The Premier League is a marketplace and, as things stand, Liverpool are its top merchant. Their ultimate commodity? Advertising space – and few clients have been as loyal as Standard Chartered.
For fans of a certain vintage, it once would have been unthinkable to see Liverpool sponsored by anyone other than Carlsberg, who were the club’s front-of-shirt partner from 1992 to 2010.
Incidentally, it was Fenway Sports Group’s first season post-takeover when Standard Chartered replaced Carlsberg, though the decision to sign with the financial services firm pre-dates their time at Anfield.
Photo by Marc Atkins/Getty Images
Photo by Marc Atkins/Getty Images
The current front-of-shirt deal is worth a reported £50m per season and runs until the end of 2026-27. By that time, the relationship will have lasted just one year less than the Carlsberg agreement.
Since 2010, football finance has evolved. When FSG bought the club, annual commercial income stood at a paltry £62m. Nowadays, Liverpool are looking at £300m-plus. Just as the Premier League has found new ways to sell itself and its media rights, so too have Liverpool uncovered more ways to monetise their IP.
While the front-of-shirt space was once just a billboard, it’s now an entry point into a deeper partnership. For instance, when Mohamed Salah was – to no one’s surprise – named Liverpool’s player of the year this week, it was Standard Chartered who played a supporting role in the announcement.
Standard Chartered also played a decisive role in the decision for Arne Slot and his squad to fly to East Asia for pre-season ahead of 2025-26, because the firm has a huge presence in Japan and Hong Kong.
As the likes of Liverpool have sought to provide more value for partners, the club-sponsor relationship has become less passive. It really is a ‘partnership’ where both sides play an active role. And in the digital economy, clubs see endless opportunities for branded content.
From next season, Liverpool will partner with Adidas in a deal worth anywhere between £60m and £90m per year depending on performance bonuses and sales.
Logistically, the transition from one supplier to the next is enormously complex, especially if you are selling your entire retail and merchandising rights too, as many clubs do. It’s not quite as intense with a front-of-shirt partner, but it’s a procedurally demanding process nonetheless.
Negotiations take months, if not years. And with clubs favouring longer term deals these days, there are hundreds of millions of pounds on the line. Billions, potentially, so it’s a workflow in which John Henry, Tom Werner, Mike Gordon and other bigwigs at FSG HQ are personally involved.
Photo by Dan Istitene - Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images
Photo by Dan Istitene – Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images
And with two seasons left to run on the Standard Chartered deal, talks will be underway, both with the firm itself and potential suitors. As Premier League champions, they hold the high card in negotiations.
FSG don’t put money into the football side of the club, so as one of Liverpool’s single biggest sources of income, the front-of-shirt deal will have a major impact on transfer and wage budgets from year-to-year.
Liverpool’s front-of-shirt rights valued at £66m
As we mentioned, the headline figures don’t always tell the full story, but Liverpool’s Standard Chartered alliance is reportedly worth a basic £50m per season.
That makes it the joint third-most valuable in the Premier League, although as Arsenal’s deal with Emirates and Manchester City’s with Etihad both also include stadium naming rights, 2nd is probably a truer reflection of the value of the Standard Chartered deal.
However, research from The Sponsor, a commercial consultancy firm specialising in sport, suggests that Liverpool could get another £15.9m if they were negotiating a new front-of-shirt deal right now.
The fair market value (FMV) of the Standard Chartered deal as it stands is just less than £66m, according to the report.
Rank Club 2025 FMV value Current deal Difference
1st Liverpool £65.9m £50m £15.9m (undervalued)
2nd Manchester City £63.8m £67.5m £3.7m (overvalued)
3rd Manchester United £51.1m £60m £8.9m (overvalued)
4th Chelsea £50.3m – –
5th Arsenal £49.6m £50m £0.4m (overvalued)
6th Tottenham Hotspur £49.1m £40m £9.1m (undervalued)
7th Newcastle United £23.6m £25m £1.4m (overvalued)
8th Aston Villa £23.2m £20m £3.2m (undervalued)
9th Everton £13.9m £10m £3.9m (undervalued)
10th West Ham United £13.9m £10m £3.9m (undervalued)
With negotiations between Liverpool and Standard Chartered likely active, the Premier League title triumph will have given the club significant leverage.
And with the direction of travel more broadly in the uber-competitive commercial market, the
Since the takeover in 2010, Liverpool have more or less broken even. They are slightly in the red zone, though only by a fraction.
Their accounts for the last two published financial years, however, show combined deficits of £72m. Over the last five, it’s £121m. For a club routinely garlanded as the most sustainable and well-run in football, the picture looks somewhat counterintuitive.
Chart showing Liverpool's profit and loss account over the years, with TBR Football logo
Liverpool profit and loss graph Credit: Adam Williams/TBR Football/GRV Media
In truth, however, the profit-and-loss account is a useful fiction for accountants. Because it contains non-cash expenses like amortisation and depreciation (£114m and £17m for Liverpool respectively last season), it isn’t a reflection of how much cash actually flows in and out of the business.
In terms of cold, hard cash, there are few clubs who perform as well as Liverpool. FSG have never put a penny into the business other than to fund one-off infrastructure projects like the expansion of Anfield and the construction of the AXA Training Centre.
Across football, huge revenues are swallowed up by soaring wages and transfer market inflation. And while Liverpool have not been immune to the space race, they have had far better cost control than most.
Chart showing Liverpool revenue vs squad cost, which is made up wages plus amortisation, with TBR Football
Liverpool squad cost vs revenue Credit: Adam Williams/TBR Football/GRV Media
Their squad cost, comprised of annual wages and player amortisation (which is how clubs account for transfer fees over time), has never risen above revenue. In recent years, the two metrics have risen in lockstep, with their wages-to-turnover ratio staying in the 60-65 per cent range.
FSG’s maturing commercial strategy, in tandem with the lucrative expansion of Anfield and soaring UEFA revenues, allows the club to spend on the likes of Jeremie Frimpong – and perhaps Florian Wirtz – without relying on owner handouts.
In turn, that is why any objections to their spending on the grounds of Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) are misguided. Liverpool are as sustainable as they come – and sponsorship is central to that.