Quote:
Originally Posted by Lisnaholic
I'm not sure I even understand what jackhammer is talking about in his OP, but I hope it's still relevent in some way.
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Long and boring post alert.
Football teams are paid money to carry the logo of companies on the front of their shirts. The front of the shirt is a great advertising space and companies will pay big money to have their logo on it. Man United's deal with Chevrolet is one of if not the biggest deals at the moment and worth £47m per year. Usually these deals are in instalments over a period of years. It started in the late 70s and has increased since then. Here is one of the earliest examples of shirt sponsorship:
Over the years it's become more common because the financial gain is important if you want to compete with other clubs. By the 90s it was incredibly rare to find a single team in any top division that didn't have a sponsor's logo on the front of their shirt.
Barcelona were famed and respected for waiving these sponsorship deals on their shirts as they were an anomaly in the modern game. They continued to ignore sponsorship until the late 00s when they carried Unicef's logo on the front of their shirt. They weren't paid for this but it was the gateway to full sponsorship, they had a Qatar Foundation logo on the back of the shirt to start off with and they have now been sponsored by Qatar Airways on the front of their shirts since about 2012/13.
2005/6, no shirt sponsorship:
2008/9, Unicef deal:
2012/13, full sponsorship with Qatar Foundation which they've had ever since (its now Qatar Airways):
Jackhammer posted this thread because under the ownership of Randy Lerner from 2006-2016, Aston Villa paid a local charity to carry their logo on the front of the kits instead of cashing in on sponsorship with a betting company or whatever. The deal lasted two years and the charity is called Acorns and it provides specialist services for local children in the Birmingham and West Midlands area with serious illnesses. If you saw Moin Younis at the Pride of Britain awards, he has been helped by this charity.
I have this shirt:
Villa still do work with Acorns and children's replica kits have the Acorns logo on. Probably because our current sponsorship is with a betting company tbh.
Most fans don't like shirt sponsorship because it spoils kit design and you have pretty much no chance of buying a shirt without the ugly logo splashed all over the front. I don't want to wear a shirt with Bet 365 or Wonga on it. And it is only getting worse, as teams have moved on to sleeve sponsors in the Premier league and sponsorship on the back of the shirts in the lower leagues and abroad (this is in addition to the main deal on the front of the shirt).
At present, international football hasn't been affected by this but it's surely only a matter of time.