What lessons do the changing football front of shirt sponsors across Europe’s top 5 leagues have for clubs looking to secure future deals?

caytoo compared the sponsor logos appearing on the front of the shirts between April 2020 and March 2025 of teams in the Bundesliga (Germany), LaLiga (Spain), Ligue 1 (France), the Premier League (England) and Serie A (Italy).

The findings include the following.

Foods should be a top priority

Foods has undertaken the biggest jump in front of shirt (FoS) deals over the last five years.

The subcategory offers a huge range of varied options to target, illustrated by the likes of canned seafood and spices group Conservas Dani (with RCD Espanyol in Spain), dairy conglomerate Saputo (Bologna) and meat distributor Fratelli Beretta (Torino FC in Italy).

In addition, new and alternative types of food brands are popping up all the time and established players (who tend to have big enough budgets) will need to protect market share.

Specialist Professional Services should be a priority

This subcategory has seen the joint-second biggest increase in deals. It’s an extremely varied subcategory so offers a lot of targeting options.

This is illustrated by waste management firm Guyot Environnement (with Stade Brestois 29), the Yasuda Group (with Real Sociedad and Stade de Reims) – a conglomerate concentrated around marketing, academy and entertainment operations – and the workplace facilities support group Samsic (with Stade Rennais).

Not only does it give the sponsors huge brand awareness and helps position them as leaders in their field but it also crucially enables them to showcase their product or service through ‘use-case’ scenarios. In other words, the clubs use them in the running of their organisation. This is particularly prevalent in motorsports such as Formula 1, IndyCar and NASCAR.

Airlines should be a priority

Airlines has seen the joint-second biggest increase in deals, which has been driven by the state-owned Middle East carriers.

Although these deals have possibly been done with more state-led geopolitical objectives rather than pure business performance – and some are tied into sponsoring clubs they already own – it does reinforce the need for competitors to react.

The only current sponsor outside this group is Taiwan’s EVA Air (with Stade De Reims) which could point to a new wave of airlines to sponsor. caytoo’s recent study, for example, revealed 33 new airlines that launched in 2024 or are doing so in 2025 or beyond. Although they’re clearly very early on in their journey, many are a viable target right now or should be kept on your radar for the future.

Although its difficult for the major European and US airlines to compete with state-level funding for the very very top clubs, it is surprising that they are completely absent, particularly at clubs who’d charge in the range from €500k to say €20 million per year.

Health/Wellness brands are conspicuous by their absence

With Health/Wellbeing so intrinsically linked to sport its surprising and disappointing that the entire category isn’t represented at all in football front of shirt sponsors across the five leagues. 

Contrast that with the top women’s soccer league in the US for example, where six of the 14 NWSL teams (43%) have a Health Service, such as a hospital or clinic, as a FoS sponsor.

Private health services – which obviously dominate the US healthcare market – are also becoming increasingly prevalent in other countries, partly driven by technology and free national health services coming under ever more strain post the covid pandemic.

These new private services are cheaper and more ‘pay as you go’ than in the past. So, this middle ground of more affordable private healthcare is a rich seam for rights holders to mine.

Overcoming the challenge for EPL teams when gambling is banned

After seeing the biggest decline in FoS deals between 2020 and 2024 (mainly due to the ban in Spain in the intervening years), Gambling has undertaken the biggest jump in deals in the last year alone.

This is due to English Premier League teams having ‘one last go’ at the subcategory ahead of the ban on FoS gambling sponsors from the start of the 2026-27 season.

The huge challenge for these teams (11 of the 20 teams in the EPL) is that they’ll all be looking for replacement partners at pretty much the same time. So, these clubs should look to focus on categories that have seen the biggest increases.

Benchmarking against reported deal values

The report covers the annual reported values football front of shirt sponsors to get an idea of how to benchmark your rights.

The average value is €18.2 million. However, this is skewed by the fact that the biggest clubs / highest deal values are much more likely to be reported than smaller ones, so a more realistic figure is the median value of €8.0 million (the middle value when all deals are ordered by size).

The Premier League has the highest average value (€23.9 million) due to having the biggest global audience.

Also note, the difference in values within the leagues can be enormous. For example, caytoo estimates that just three clubs – Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atlético de Madrid – account for 80% of the front of shirt sponsorship deal values in LaLiga.

The full report identifying trends around categories doing more or less activity so that rights holders can focus on who to target for future front of shirt deals includes:

• Research context
• Key lessons
• Fastest-growing categories/subcategories
• Most prevalent categories/subcategories
• Category/subcategory concentration by league
• Benchmark against reported deal values