Chelsea are nearing a front-of-shirt sponsorship deal with one of the world’s most valuable companies, The Chelsea Chronicle understands.
Chelsea have spent the best part of one-and-a-half seasons without a front-of-shirt deal, which would typically be the second-most valuable item in a club’s sponsorship inventory after kit deals.
For an elite club like Chelsea, who are said to have been targeting around £60m per year in talks with would-be sponsors, a front-of-shirt partnership can be worth around 10 per cent of annual revenue.
For context, that is roughly equivalent to the prize money Chelsea will be budgeting for from the Champions League this season, albeit in a worst-case scenario.
Chelsea's 2025-26 home shirt, with Nike logo, club badge and Club World Cup patch visible
Photo by James Gill – Danehouse/Getty Images
In April, the club announced that it had partnered with Dubai-based property developer DAMAC. And while the company has stayed on as a junior commercial partner, their front-of-shirt arrangement was only ever a stop-gap.
Chelsea’s need for revenue is clear. While accountancy sleights of hand such as selling property assets and the Women’s team to other businesses in the company structure have seen the club evade the clutches of the Premier League’s PSR enforcers, UEFA’s rules are less porous.
A settlement agreement with UEFA was struck in July after Chelsea were found to have breached European football’s governing body’s Financial and Sustainability Regulations for 2022-23 and 2023-24.
The terms of the settlement are complex, but they fundamentally boil down to re-balancing turnover (what the club earns from media, matchday and commercial stream) and football costs (first-team wages, transfer fees and payments to agents).
Graph showing Chelsea's squad cost, which is amortisation plus wage bill, against their revenue
Chelsea squad cost vs revenue Credit: Adam Williams/The Chelsea Chronicle/GRV Media
If Chelsea fail to comply, they potentially face further sporting and financial sanctions from UEFA, on top of the £27.5m they have already paid out in fines.
So a front-of-shirt deal is paramount. And it appears that there is good news on that front.
Chelsea poised to partner with Oracle
Industry sources have told The Chelsea Chronicle that Oracle looks set to become Chelsea’s new front-of-shirt sponsor.
Should the deal materialise – and one source suggested the contract has already been signed – it will be announced after the international break, likely on the eve of either Enzo Maresca’s side’s meeting with Barcelona in the Champions League on 25 November or the following Sunday’s clash with Arsenal.
Oracle is an American multinational software firm and one of the world’s biggest companies by market capitalisation, with its publicly-traded shares worth around £470bn at the time of writing.
In this photo illustration, the Oracle Corporation logo is
Photo Illustration by Piotr Swat/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Interestingly, the business also recently partnered with FPT, the IT firm that last week was named as Chelsea’s shirt sleeve sponsor.
While it is hard to frame missing out on upwards of £100m in sponsorship revenue in the last 18 months or so as anything other than a disaster, Chelsea’s commercial department might feel somewhat vindicated thanks to the blue-chip status of Oracle, which was co-founded by Larry Ellison in 1977.
Ellison is the world’s second-richest person at the time of writing. His net worth of £210bn dwarfs the likes of Chelsea shareholders Todd Boehly (£6.5bn), Mark Walter (£9.5bn) and Hansjorg Wyss (£12bn).
The value of the deal is not known, but – like nearly every commercial contract – will likely involve a fixed fee with season-by-season escalators adjusting for inflation, as well as performance-related bonuses.
In the last published financial year, 2023-24, Chelsea posted commercial revenue of £225m, up from £215m the previous season. While they are streets ahead of the rest of the Premier League, that figure was the second-lowest of the so-called Big Six:
Manchester City – £345m
Liverpool – £308m
Manchester United – £303m
Tottenham Hotspur – £255m
Chelsea – £225m
Arsenal – £218m
Chelsea's commercial income plotted against the rest of the Big Six - Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Liverpool and Tottenham
Chelsea commercial income vs Big Six Credit: Adam Williams/The Chelsea Chronicle/GRV Media
Arsenal are expected to have comfortably surpassed Chelsea once their respective accounts are released in the spring. That is thanks to their renaissance on the pitch and subsequent sponsorship and retail boom, but also due to Chelsea’s lack of a front-of-shirt and, until recently, sleeve partner.
The Blues re-jigged their corporate structure in October, with former chief revenue officer Casper Stylsvig leaving the club. Todd Kline (president of commercial), Phil Lynch (chief digital officer) and James Murray (chief operating officer) stepping into new roles with the club, each reporting to club president Jason Gannon.