Being a Chelsea football club after the Roman Abramovich era means that you are always expecting something unusual. Like spending loads of money on unproven players (while selling your own Academy prospects), buying the seventh goalkeeper in the club, or changing coaches every season. And all that without a meaningful ‘attack’ on the Champions League spot, let alone on the Premier League. And now, just 17 days before the new season starts a new shock – The Blues could start the season without a main sponsor on the shirt. First outing. 👕Please note that Infinite Athlete will appear on front of shirt for pre-season only. pic.twitter.com/NUQj3YTMlP— Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC) July 25, 2024 It looks remarkable that we are writing about something like that, especially when such a big club like Chelsea is concerned, but Football Insider revealed the news while talking with financial expert Stefan Borson. In the world of modern football, with Financial Fair play being the ultimate rule for every club, revenue from sponsors is one of the main sources of income and shirt sponsors (along with stadium sponsors) usually bring the most money in. So, being without a sponsor looks unimaginable, but this is Todd Boehly’s Chelsea we are talking about. Chelsea diving deep to find a new custodianIn fact, something similar happened last season. The Blues struck a 40 million pounds per season deal with the US-based sports data company Infinite Athlete, but only in September, two months after the season started. Under the agreement, the company is set to transition to a sleeve sponsorship deal for next season despite its logo featuring on the front of Chelsea’s shirts during their US June tour. Chelsea don’t give up on Atletico’s Nigerian-descent forwardThe logical option would be for Infinite Athlete to do another deal, but…“I don’t think it would get through the current associated party rules. It depends how it would be structured. But they don’t have the money to pay 40-50million a year. I have said publicly that I don’t see how they were able to do it last season. But we don’t know how much they paid, we will see in the accounts when they come out in the early part of next year as to how much they probably did pay. The fact that they are carrying on as the front-of-shirt sponsor for the US tour is neither here nor there really. It’s the cost of printing it on the new kit as much as anything. It’s not available for sale anywhere. It’s probably not worth very much from a financial perspective. But I don’t think they have the need commercially to do another sponsorship deal for another year anyway. If they were to do it, I think it would be on a friendly basis as opposed to something that was agreed at arm’s length” Stefan Borson told the Football Insider. ##NAJAVA_MECA_8244218##
