At a recent shareholder meeting the Premier League informed its 20 football clubs that it is mulling over some changes to its commercial affairs, Sky News reports.
The idea, according to a Sky News source “familiar with” the league’s pitch, is to effect a centralized sale of 60 percent of the perimeter advertising and increase the number of commercial partners from seven to ten. By the league’s reckoning, this would add an annual £750 million (€860m) in revenue. According to “sources,” the pitch is exploratory, not a plan.
The league has made no public comment on the matter.
The current picture – partners
The league’s present seven partners are EA Sports, Barclays, Adobe, Coca-Cola, Guinness, Microsoft and Puma; its five licensees Avery Dennison, Football Manager, Rezzil, Sporare and Topps.
Barclays has the oldest relationship still going among the partners. The bank signed on in 2001 and was the title sponsor until 2016, when the league switched to a multi-sponsor policy. Of Europe’s Big Five football leagues, only LaLiga now has a title sponsor, EA Sports. Serie A has no title sponsor confirmed, while the Bundesliga and Ligue 1 have multiple partners instead.
In addition to having title rights with LaLiga, EA Sports is the Premier League’s highest-paying sponsor. Its deal, running from 2023 to 2029, is worth something like £500 million (€574m), according to SportsPro.
Puma edged out Nike in 2025, when the latter’s 25-year contract expired, to become the league’s purveyor of match balls. Coca-Cola is a returning sponsor, signing a three-year deal in 2025 – after previous deals in 2016/17 and 2018/19. Guinness signed a four-year deal – its first global partnership in football – with the league in 2024, replacing Budweiser.
Adobe and Microsoft both signed on last year, one for multiple years, the other for five.
| Premier League - Revenue | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025/26 season | ||||
| Provider/category | Approx. annual value | Notes | ||
| Sponsors | Partners | EA Sports | £100M+ (lead deal to 2029) | Player awards, Fantasy PL |
| Barclays | Multi-year renewal | Official bank | ||
| Adobe | Multi-year | Creativity/digital partner | ||
| Coca-Cola | Three years | Soft drinks | ||
| Guinness | Four years | Beer | ||
| Microsoft | Five years | Cloud/AI | ||
| Puma | Multi-year | Match balls | ||
| Licensees | Avery Dennison | N/A (collective) | Merchandising/tech | |
| Football Manager | ||||
| Rezzil | ||||
| Sorare | ||||
| Topps | ||||
| Broadcasters | Domestic | Sky Sports | Approx. £1.275B (part of ¬£1.33B domestic) | 215 live games |
| TNT Sports | Included in domestic | 52 live games | ||
| BBC Sport | Highlights | |||
| International | Various global deals | Approx. £1.73B | Equal + merit shares | |
| Other central commercial | Sponsorship pool | Approx. £158M | Equal distribution | |
| Matchday | Tickets/stadia (club-level) | Approx. £1B league total | Individual club revenue | |
| Sources: SportsKhabri, SportsPro, Deloitte | ||||
The current picture – perimeter ads
UEFA (per Article 73 of its regulations) takes charge of stadium LED boards and their advertisements for UEFA matches. For regular league play, however, the clubs negotiate their own deals, often through third parties. One such party, the marketing agency SportFive (Hamburg, Germany), calls itself the “largest exclusive rightsholder” in the field, boasting deals with 12 of the 20 clubs.
The league is proposing to shrink the share of perimeter ads sold by the clubs to 40 percent. According to Sky News, at least one club executive at the pitch meeting spoke of likely conflicts with the clubs’ own commercial deals.
There is no public total for the value of these advertisements. However, the marketing agency EMW Global (London) provides some hints. A minute’s ad time, it says, yields 156 minutes of visibility worldwide, while primary TV-facing LED boards cost £2,000 (€2,291) + VAT per minute per game at small stadiums, and more at the stadiums of the Big Six clubs.
If we take the £2,000 figure as the rule, exclude VAT, multiply by exposure per match (ten minutes) and multiply again by televised matches per season (270), we arrive at a theoretical maximum of about £5.4 million (€6.2m). Again, the premium rates of Big Six matches (30% of total matches) would raise the value considerably, while the cuts of middlemen (the agencies), discounts and other negotiated terms would lower it.
The current picture – revenues
“Sponsor spend from brands and the number of deals signed are up 9 percent and 14 percent respectively compared to 2023/24, taking total sponsorship revenue to £1.58bn” for the 2024/25 season, as the market-research firm Ampere reported last year.
According to SportsPro, in the 2024/25 season the Premier League made 20 equal payments of central revenues, one per team, of £7.9 million (€9.0m). That amounts to £158 million (€181m) in all. The prior season’s pot was bigger: £164 million (€188m).
In addition, each club received £29.8 million (€34.1m) in fees for domestic media rights and £59.2 million (€67.8m) in fees for international broadcasts. Those league-wide totals are respectively £596 million (€682m) and £1.184 billion (€1.355bn).
All of this excludes matchday revenue and more.
