As Reds fans, we can all agree that there is no better football strip than the one worn by the home side at Anfield. The crimson colour makes the players stand out against almost any other team; the iconic red shirts do much more than that.
For any Kopite, a Liverpool top carries special meaning. It fills you with pride and delight, reminding you of the club’s history and the legendary names that have donned it.
But a shirt is much more than that. For the club, it helps to create a community, as well as providing a vital source of income. Big names like Hitachi, Crown Paints, and Candy have more recently been joined by the British-based multinational bank Standard Chartered.
Unless you’re of a certain age, you won’t have known any different. To you, a shirt sponsor is just as important as the player’s name or club’s crest. Some sponsors become so iconic that they even become associated with the team or periods of time become known as that brand’s ‘era’, but there was a time when players walked out onto the pitch at Anfield with sponsor-less shirts on their backs.
The switch to including a brand’s logo in exchange for cash was not a smooth one. It took a pioneering lower-league club, a game of brinkmanship, and eventual pressure from others in the sport to get to where we are today.
Kettering Town Pioneers
Of all the clubs to push the boundaries of shirt sponsorship, Kettering Town likely wouldn’t have been your first guess. The lower-league club rocked up to a match in 1976 with “Kettering Tyres” embroidered on its shirts, sparking outrage with the FA who immediately ordered the letters be removed.
Being the boundary-pushing pioneers they were, Kettering tried a sneaky side step by removing the “yres” from the end, claiming that “Kettering T” was short for the club’s name. This brazen move didn’t wash with the FA which stood firm in their opposition.
Faced with a fine that could have been more than the “four figures” paid by the local tyre company, the club eventually relented. However, just a year later, the ban was lifted and the club began featuring sponsors again.
Liverpool then became one of the first top flight clubs to take advantage of the rule change, signing its first deal with Hitachi in the summer of 1979.
Changing Economics, Changing Brands
Every generation or so, a new industry becomes the primary category of sponsor. In the past, this has been technology companies, car manufacturers, drinks brands, and financial institutions.
Today, however, one of the biggest sponsors in football is the iGaming industry. This is because the online casino and betting market has exploded in recent years so companies have needed to find ways to stand out.
Different brands have taken different approaches. For example, PokerStars Casino is an online casino that has focused heavily on creating its own unique games, such as Golden Warrior, Big Bass Bonanza 3 Reeler, and Diamond Drums, alongside other player favourites like Live Crazy Time and Book of Dead.
Others have opted to offer bigger bonuses to encourage new players to join whilst many have invested in sports sponsorships, particularly in football.
It appears that iGaming is likely to slowly leave football in the coming years, just as other industries have. In doing so, these brands will make way for new companies to invest in football instead.
Additional Logos
In some sports, like Formula 1 and NASCAR, teamwear will often be emblazoned with a patchwork of sponsors, rather than just one. This provides additional revenue for teams but creates much busier clothing.
Sports like football have, so far, mostly resisted following suit, sticking to just one main logo on a shirt. However, the Premier League recently changed its rules to allow a much smaller secondary placement on the sleeve. Liverpool was one of the first to embrace the change, signing Western Union for the 2017/18 season.
We can expect even more placements to be allowed over time as clubs look to increase revenues from sponsors even further. However, it’s likely this will be a small trickle of changes rather than opening the floodgates.