Burnley Ends Finotive One Deal, Vertu Motors Steps In
Burnley’s new season kicks off on Sunday. Their new shirt sponsor will not.
Just 42 days after announcing Finotive One as their front-of-shirt partner, the club have torn up the contract, pulled the shirts from sale and rushed in Vertu Motors as a last‑minute replacement.
It is an extraordinary U-turn, and an expensive one.
A launch video already consigned to history
Only a fortnight ago, Burnley were rolling out the cream away kit with all the trimmings of a modern launch. A glossy video. Big names. Big noise.
Former NFL star and minority investor JJ Watt fronted it. James Anderson, one of England’s greatest fast bowlers, appeared. Arnold Schwarzenegger even featured. All of them selling a shirt emblazoned with Finotive One.
That video is now redundant. The shirts have vanished from the club’s website. They will not be on the shelves at Turf Moor before West Ham United visit on Sunday.
Supporters who bought the 2026-27 home or away shirts with Finotive One across the chest have been offered full refunds or exchanges. Some might tuck them away as curiosities – a sponsorship that barely made it to pre-season’s end – but most are expected to trade them in for the new version carrying Vertu Motors.
The clues before the announcement
The first hint that something was badly wrong came on Thursday. Sky Sports ran a promo for Sunday’s game. Kyle Walker appeared in a Burnley shirt stripped bare of a sponsor.
Odd. Burnley had worn Finotive One throughout pre-season. Even in last weekend’s Carabao Cup tie against Notts County, the logo was still prominent on the claret shirts.
Then the digital trail started to disappear. Articles and announcements about the Finotive One deal quietly vanished from Burnley’s official website.
By Friday morning, the club could no longer keep a lid on it. In a short statement, Burnley confirmed the agreement had been scrapped “to protect the club’s interests, and those of our supporters”.
The club have not answered detailed questions about what triggered such a drastic move, but walking away from a fresh commercial deal after six weeks does not come cheap.
A familiar headache on the front of the shirt
This is not new territory for Burnley. Shirt sponsorship has been a recurring problem in the AIK Capital era.
LoveBet, an Asian betting firm, signed a three-year deal but disappeared after two, hit by financial trouble. That change came just after AIK Capital completed their takeover in December 2020.
Amid criticism of the club’s ties to gambling, new chairman Alan Pace addressed the issue on X, saying the matter would be considered “as part of the overall commercial strategy for the club”. He acknowledged “historic contractual obligations” but promised to review the situation with his team for the long term.
The reality since then? Gambling has remained at the heart of Burnley’s commercial portfolio.
Apart from a single-season agreement with Classic Football Shirts in 2022-23, every front-of-shirt sponsor in the AIK Capital period has been betting-related. LoveBet gave way to SpreadEx, a fixed odds and spread betting company. After Classic Football Shirts, Philippines-based operator W88 took over.
In 2024, Burnley signed a contentious two-year contract with 96.com, a betting site run by TGP Europe. That relationship quickly attracted regulatory heat. Last year, the Gambling Commission issued warnings to Burnley and three other clubs over their links to TGP-run sites after the company surrendered its British licence.
Investigators found TGP Europe had failed to carry out “sufficient checks on business partners” and had breached “anti-money laundering rules”. It was another stain on Burnley’s commercial record.
A risky pivot to Finotive One
Trying to move away from 96.com, Burnley took an unconventional turn. Finotive One, registered in Cyprus, bills itself as an “all-in-one ecosystem” for traders. Beyond that marketing line, very little was publicly clear about its operations or its customer base.
On paper, the deal looked lucrative. In a competitive market, it was the offer Burnley chose. Six weeks later, it is gone, leaving the club with a red face and a hole in their commercial plans.
Into that gap has stepped Vertu Motors. The UK-wide car dealership is not a stranger to Turf Moor, having held a sponsorship arrangement with Burnley since 2022. This time, though, they are front and centre.
The terms of the hastily arranged deal are unknown, but the timing is telling. With the season about to start and the Finotive One agreement in tatters, Burnley were hardly negotiating from a position of strength.
What looked like the most profitable option at the start of the summer has ended in embarrassment. Now the club head into a new campaign with a new badge on their shirts and old questions hanging over how – and with whom – they choose to do business.
