Turkish Airlines will be new Liverpool shirt sponsor in €350m deal
by AFP · The42become Liverpool’s new front-of-shirt sponsor from the start of the 2027/28 season, the Premier League giants announced on Tuesday.
No fee was disclosed by the club, but the BBC reported that the five-year deal was worth £300 million (€350m) in total.
A contract worth more than £60 million a season, would represent an increase on the current £50 million-per-season deal with retail bank Standard Chartered, who have been the Reds’ front-of-shirt sponsor since 2010.
Liverpool’s new deal is believed to be the most lucrative purely front-of-shirt agreement in Premier League history, with Arsenal and Manchester City’s agreements with Emirates and Etihad Airways respectively also involving stadium naming rights.
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By contrast, six-time European champions Liverpool’s home ground is still solely known by its original name of Anfield.
In February, Liverpool announced record revenues of more than £700 million for the most recent financial year, and were the highest-placed Premier League club in the Deloitte Football Money League.
Liverpool were the first major English professional football club to have a shirt sponsor, when Japanese electronics company Hitachi had its name displayed across the club’s strip back in 1979.
Standard Chartered will remain as the shirt sponsor this season before becoming a “global partner” of Liverpool from 2027/28 onwards.
It is understood that talks with Turkish Airlines started before 1892 Holdings — a consortium led by British-Indian millionaire businessman Amit Bhatia, the Liverpool vice-chairman, purchased a stake of around 38 percent in the club last month.
Chief commercial officer Ben Latty said that the front of the shirt “holds a special place in the history” of Liverpool, adding that the partnership will build on “strong foundations” from the club’s Champions League final win in the Turkish city of Istanbul in 2005.
Turkish Airlines chief executive Ahmet Olmustur said: “This partnership brings together two global brands united by their international reach, commitment to excellence and ability to inspire millions of people around the world.”
Turkey’s national flag carrier boasts that it flies to 356 destinations in 132 countries. A pet soft-power project of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the company is controlled by the country’s wealth fund, which owns 49.1 percent of its shares.
The company’s network centres on Istanbul airport, which overtook London Heathrow as Europe’s busiest airport in the July summer peak with more than eight million travellers.