Darby Jean #90 | Shirt sponsors of the Premier League

The world is a slum of deleterious consumption and waste and it’s everyone’s fault. Even yours. Nowhere is this more apparent than on the jerseys of our favourite footballing machine-bot millionaires. What's also true is that a jersey sponsor can make or break a kit. It can mark an era of greatness, or one of infamy, and can define a player's lasting image: Draper Tools (LeTissier), Vodafone (Van Nistelrooy), or Holsten (Gazza). So, with things a touch slow on the club front, we’re headed for a two-part trip to Sponsorland.

Arsenal

Emirates Airlines have presided over Arsenal’s famous red and white joursey across most of the club’s infamous decline. You’d think they’d want a way off the sweating, panting wreckage the club has become, but a jersey agreement through 2024-5, and stadium naming rights sealed through to 2028 suggests there’s little in the way of an end in sight.

Aston Villa

Cazoo is an online used car dealership that purports to let you buy a used car online and have it sent to you within 72 hours. Brilliant. And if you’re not in a rush to receive your new vehicle, Emilianos Martinez and Buendia will deliver it to you after they clear quarantine.

Brighton

The idea of Hollywood Bets being a good brand fit for the Bees weakens when you understand that the South African online gambling company has been called things like ’useless’ ‘pathetic liars’ who offer ‘rigged games’ to clients. These aren't especially charitable attributes to have pegged to your brand. Nice logo, but where online gambling goes - and I can’t say this for certain - you probably get what you pay for. Maybe just don’t gamble?

Brentford

The south coast club signed a 12-year, $120 million USD arrangement with American Express in 2019 for jersey sponsorship and stadium naming rights. The mammoth deal is one of the largest outside of the top six Premiership clubs. With Brighton home to Amex’s UK headquarters, it’s one of the few examples in the league of a decent fit from a brand and business perspective.

Chelsea

Chelsea are sponsored by Three mobile, a UK-based mobile telecom brand that operates in markets that include the aesthetically disparate nations of Ireland, Sweden and Macau. The company logo, a giant tattoo-inspired ‘3’ looks ridiculous approximately every time you see it. That's a lot of times.

Crystal Palace

So much gambling. The Premier League’s global reach makes it the perfect vehicle for outfits that can afford to splurge on instant awareness, particularly in Asia, where there are absolutely zero things hindering the gambling. Ever. Which pits us against another online gambling ring (let’s call it that), W88. I don’t know what the ‘W’ stands for, but ‘8’ is the luckiest number in China, which is why you always see 8s in the names of these companies.

Everton

Speaking from the club’s point of view I’m not sure how to feel about the double club sponsorship. One Cazoo is enough, no? How much is there to know about online cars?

Leeds

SBO Top is a global gambling brand whose parent company’s headquarters are on the Isle of Man, a location that's a touch on the aloof side, if you ask me. The SBO Top website offers a casino game called Leeds United Roulette, next to an inducement that reads “Let’s Virtual Sports!”, underneath an oddly photoshopped image of defenders Luke Ayling, Liam Cooper and Stuart Dallas. They look like mutants. Tired, reluctant mutants. But oh hell, why not let’s just gamble the night away?

Leicester City

The modern version of Leicester City has been all about King Power, the vaunted Thai duty free chain owned by the late Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, whose family also own the club. This year the coffers of the Foxes were padded by a four-year sponsorship deal the global financial trading brand, FBS. If you were asked to spend an extended period of time thinking about global financial trading, like, really concentrating on it, and then asked to draw something that represents global financial trading, or maybe the act of it, you would invariably end up with the FBS logo. It would happen to each of us. I claim this with unwavering certainty.

Liverpool

Standard Chartered. The London financial services company’s logo accompanied Liverpool from its lowest ebb during the Dalglish-Rodgers era to its recent patch of high profile success. Nothing about this makes anything about Standard Chartered any less boring. The company updated their logo recently, but all that really does is make it so that when you’re checking the overdraft charges to your chequing account it feels a little more like you’re doing it in a Foot Locker.