Swansea City fans are getting impatient, even Joma in Toledo, Spain are getting impatient but it seems the new shirt sponsor has been sorted out for public consumption within the next five days or so.

So what about the hold up ?

There clearly has been an issue as we are aware that a sponsorship was sorted out around six weeks ago. However, that stalled and seems to have gone off the boil. Speculation that the sponsor may have been a betting company is rumoured. Clubs with an additional betting sponsor away from (Sky Bet) who hold the main rights for the EFL Championship can run into financial problem and most certainly merchandise and . The main concern is the LED screens which we all see around every football ground these days. As a sponsor of the league Sky Bet get around fourteen minutes per game on those screens which is compulsory for all clubs. That is a part of the overall agreement. However, fifty percent of that screen time has to have ‘gambling aware’ messages.

With another betting company involved the same rule applies.

The amount of payment for a minute of LED time could be as much as £35,000 a minute as it was back in the heady days of the Premier League. That has fallen drastically for Swansea of course but you can ‘bet’ the top six or so clubs are punting out screen time almost double that with their games reaching millions across the world. Thats a huge financial income. Nowadays the Swans utilise their anti gambling stance for other markets, they recently announced a sleeve sponsor (asi:One) which is the biggest deal Swansea City have brokered since falling back into the Championship. That could be around £400,000.

We believe the most the Swans can make on LED screen time is around £8,000 (at the very maximum) a minute but that would be for games such as Manchester City last season and probably not surprisingly the Snoop Dogg visit for the Preston game again last season. Wrexham at home when the Swans defeated them 2-1 would fall into that category. But how much is hard to define. Bigger matches means more money with Manchester City hitting the highest income from TV, LED sponsorship and one off deals with big companies. That game earned the Swans a lot of money, plus the prize money leading up to that game for each round won. Including Nottingham Forest.

The Premier League has banned all front of shirt betting sponsorship this coming season, the Championship hasn’t. There is a stigma around having a betting company involved as a sponsor and with the Swans being so anti gambling, a big reason being the fans backlash with this type of sponsorship it seems very strange this betting sponsor rumour has surfaced. Over their Premier League years we saw multiple deals resulting in huge income.

YOBET (2019–2020)
Bet UK (2018–2019)
Letou (2017–2018)
Beteast (2016–2017)
32Red (2009–2013) Classic Michu shirt below.

We mentioned stigma but also a club has to be very careful where they place advertising for betting companies, an example within the agreed memorandum for betting companies being things like not facing a family stand or impacting on areas frequented by minors. There are many other caveats but straight away you can see the pitfalls. Big advertising boards outside the ground are a no no these days. Plus with gambling affecting one in ten families in the UK that can mean fans won’t buy merchandise and in some cases not at all. Kids can’t wear the same shirts as their heroes as they have to have a different logo. In fact the impact commercially in most cases means a deal earning more money for the club with a betting sponsor could illustrate overall a lack of credible commercial funding from merchandise.

We will go as far to say that back in the betting shirt sponsor days of the Swans - if those companies were put on LED screens, the Premier League agreement of fourteen minutes exposure for their sponsors increases by four minutes. That’s a huge loss of revenue from LED advertising when you look at the eye watering figures back then. Four minutes every game, say averaging out at £20,000 a minute loses you £80,000 a match, and that’s just for starters.

Despite that a good deal with a betting company can double the income of a football club. However with clubs placed third to eighth qualifying for a play off to get to the Premier League - any deal if they were promoted would be banned. The complications there to agree a deal would mean the shirt sponsor is actually relying on an unsuccessful season to gain more exposure in the EFL Championship.

Mad.

This brings us around full circle, it just seems odd to us that Swansea city would have allowed their commercial department, or head of commercial (he left some seven weeks ago) to go anywhere near a controversial front of shirt sponsor is not well thought out at all. There clearly has been an issue otherwise the club would now be selling their products (well online anyway) to the thousands who support the Swans worldwide. Whatever that issue as we have stated has impacted greatly not only commercially with a loss of at least three to four weeks of merchandise sales overall, the club shop now rebranded as ‘The Foundry’ hasn’t opened at all.

Imagine a buy new shirt deal for kids on Saturday and get free entry, it’s not as if the friendly against CD Leganés is gripping the fans attention. Just a thought. The stadium is open anyway, let’s get the kids in because as we all know when they are hooked they rarely leave the team of their formative years.

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Photographs : Reuters REUTERS/Dylan Martinez,