Premier League: Cash brings success but at what cost?
Liverpool's Dominik Szoboszlai, in the lucrative Adidas and Standard Chartered sponsored shirt, celebrates scoring during the UEFA Champions League, league phase match, against Atletico Madrid at Anfield, Liverpool on Wednesday night. Picture: Peter Byrne/PA Wire
After weeks of watching Premier League clubs fling around hundreds of millions pounds in the transfer market, all in the hope that some twenty-something year old star, who probably still rings his mother to ask how the washing machine works, can deliver that elusive Premier League title, we now get a glimpse of how the bills are paid.
Liverpool this week unveiled a new front-of-shirt sponsorship deal worth £300m over five years with Turkish Airlines. The agreement, which replaces long-time partner Standard Chartered, is worth a cool £60m a season.
To put that into perspective, the average Premier League shirt sponsorship is worth between £8m and £10m annually. Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Arsenal are operating in a different financial universe, with shirt sponsorship now pushing towards £70m a year. Just as there is a widening gap at the top of the table, there is an ever-growing financial gulf between the Premier League's haves and have-nots.
Standard Chartered have been Liverpool’s main partner for 17 years with the current deal understood to be worth around £50m per season. And even though they step back from the main shirt sponsor’s deal, the company say they will become a global partner of Liverpool from 2027-28, whatever that entails or pays is not clear.
Liverpool’s new shirt sponsorship underlines the huge commercial muscle of a club that posted record revenues of £703m in the financial year ending May 31, 2025 has. Of course that was after a championship winning run.
Obviously, the shirt deal alone does not cover the costs when you spend a couple of hundred million pounds every transfer window. And of course, there’s a lot more revenues than the shirt deal and ticket sales alone.
It is believed that Liverpool also make £60m a season from Adidas by being the official kit. They get £12m from Expedia by being the official travel app and sleeve sponsor, and they make another £5m from AXA by being the official insurance company. There are a host of other business partners, including Carlsberg (a long-time shirt sponsor) being the official club beer with access to the bars at Anfield. EA Sports are the official video games sponsor, with access to the growing football gaming leagues and markets. Then there are more obscure ones like EC Markets: The official financial trading partner. The partner’s list is huge and include Google Pixel, Lucozade, PayPal, UPS, Tommy Hilfiger, and others all filling in sponsorship roles in everything from club phones, soft drinks, deliveries, and off field clothing for the players. They all feed into the coffers and mean the difference between profitability and choice of whatever players they want in the transfer window, and a debt that impacts the transfer budget, especially in a bad year.
The elephant in the sponsorship room at Liverpool is what role will new minority owners Jeff Bezos, of Amazon fame, and Facebook co founder Eduardo Saverin, will have on the club in the future. That sale made the club £2bn as well.
On the surface Liverpool's finances look exceptionally healthy. Yet football's modern business model comes with strings attached. Sponsors, investors and commercial partners all want something in return for their millions. Their interests do not always align with those of the supporters. Like, when will the sale of naming rights for Anfield become so strong it can no longer be ignored. And will Scousers live with it?
This is part of the problem surrounding the 115 charges for financial doping against Man City. The Eastlands club have a rather sweet £70m a year deal since 2009 with another airline Etihad for the shirt deal and naming rights of City’s stadium.
The issue is that Etihad Airways, a UAE airline, is owned by the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund. So, City are technically sponsoring themselves but with several financial twists and contortions an acrobat would be proud of in order to stay within the league’s financial regulations.
However, A leak of information in 2019 revealed that an internal Man City email suggested that of the £67.5m sponsorship in the 2015-16, just £8m came from Etihad and £59.5m came from Sheikh Mansour’s own holding company. Whether that will ever be included in the decision on the 115 charges against the club we may never know at this point.
What is beyond dispute is that success follows money. That it costs the club its soul in the long run seems sadly rather clear as well.
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