Liverpool Agree Turkish Airlines Front Of Shirt Deal That Will Replace Standard Chartered From June 2027 | OneFootball

From the start of the 2027-2028 campaign, Liverpool will have a new company’s name emblazoned on the front of the club’s shirts. Turkish Airlines have signed a deal worth £300 million, which the club thinks is the most lucrative such deal of its kind. The airline will pay the club £60 million per season, which is a £10 million increase on the deal that’s currently in place with Standard Chartered. It is a solid move for the club from a financial point of view, coming on the back of a February announcement regarding record revenues in the recent financial year.

A Good Deal, But at What Cost?

Shkuru Afshar, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Standard Chartered will have been the club’s main front-of-shirt sponsor for 17 years by the time this season comes to a close, meaning that the only company that have been associated with the Reds for longer is Carlsberg. The name of the beer company was featured on our shirts between 1992 and 2010, but it is difficult to imagine that Standard Chartered will be remembered in quite the same nostalgic way. The Reds were later than some other clubs in embracing the capitalistic nature of football, but it’s safe to say that they’re catching up now.

Standard Chartered is a company with its own problems, of course, but anyone hoping that the new deal would be without any kind of moral quandary will be sorely disappointed. ILGA-Europe, the European region of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association, ranks Turkey as 47th in terms of LGBTQ+ rights, with only Azerbaijan and Russia below them. Pride marches have been banned since 2015, with tear gas and water cannons used to disperse the crowds. It’s difficult to imagine that Kop Outs will be thrilled with the deal.

The airline’s branding will be on the front of the men’s, women’s and Academy match shirts when they play, which will likely see them gain more passengers than they already have, which is impressive when you consider the fact that they are the fourth-largest airline in the world, flying to more countries than any other company. It certainly won’t hurt their involvement that Liverpool is the global brand that it is, meaning that Reds from all over the world may well choose to fly with them when heading to Anfield, for example.

Although I don’t pay much attention to which company sponsors the club from one minute to the next (who would actively choose to drink Carlsberg, for example), it is fairly obvious that the same isn’t true for other people. After all, there is a reason why sponsors choose to spend tens of millions of pounds getting their brand associated with the football club. Moving forwards, that is going to be Turkish Airlines. At a time when LGBTQ+ people have never felt more under threat, I’m not entirely sure the association is a good thing.