Chelsea have finally announced their shirt sponsorship with Infinite Athlete.
It’s taken a while to come to fruition, with the rumours about the sports data company becoming out “principal partner” starting more than a month ago, but it’s only now that we’re seeing the deal done.
There’s been a very long period of approval from the Premier League, partly because IA is a new company formed by a merger, meaning that the £40m they’re paying us each year is a huge sum compared to their lifetime revenue
In the light of Manchester City and Newcastle’s questionable tie ups, the league are now hot on making sure that sponsorships aren’t artificially pumped up.
It brings to an end an embarrassing start to the season where Chelsea have played without a sponsor on their shirt at all, making us look a bit like a Sunday league team.
Infinite Athlete will sponsor the women’s team too, and in fact our first game with their logo on our shirts will be the women’s game against Tottenham tomorrow evening.
The only thing that’s embarrassing is a league that will sanction gambling sponsorships but not a cable channel (Paramount Plus). The latter happens to carry most Champions League matches in the US and the last time I checked the EPL sends at least four clubs to that competition. God forbid Chelsea help publicize a service that would increase the visbility of England’s top clubs in a market of over 300 million people!