Just the 6th Sponsor in 48 Years
Liverpool have had just five main shirt sponsors since 1979. From 2027/28, Turkish Airlines will become only the sixth.
There are football clubs whose shirt sponsors seem to change every few seasons. And then there is Liverpool.
Since putting a commercial name on the front of the shirt for the first time in 1979, Liverpool have had just five main shirt sponsors.
Hitachi.
Crown Paints.
Candy.
Carlsberg.
Standard Chartered.
That is it.
From the 2027/28 season, Turkish Airlines will become only the sixth.
The five-year agreement is worth around £300 million, or £60 million per season, making it one of the most valuable front-of-shirt sponsorship deals in football. Turkish Airlines will become Liverpool’s main airline and front-of-shirt partner from the 2027/28 season.
But there is another, less visible consequence of the deal.
As part of the exclusivity clause, which ensures that Turkish Airlines is the only airline represented among Liverpool’s sponsors, Liverpool’s partnership with Japan Airlines, which began in 2024, will formally conclude at the end of the 2026/27 season.
The JAL agreement was reportedly worth around £4 million per season.
If we connect the two ends of Liverpool’s shirt sponsorship history, the numbers are extraordinary. When Hitachi became the club’s first shirt sponsor in 1979, the agreement was worth £50,000 per season. From 2027/28, Turkish Airlines will pay around £60 million per season, which is 1,200 times more.
The scale of that £50,000 becomes even clearer when put into the context of the club at the time. Liverpool had an annual turnover of around £2.4 million and made a profit of just £71,000, meaning Hitachi’s sponsorship represented a significant new source of revenue for the club.
The comparison is more than a curiosity in football finances. It is a powerful illustration of how dramatically the football business, the commercial value of clubs and the marketing power of football have grown over the past five decades.
