Training wear sponsorship in football: a $278m market brands can no longer ignore

Not long ago, the right to place a logo on a professional football club’s training kit was a minor commercial afterthought – bundled into broader partnership packages, rarely priced as a standalone asset, and almost never discussed alongside shirt-front or sleeve rights.

That era is over. According to new data from sports marketing agency SPORTFIVE, global sponsorship volume for training wear in club football reached $278 million in 2025, up from $18 million in 2021. The 15-fold increase in four years has repositioned training apparel as a premium sponsorship category with its own distinct economics, content logic and fan perception profile – one that now competes directly with matchday assets for brand investment.

The training ground as a 24/7 webcast studio

The economics reflect a structural shift in how fans consume sport. Social media feeds have replaced the 90-minute broadcast window as the primary daily point of contact between clubs and supporters. Training content – once confined to journalists at the perimeter fence – now drives consistent engagement across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube throughout the week.

Unlike traditional sponsorship assets, training wear visibility is not tied to match days, sporting performance or television rights contracts. Clubs control how frequently they post training content, which means they also control the exposure frequency of their training kit partner. That self-produced content – pre-session warm-ups, player access series, injury recovery clips, transfer-day footage – carries an authenticity that conventional advertising struggles to replicate.

The measurable consequence: according to SPORTFIVE, around half the advertising value generated by training kit exposure comes from social media, with another significant share coming from editorial coverage. Traditional broadcast visibility – the engine of almost every other sponsorship category – contributes only a marginal share.

Fan perception data reinforces the commercial case. SPORTFIVE research found that 69 percent of fans describe training wear partners as particularly authentic, 67 percent see them as especially close to the club, and 68 percent rate them as equivalent in status to sleeve or shirt-front sponsors – a bracket that has historically commanded a significant price premium.

Italian Serie A leads; German Bundesliga lags

Market maturity varies significantly across Europe’s major leagues. Italy’s Serie A sets the commercial benchmark: most clubs have separately marketed at least one training-wear asset, and around two thirds have sold the chest placement, historically the most protected real estate on any garment. The Premier League ranks second, with Spain’s La Liga in third.

The German Bundesliga presents a stark structural contrast. SPORTFIVE data shows that only 22 percent of Bundesliga clubs have assigned any training-wear space to a separate sponsor, and just 11 percent carry a partner other than the main shirt sponsor on the chest, leaving the league sixth in the European ranking. Given the Bundesliga’s global commercial profile, the gap represents significant untapped inventory.

The picture is beginning to shift: in September 2025, Borussia Dortmund expanded its long-standing relationship with German retail group REWE (Rewe Group) to include training kit across the men’s first team, Under-23s and youth squads, a move that signals growing appetite for the category even in Germany’s traditionally conservative sponsorship market.

The AXA blueprint

The most widely cited benchmark for the category’s premium potential is the partnership between Liverpool FC and insurance group AXA (Assurance Exchange). Valued at approximately $30 million, it shows how training wear can anchor a broader brand ecosystem. What began as a kit-only deal in 2019 has since expanded to include naming rights for Liverpool’s training facility in Kirkby – the AXA Training Centre – with the partnership extended until 2029.

The logo now appears on apparel, in every piece of club-generated content filmed on site, and on the facility itself: a 360-degree visibility loop that matchday sponsorship cannot replicate. For an insurance group, the training ground environment becomes a sustained and credible metaphor – preparation, discipline, long-term investment.

From training kit to sleeve: the Manchester City–OKX arc

The Manchester City–OKX partnership offers a second instructive model. OKX, a cryptocurrency exchange and Web3 technology company, became the club’s Official Training Kit Partner for the 2022/23 season. The position helped validate audience engagement and build brand recognition with a global fanbase before the company committed to more expensive matchday inventory. In June 2023, the relationship was upgraded to Official Sleeve Partner in a new multi-year deal worth $70 million – a clear example of training kit serving as both a proof-of-concept platform and a commercial entry point. The progression is becoming a recognizable pathway: enter through training, validate, then move upward.

Regulation and self-regulation are accelerating training kit sponsorship

The category is receiving structural momentum from one of the most significant regulatory shifts in football sponsorship in years. The Premier League’s voluntary ban on front-of-shirt gambling sponsorships, which takes effect for the 2026/27 season, is forcing clubs to restructure commercial portfolios that have historically relied on betting operators – who typically paid a premium above standard market rates – as primary shirt sponsors. The ban applies to front-of-shirt placement only; gambling and fintech brands remain permitted on sleeves, shorts, training kits and stadium signage.

This has created a structural rebalancing that benefits the training wear category directly. UK Clubs have been both channeling displaced gambling spend toward non-matchday inventory and, in some cases, elevating existing training kit partners into front-of-shirt positions as established relationships at known valuations. Training kit is functioning, increasingly, as a commercial feeder category with upward mobility.

What it means for sporting goods brands

The rapid growth of training kit sponsorship carries clear implications for sporting goods companies. As training kit partnerships gain visibility and perceived status, the technical manufacturers supplying those kits gain exposure through the same content ecosystem. Every training clip that reaches a large audience also becomes a visibility moment for the manufacturer’s logo, materials and performance technology.

For brands considering a sponsorship entry point, training wear now has a clear economic logic, measurable fan perception data and a growing library of deal structures to benchmark. In a media environment where the scroll has replaced the broadcast, the training ground has become some of the most valuable real estate in professional sport.