For years, walking into an English Premier League stadium meant being surrounded by logos for betting companies. That era is ending. Starting with the 2026-27 season, front-of-shirt gambling sponsorships are gone, and clubs are scrambling to fill a revenue gap estimated at £80-100 million collectively.
The deals taking shape
Everton kicked off the new era with a multi-year deal with CMC Markets, the London-listed online trading platform, announced on July 1, 2026. The agreement is reportedly worth approximately £30 million over three years. Crystal Palace went a different direction, naming Temporal as its main front-of-shirt sponsor in a multi-year agreement announced in May 2026. Meanwhile, Brentford upgraded its existing sponsorship arrangement with Indeed, the job search platform, and Bournemouth expanded its deal with health insurance provider Vitality to cover front-of-shirt rights.
Why the gambling ban happened
Premier League clubs collectively agreed in April 2023 to phase out front-of-shirt gambling sponsorships. The decision came during an ongoing UK government review of gambling laws, and it was framed as a voluntary, proactive step rather than waiting for regulators to force the issue.
Approximately 11 clubs were affected by the ban. That’s more than half the league, which gives you a sense of how deeply embedded gambling money had become in English football’s commercial infrastructure.
The fintech frontier and its limits
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority has specifically warned Premier League clubs against partnering with unlicensed crypto or trading firms. That warning serves as a regulatory guardrail, essentially telling clubs that swapping a betting logo for an unregulated token platform isn’t the kind of upgrade anyone had in mind.
The Everton-CMC Markets deal is illustrative of where the sweet spot might be. CMC Markets is FCA-regulated, publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange, and has operated for decades. It offers exposure to crypto markets through its trading platform, but it’s fundamentally a traditional financial services company.
While institutional and sovereign investors are becoming increasingly interested in acquiring football assets, examples of these entities engaging in shirt sponsorships remain scarce.
