Everton, of English soccer’s top-tier Premier League, have announced a club-record main partner agreement with crypto casino and sports betting platform Stake.com.
Through a multi-year deal, announced today (June 9), Stake.com branding will feature on the front of the club’s men’s and women’s teams’ playing shirts.
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It will also appear on screens and media backdrops at Everton’s Goodison Park home stadium and Finch Farm training ground, as well as across the club’s digital platforms.
Everton says the deal follows an expansion of its commercial team aimed at increasing revenues.
Stake.com replaces online car retailer Cazoo as Everton’s main sponsor, with the pair having been unable to agree terms for a continuation of their relationship following the 2021-22 season.
Everton have now said their commercial team took the option to end that partnership early. The contract was understood to be worth around £10 million ($13.4 million) per year.
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By GlobalDataAs the “highest value front-of-shirt deal in the club’s 144-year history”, the Stake.com tie-up will be welcome for Everton’s top brass, with the club having suffered losses of more than £110 million ($147.4 million) for the third consecutive season during 2020-21 and having narrowly avoided relegation in the recently finished 2021-22 season.
Relegation to the second-tier Championship would have severely compounded matters, not least because Everton are in the process of building a new 52,000-seat stadium.
In an open letter to fans published yesterday (June 8), the club’s majority shareholder Farhad Moshiri apologized for its on-field performance and acknowledged that it had “not always spent significant amounts of money wisely.”
“I am committed to securing the future success of the Club by delivering a fully-funded stadium that will underpin our status as a leading club,” said Moshiri. “Our new stadium project at Bramley-Moore Dock has reached an exciting and landmark stage as it emerges from the ground, with the four main cores now in place.”
He added: “During the 2021/22 season, the board led a strategic review of our operations which included looking at working practices, our recruitment process and the whole structure of our footballing operation in order to clearly identify the causes of our under-delivery on the pitch. Many of the learnings have already been implemented.”
Everton is one of two soccer clubs that Stake.com now sponsors, with the company having last year agreed a multi-year principal shirt sponsorship deal with Watford, who have just been relegated from the Premier League and will play in the second-tier ELF Championship next season.
Among its other sports partnerships, Stake.com also has a betting tie-up with the Ultimate Fighting Championship in Brazil.
Denise Barrett-Baxendale, chief executive at Everton, said: “Stake.com is an ambitious organization with impressive growth plans and we’re all very excited to enter into a partnership with them at this stage in their journey.
“My talented colleagues in our new revenue team have made excellent progress in recent months and worked tirelessly to secure what is the biggest main partnership deal in the club’s history – I’d like to congratulate them on this achievement and, on behalf of everyone at the club, express my gratitude to Stake.com for choosing Everton as a long-term partner.
“Finally, I am pleased to say that we have already been working together with Stake.com on some exciting activities and content for our local and international supporters and we look forward to sharing more detail on these plans soon.”
Akhil Sarin, head of acquisition for Stake.com, added: “We are incredibly proud to be partnering with Everton, a club steeped in tradition and with a passionate and loyal fanbase respected the world over. Everton is a club that perfectly complements our own growth ambitions as we seek to expand our presence globally and strengthen our top-tier sports sponsorship portfolio.
“It’s a huge honor for everyone at Stake.com to be joining the Everton family and playing our part in supporting the club in the transition to the new stadium. We look forward to celebrating this most exciting chapter in the club’s history with Evertonians everywhere.”
