Every time a footballer pulls on their shirt, they are also wearing an advertisement. That has been true since the 1970s. What has changed — season by season, league by league — is whose logo makes it onto the chest, and what that choice reveals about the business of football in different corners of Europe.
For the 2025–26 season, Football Kit Archive mapped the shirt sponsorship categories of all clubs across the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Ligue 1, and Bundesliga. Across nearly 100 clubs, 20 distinct sectors show up. The differences between leagues are not subtle.
THE PREMIER LEAGUE’S GAMBLING PROBLEM — BY THE NUMBERS
Start with the most striking finding: six Premier League clubs carry a gambling or betting company on the front of their shirts. That is more than the other four major European leagues combined. Aston Villa, Brentford, Crystal Palace, Everton, Fulham, and Sunderland all enter the 2025–26 season with a bookmaker prominently displayed on their chest.
This is not a new conversation in English football, but the data makes the scale impossible to ignore. The UK government’s gambling white paper proposed restricting front-of-shirt gambling sponsorship. Yet here we are: six clubs in the top flight still wearing their bookmaker’s badge. By contrast, La Liga, Serie A, and the Bundesliga register zero gambling shirt sponsors. Ligue 1 has one. The Premier League’s relationship with the betting industry is its own ecosystem.
AIRLINES EVERYWHERE — BUT NOT EQUALLY
If gambling is the Premier League’s story, the airline sector is football’s truly universal sponsor. Every one of the five leagues has at least two clubs wearing an airline logo. The names at the top are familiar: Emirates on Arsenal and Real Madrid, Etihad on Manchester City, Qatar Airways on Paris Saint-Germain. These are not random pairings. They are national carrier soft-power plays dressed as sponsorship deals.
Emirates alone appears across two different leagues. Qatar Airways sits at the Parc des Princes, the most watched French club in the world. These deals are as much about national image as football marketing. Further down the pyramid — Osasuna, Atletico Madrid — budget carriers and Gulf brands have found that European football kits are among the most cost-effective broadcast media on the planet.
GERMANY STAYS LOCAL. LA LIGA GOES GLOBAL.
One of the more interesting contrasts in the data is between the Bundesliga’s domestic orientation and La Liga’s international reach. In Germany, the shirt sponsor story is dominated by recognisably German names: Volkswagen at Wolfsburg, Red Bull at Leipzig, REWE at Cologne, LBBW at Stuttgart. The Bundesliga’s famous 50+1 ownership rule, which keeps clubs in the hands of members, seems to have a sponsorship corollary — the money stays closer to home.
La Liga presents a different picture. The league that houses Real Madrid and Barcelona is a showcase for global capital. Etihad Airways, Emirates, Riyadh Air — all Gulf-connected entities — account for three of the top clubs’ partnerships.
CATEGORY DIVERSITY: SERIE A AND LIGUE 1 LEAD, PREMIER LEAGUE NARROWS
If you measure the health of a sponsorship market by how many different industries are competing for front-of-shirt space, the Premier League actually looks surprisingly narrow. Eight distinct categories — compared to 13 in Serie A and 14 in both Ligue 1 and the Bundesliga.
Part of the explanation is the gambling cluster. Six clubs in one category compresses the overall diversity. Italy and France, by contrast, see their clubs spread across a broader range: industrial companies, pharmaceutical brands, tourism boards, retail chains, even a human resources firm (Nantes, in Ligue 1) have found their way onto kits.
FIVE KEY FINDINGS
1. The Premier League is Europe’s gambling shop window. Six clubs, six bookmakers. No other major league comes close.
2. Airlines have colonised the elite tier. Emirates, Etihad, Qatar Airways. The biggest clubs in England, Spain, and France all wear airline logos. These are geopolitical decisions as much as commercial ones.
3. The Bundesliga trusts German money. VW, Red Bull, REWE, LBBW. The most domestically focused sponsorship market in European football.
4. Going without a sponsor is a statement. Chelsea and Newcastle enter 2025–26 without a front-of-shirt sponsor. Given the sums on offer, this is not an oversight — it is a negotiating position, a brand decision, or both.
5. France and Italy sell the most varied inventory. Ligue 1 and Serie A each span 13–14 categories. These leagues attract a wider pool of advertisers, reflecting either smarter commercial teams or simply more modest asking prices at the mid-table level.
WHAT THE SHIRT SAYS
A shirt sponsor is a two-way transaction: money in exchange for visibility. But the choice of partner says something about what a club is willing to associate with, what its fanbase will accept, and which industries see football as their best marketing channel.
In England, the answer is increasingly clear: it is the betting industry. In Germany, it is the domestic corporate world. In Spain and France, it is airlines and global finance. In Italy, it is a bit of everything.
The front of a football shirt is still the most watched rectangle of fabric in sport. The 2025–26 data shows who wants to be seen on it — and increasingly, who does not.