Chelsea have ended talks with Stake.com over them becoming the club’s next main sponsors after a backlash from fans.
The gambling firm, who have a multi-year deal in place with Everton as the Blues’ front of shirt sponsors, had been in talks with the Stamford Bridge club over a one-year deal to take over from mobile company Three, who had been paying £40m per year to the club as part of their previous deal.
But with a voluntary ban on front of shirt gambling sponsorships in football coming into effect at the end of the 2025/26, the possibility of a betting firm becoming the main partner for Chelsea was not warmly welcomed.
According to the Evening Standard, Chelsea have now ended talks with Stake.com over any possible deal.
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A Chelsea Supporters’ Trust spokesperson, said: “The CST is really pleased that, according to recent reports, Chelsea FC has listened to the very serious concerns of the Trust and has acted accordingly.
“Over 77 per cent of our members disagreed with the use of an online casino & betting company as the primary shirt sponsor, and if these reports are indeed correct, it demonstrates again that supporters can make a monumental difference.”
Everton and Stake.com entered into a partnership during the summer of 2022, with the firm replacing online car dealers Cazoo in what was described at the time as a ‘club-record deal’. It arrived despite former chief executive Denise Barrett-Baxendale telling the club’s annual general meeting in early 2020 that “in an ideal world” the club would not partner with another betting company after ending a deal with SportPesa in 2019.
The Stake.com deal wasn’t without its controversy, though, with more that 20,000 people signing a petition led by Everton fan Ben Melvin, who had lost hundreds of thousands of pounds through a gambling addiction over a decade, calling for the club to abandon its partnership with the company.
