Why Chelsea released 2024/25 season jersey without shirt sponsor

Chelsea have finally released their 2024/25 home and away kits but in a deviation from the standard, they were without a shirt sponsor. 

Shirt sponsors are one of the major revenue streams for football clubs. For example, Arsenal earn a reported £60 million annually until 2028 to carry the Emirates brand across their shirt. They also stand to earn more should objectives like winning the Premier League or Champions League be met. 

In more recent years, football clubs have taken it a step further and they now have sleeve sponsors (Real Madrid's deal with HP) and in some cases, brands take up placements on the rare panel of club shorts (as seen in Getafe’s El Briliante partnership)—this sponsorship across the gluteal area is more common in Spain and France. 

Hence, it is peculiar when a club releases a jersey without taking advantage of the financial opportunity shirt sponsorship serves. 

While their Premier League rivals Manchester City, Arsenal and Liverpool have since released their kits, and others like Manchester United did weeks ago, Chelsea only recently unveiled their home and away jerseys, with the latter dropping just yesterday. 

It has been reported that negotiations with shirt sponsors caused the delay, but the jerseys were released in throw-back style without any brand’s name ingrained across them. 

This means Chelsea will most likely start the season with a ‘plain’ jersey, a repeat of last season, whereby the club played without a shirt sponsor until reaching a £40 million lone-season deal with Infinite Athlete in September 2023, months into the campaign. 

According to talkSPORT, the club intended to get the 2023/24 season out of the way with the short-term deal, affording the Chelsea leadership time to secure a more long-term partner. 

It is stated that the intended longer-term partner could well be Infinite Athlete; however, Chelsea are yet to find a suitable deal and the shirts have now been mass-produced by Nike. 

Chelsea will still play with Infinite Athlete across their chests during the preseason, as the club announced and as seen in the 2-2 draw against Wrexham and the 4-1 defeat to Celtic, but the association is expected to end after the friendlies.