When Liverpool signed a £100,000 deal with Japanese tech giants, Hitachi, in 1979, they became the first team in England’s top flight to have a shirt sponsor. Prior to this point, football kits had largely consisted of a shirt, sometimes with a collar, sometimes with the logo of the kit manufacturer, all of which you would now class as “retro”.
Now, more than 40 years on since Hitachi’s deal with the Reds, shirt sponsors are an essential part of any football club’s kit, irrespective of their division or status, and they are worth big bucks, especially in the Premier League. As football fans have become so accustomed to shirt sponsors being ever-present on every team’s shirts, headlines were made last season as newly promoted side Nottingham Forest played their opening game of the season wearing kits without a shirt sponsor.
This year, the Nottingham side have carried on the trend, starting the new campaign without having secured a kit sponsor, despite these being enormously lucrative. In this article, we will explain why Forest have been playing without a kit sponsor, as well as taking a look at any other teams that have played in unsponsored shirts in recent years.
Why Have Nottingham Forest Been Playing Without a Shirt Sponsor?
Well, Forest’s striking sponsor-less kit, first worn at the City Ground when they defeated West Ham in their first home game back in the Premier League for 23 years, was worn simply because they could not agree a satisfactory deal with a potential sponsor. BOXT, who had been the club’s primary shirt sponsor during their impressive play-off winning campaign in 2021/22, reportedly offered the club a multi-million-pound deal to extend their partnership, but this was declined.
Forest owner, Evangelos Marinakis, who wilfully splashed out over £150 million on players to keep the East Midlands side in the Premier League, was supposedly holding out for a deal worth £10 million per season. When this wasn’t found, he was happy to continue to wait, meaning that Steve Cooper’s side became the first top flight side since the late 80s to not have a shirt sponsor! However, from January, Forest began playing with a shirt sponsor, but this was not for commercial purposes.
Who Were Forest’s Shirt Sponsors After January?
On the 1st of January 2023, the East Midlands club declared that their kits would now include the logo of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), allowing the club to use their lack of shirt sponsor for good. A club statement read, “Nottingham Forest Football Club is proud to announce a new international charity partnership with UK for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, to support relief efforts for people fleeing conflict and persecution around the world.”
Alongside this announcement, the club also declared that it had made a significant financial donation “to support international relief efforts”, a move that demonstrated how Premier League clubs can use their vast public profiles to raise awareness for worthwhile causes. Furthermore, fans who had previously purchased the sponsor-less shirt were then able to have the UNHCR logo added to their shirts, although many appear to have grown rather fond of the sponsor-less kit, as these remain a common sight at the City Ground.
Do Forest Have a Shirt Sponsor for the 2023/24 Season?
The simple answer here is no. The two-time European Cup winners started their second campaign in the Premier League with no kit sponsor. This is because the club have still been unable to find a suitable brand, prepared to pay what Forest believe they are worth, to be emblazoned on the front of their famous red shirts.
As Marinakis is still holding out for a particularly lucrative deal, a number of proposed brands have reportedly been close to reaching an agreement, but none have been officially signed. Once again, the Greek owner is more than happy to start the Premier League season without a shirt sponsor, meaning that the Midlands side have begun the 2023/24 campaign without a deal, although their kits will now be made by Adidas, rather than Macron.
Dr Dan Plumley, a finance expert at Sheffield Hallam University, suggested last year that Forest are “going above the benchmark”, as newly promoted clubs typically aim for “£6m or £7m”, rather than the £10m that the club have their heart set on. However, now that the Reds have managed to stay in the Premier League for a second season, perhaps they may be able to attract a more lucrative deal. As of now (September 2023), they are still playing without a primary front-of-shirt sponsor on their kits. However, rather surprisingly, they are not the only Premier League team to be doing so.
Why Do Chelsea Not Have a Shirt Sponsor on Their Shirts?
Nottingham Forest appear to have started a trend. Chelsea, just like Forest, have begun the Premier League season without a shirt sponsor, after their £40 million per season deal with mobile network Three ran out at the end of last season. It appears now that rather than desperately attempting to start the campaign with a shirt sponsor sorted, sides are happy to hold out for the perfect deal, and will therefore play without a sponsor if necessary.
For fans, many of whom have been desperate for a shirt that isn’t “ruined” by commercial branding, this is a welcome change. Despite this, Chelsea have not been short of options. They initially agreed a highly lucrative deal with gambling brand stake.com but pulled out after they faced severe backlash from Chelsea fans and gambling awareness charities. Owner, Todd Boehly, no stranger to big money deals, then found his club blocked from securing a deal with streaming network Paramount +. This was because the Premier League feared that this would upset their worldwide broadcasting partners, which include Amazon Prime and NBC Sports, as well as their main UK TV partners.
Chelsea have since reportedly agreed a deal with tech giants, Infinite Athlete. This relatively low-key business have a number of sport-related products, such as an AI injury detector, which can supposedly reduce and discover risks of injury to athletes, making them an ideal choice for a football club. However, this deal, worth around £40 million per season, has yet to receive approval from the Premier League, meaning that the Blues have begun the season without a shirt sponsor.
The club’s kits for this season are “90s themed”, and the lack of sponsor has so far added to the retro feel, although the home shirt has come under fire from some for simply resembling a “training kit.” On the 30th of August, the west London side revealed their new “pitch blue and soar” away kit, and this also had no shirt sponsor, suggesting that the club are still a way off from having Infinite Athlete emblazoned on their shirts. Furthermore, unlike Forest, supporters who purchase the sponsor-less kit will reportedly not have the option to add a sponsor once it is announced, which appears a poor move!
Which Other Clubs Have Played Without Sponsors?
