Standard Chartered Plc will no longer be the front-of-shirt sponsor of Liverpool FC, bringing an end to a 17-season arrangement that created one of football’s most recognizable partnerships.
Turkish Airlines will become Liverpool’s main sponsor from June 2027, according to a statement Tuesday. The five-year deal is worth in excess of £60 million ($81.2 million) per season. Standard Chartered will become a more junior sponsor to the Premier League team.
Liverpool FC is one of the world’s biggest football teams, with Amazon.com Inc. co-founder Jeff Bezos recently joining the ownership group. Standard Chartered’s logo has been on its shirts since 2010, the year the club was sold to Fenway Sports Group, which also owns the Boston Red Sox baseball team.
The change comes as Standard Chartered shifts its focus to other sports including Formula 1. Since becoming Liverpool’s front-of-shirt sponsor, the London-based lender has likely spent over £500 million on the deal, with the most recent four-year extension in 2022 reportedly costing £50 million a year.
Liverpool has been seeking more from the sponsorship as new footballing financial rules kick in that link how much a club can spend on new players to the size of its revenue.
In the Premier League, only Emirates has a longer sponsorship deal, becoming the front-of-shirt sponsor for Arsenal at the start of the 2006-07 season.
Turkish Airlines has a number of sports sponsorships, including the Turkey national football teams and the Turkish Airlines Open on golf’s DP World Tour.
