caytoo analysed how the current main shirt sponsors across Europe’s top 5 soccer leagues compares to four years ago and the resulting lessons for the clubs

The leagues in question are the Bundesliga (Germany), LaLiga (Spain), Ligue 1 (France), the Premier League (England) and Serie A (Italy). The data compares the 2023/24 season to that of 2019/20.

The key finding is that travel could be the next big frontier for front of shirt sponsorships across the top five. Driven by Middle Eastern brands, particularly from Saudi Arabia, looking to generate mass market awareness and credibility, Travel & Tourism has seen the biggest increase in the number of deals over the last four years and is now the most dominant category. For instance, all seven Airlines sponsors are from the Middle East – and Emirates is now the most prevalent individual sponsor. Surely their overseas competitors will have to start countering this to protect market share?

Cruise Lines is another potentially rich source to mine within travel. In addition to two new deals (both by MSC Cruises with Serie A clubs), the sector has been upping sponsorship activity generally around the world – particularly in the US with the likes of Royal Caribbean sponsoring David Beckham’s MLS team Inter Miami. This certainly bodes well for Europe’s top clubs.

The changing and increasingly fractured face of Broadcasting, particularly the rise of streaming and online services, also offers a big opportunity – despite the obvious challenges around competitive exclusivity with media firms holding the broadcast rights. This is illustrated by new deals by Paramount+ with Inter Milan (€20mn) and Union Berlin (€5mn) and Italian online radio station Radio 105 with Genoa.

Like Broadcasting, Foods has also seen a relatively big jump in activity from a standing start four years ago. The category offers a huge range of varied options to target, illustrated by the likes of animal nutrition firm Gosbi (with Girona in Spain), meat group Jean Floc’h (Lorient in France) and dairy conglomerate Saputo (Bologna). 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.

Aside from Gambling (due to the ban in Spain, which will be repeated in England in two season’s time), car manufacturers have seen the biggest decline in main shirt sponsors over the last four years. However, with the growing global footprint of their Chinese competitors, the next round of renewals should factor in targets from Western, South Korean and Japanese marques who need to protect their market share and few rights holders can compete with the multinational reach of Europe’s top soccer leagues.

The analysis also covered around 70 reported deal values which revealed the average value to be €16.9 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 €7.5 million (the middle value when all deals are ordered by size).

The full main shirt sponsors report covers:

1. Key lessons
2. Top risers and fallers
3. Most prevalent categories
4. Reported deal values