chest.
Bournemouth, Crystal Palace, Nottingham Forest and Sunderland have all added betting or online casino sites as sleeve sponsors for the new season, MrQ Casino, Kaiyun Sports, Bally Bet and LiveScore Bet respectively. Manchester United went further, signing a reported £20m-a-year training-kit partnership with Betway.
"Increasingly, bookmakers are going to be on the sleeve sponsorship, and the value of those sleeve sponsorships is going to increase significantly," Henry Beesley, marketing manager at British bookmaker Fitzdares, told CNBC, adding that the industry has "had years to prepare" for the front-of-shirt exit.