Whilst it has been almost unheard of, prior to last season, for Premier League sides not to have a shirt sponsor, this has not always been the case in other leagues across the world. Below, we have rounded up some of the most prominent examples of clubs playing without a sponsor on the front of their kit.
Barcelona
First up, we have Barcelona, who, despite being one of the undisputed giants of world football, did not feature a shirt sponsor on their kits until 2006, some 107 years after they had been founded. Since their inception, Barcelona have been a club famed not just for producing incredibly talented footballers in their infamous La Masia academy, but for being a “social club”, who have contributed to a number of charitable causes over the years.
This is something that has been going on for decades, harking back to the Second World War, which saw fascist dictator Francisco Franco favour arch-rivals Real Madrid, who supported him, leaving Barcelona to consistently struggle. To assist with the Catalan club’s financial burden, Barca president, José Luis Núñez, who came to power in 1978, planned to use La Masia to produce the majority of the club’s top players, rather than relying on recruiting expensive footballers from elsewhere. This extremely successful academy was then instrumental in the club’s successes throughout the 2000s and 2010s, helping to develop world-class talents such as Lionel Messi, Xavi, and Andres Iniesta, to name just three.
Meanwhile, Real Madrid had their first shirt sponsor way back in 1982 and have long been known to buy the world’s best players at high cost, as they have continued to establish themselves as the most successful club in the world. For Barca, on the other hand, their first ever shirt sponsor was charity UNICEF, who appeared on the famous shirt to raise money for the Children’s Fund, rather than for revenue. However, following the emergence of a certain Lionel Messi, and thanks to the genius management of Pep Guardiola, Barcelona quickly became one of (if not the best) football team in the world.
Because of this, and due to the increasingly financial nature of football and vast sums of money needed to compete at the top level, the club’s board decided to throw away their charitable sponsor in 2010. Instead, they signed the most valuable sponsorship deal in football history, with Qatar Foundation, worth a reported €150 million! For many, it appeared that the Catalan club had sold their soul, but this move allowed the club to compete financially with Real Madrid and teams in the Premier League, beginning a golden era in the club’s history, in which they won three Champions Leagues and eight La Liga titles.
Back in 2016, the club agreed a four-year deal with Rakuten, a Japanese e-commerce brand, worth a reported $58 million a year! Whilst the Catalan giants continue to partner with and raise money for UNICEF, it appears that their success under Guardiola propelled them to simply sell out in order to continue winning.
Other sponsors down the years have included Qatar Airways, Beko and Spotify, the club’s current shirt sponsor. Furthermore, as the club have begun to splash the cash in recent years, they appear to have started a trend of signing big money “flops”. Phillipe Coutinho, for example, had a largely underwhelming time at the Nou Camp, despite costing an initial £105 million, and the same can be said for Antoine Griezmann, who cost £107m!
Although La Masia continues to produce top talents, such as midfield duo Pedri and Gavi, it appears that a large amount of the vast money they have raked in from sponsorship has been wasted. What’s more, despite these lucrative front-of-shirt deals, they still face a constant struggle to align themselves with Financial Fair Play rules.
Girondins de Bordeaux
In the 2022/23 season, French Ligue 2 side Girondins de Bordeaux played half of the campaign without a shirt sponsor, for a very bizarre reason. The club, who have suffered a dramatic decline in recent years, considering that they are six-time Ligue 1 winners, found themselves consistently mocked on Twitter by their primary shirt sponsors, Winamax.
The betting company, who were paying the club around £1 million per season, saw their partnership contract terminated after they posted around 20 tweets mocking the club’s on-pitch failures, something that Bordeaux CEO Thomas Jacquemier was incredibly unhappy with. The club therefore played on without a sponsor, finishing third in France’s second tier and just missing out on promotion back to the top flight. Should have gone easy on the memes…
Six La Liga Teams Start the 2021/22 Campaign Without a Sponsor
Whilst the Premier League have made it clear that they are happy to wait until 2026/27 to stop teams from playing with gambling sponsors emblazoned on their shirts, La Liga took much more decisive action back in August 2021. Just a year prior, the league had announced that betting sponsorships would be banned, due to the negative impacts of such companies, in an attempt to fight against the pervasive issue of gambling addiction.
The clubs without a shirt sponsor were Granada, Real Sociedad, Alaves, Cadiz, Levante and RCD Mallorca, with all of these suffering a decline in revenue as they were unable to move on and secure a non-gambling sponsor quickly enough. Whilst this meant that a number of clubs played in some lovely looking retro kits, it also served as a stark reminder for sides across the Premier League and perhaps in the future the Football League, who will need to ensure that they have different sponsors in place by 2026.
Roma Play the 2022 Europa League Final Without a Shirt Sponsor
For the 2022/23 campaign, several Italian clubs had crypto blockchain business, DigitalBits, as their primary kit sponsor, including Inter Milan and José Mourinho’s Roma. Both teams had been partnered with the crypto brand since 2021 and had so far received their payments correctly and on time. However, things started to go wrong.
After a few months of the season, Roma’s payments from DigitalBits stopped out of nowhere, and Inter reportedly received zero income from the brand throughout the entire season. This led to both teams terminating their sponsorship contracts, leaving both without a shirt sponsor for the remainder of the season.
However, rather than leave that area of the shirt blank, as Inter did, Mourinho’s side instead decided to include the letters “SQPR” on the front of the shirt, which has been used as a symbol of Italy’s capital since the Roman Empire, dating back to 80BC! Now that’s what we call retro! This meant that the sponsor-less SPQR kit was therefore on display to a vast audience, as the club reached the Europa League final, which they unfortunately lost on penalties. Whilst it can be financially damaging to a team, in this scenario, it highlighted that not having a commercial kit sponsor can lead to some beautiful and innovative playing shirts!