Burnley Ends Finotive One Deal, Vertu Motors Steps In Before Season

Burnley’s new season has been thrown into an off-field scramble, with the club tearing up their front-of-shirt sponsorship deal just days before kicking off the Premier League campaign.

On Friday, the club abruptly ended their agreement with Finotive One – a self-styled “trading ecosystem” – only 42 days after announcing it. No detailed explanation has been given, but the wording from Turf Moor was stark: the deal has been scrapped “to protect the club's interests, and those of our supporters”.

That protection will not come cheap.

Burnley are offering full refunds or exchanges to any supporter who bought the 2026-27 home or away shirts bearing the Finotive One logo. Those shirts have already disappeared from the club’s online store and will not be on sale at the ground before Sunday’s season opener against West Ham United.

Two weeks ago, the mood was very different. The new cream away kit had been launched with a big-budget promotional video featuring minority investor and former NFL star JJ Watt, ex-England cricketer James Anderson and even Arnold Schwarzenegger. The clip was pushed hard across social media, designed to set the tone for a fresh season.

Now it’s redundant.

The shirts that were meant to front Burnley’s commercial push are suddenly relics of a sponsorship that barely got started. Some fans may decide to keep them as curios – a short-lived chapter in club history – but most will likely swap them for the updated version, fronted by new sponsor Vertu Motors, a UK-wide car dealership.

The first signs of trouble surfaced before any official statement. On Thursday, sharp-eyed supporters noticed something odd in Sky Sports’ promotional material for Sunday’s game: Burnley’s kit, modelled by Kyle Walker, appeared without a sponsor. Strange, given Vincent Kompany’s side had worn Finotive One branding throughout pre-season.

Even in last weekend’s Carabao Cup tie against Notts County, the Finotive One logo was emblazoned across the shirt.

Then another clue. Stories announcing and detailing the Finotive One partnership quietly vanished from Burnley’s official website. By Friday morning, the club confirmed what many had already guessed: the deal was over.

A familiar sponsorship headache

This is not the first time Burnley have found themselves scrambling to fix a front-of-shirt problem.

LoveBet, an Asian betting firm, signed a three-year agreement but disappeared after two seasons when the company ran into financial trouble. That exit came shortly after ALK Capital completed their takeover of the club in December 2020.

At the time, new chairman Alan Pace faced criticism over the club’s reliance on gambling sponsors. He responded on X, saying the issue would be assessed “as part of the overall commercial strategy for the club”, while warning that “historic contractual obligations” might limit immediate change.

The reality since then has been clear enough. Under ALK Capital’s ownership, betting brands have dominated Burnley’s shirts.

With the exception of a single season in 2022-23, when Classic Football Shirts took the front-of-shirt slot, every main sponsor in the ALK era has been tied to gambling. LoveBet gave way to SpreadEx, a fixed-odds and spread betting company. After Classic Football Shirts, Philippines-based betting firm W88 took over.

In 2024, Burnley agreed a controversial two-year deal with 96.com, a betting website run by TGP Europe. That arrangement drew scrutiny. Last year, the Gambling Commission issued warnings to Burnley and three other clubs over their links to sites operated by TGP Europe, which had surrendered its British gambling licence. Investigators found TGP Europe had failed to “carry out sufficient checks on business partners” and had breached “anti-money laundering rules”.

Trying something different – briefly

Seeking a replacement for 96.com, Burnley stepped away from the gambling sector and into less familiar territory.

Finotive One, registered in Cyprus, describes itself as an “all-in-one ecosystem” for traders. Publicly available information about the company’s operations and customer base was sparse, but on paper the deal appeared to be the most lucrative option on the table.

It lasted six weeks.

With the agreement now torn up, Burnley have turned to a known quantity. Vertu Motors, who have had a sponsorship relationship with the club since 2022, have stepped in at the last minute to fill the void on the front of the shirt.

The terms of the new arrangement have not been disclosed, but Burnley’s bargaining position, so close to the start of the season and in clear need of a replacement, was hardly strong. The club have avoided going into detail on the financial hit or the precise reasons for the sudden collapse of the Finotive One deal.

What is clear is the outcome: a high-profile commercial embarrassment, a rushed return to an existing partner, and another twist in Burnley’s turbulent recent history with shirt sponsors.

As the players walk out against West Ham on Sunday, the focus will be on the football. The logo on the front of the shirt, though, will tell its own story about where Burnley have been – and the questions that still hang over where they go next commercially.