Burnley Ends Finotive Sponsorship Deal Before Season Start

Burnley’s new season hasn’t even started and already they’ve had to tear up one of its supposed cornerstones.

Six weeks. That’s all the time their partnership with principal sponsor Finotive One survived before the club’s hierarchy pulled the plug, scrapping what had been billed as a flagship commercial deal for the 2026-27 campaign.

On Friday morning, the club confirmed the split in a brief, businesslike statement, announcing the termination of the agreement with the Cyprus-registered trading platform. The tone was clipped but clear: Burnley Football Club is “disappointed” the deal is over, but the board insists it has “acted decisively to protect the Club’s interests, and those of our supporters, while ensuring preparations for the new season continue uninterrupted, both on and off the pitch.”

The reality behind that corporate language is messy.

Viral launch, instant embarrassment

Burnley had thrown serious weight behind the Finotive tie-up. The new cream away kit arrived with a huge viral push, fronted by Arnold Schwarzenegger and JJ Watt, and the Finotive logo sat front and centre as the club’s commercial future.

Now those shirts are redundant.

All Finotive-branded home and away jerseys have been yanked from the online store and club shops. Stock is on hold until fresh versions carrying new sponsor Vertu Motors can be produced and rolled out. Supporters who rushed to buy the new look are left holding a collector’s item or a costly misfire, depending on how they see it.

The club has moved quickly to limit the damage. Burnley have promised a full refund and exchange scheme for anyone who bought a Finotive-branded kit, allowing fans to trade them in for the updated Vertu Motors version. Some will undoubtedly keep the originals as a snapshot of a partnership that barely made it out of pre-season. Many others are expected to swap.

All this is unfolding just as Burnley are trying to focus on football. West Ham United visit Turf Moor on Sunday for the Championship opener. Instead of a clean build-up, the club has been firefighting a marketing fiasco.

Clues in plain sight

The collapse didn’t come completely out of nowhere. The signs were there for those paying attention.

Broadcasters promoting Sunday’s clash against the Hammers released footage earlier in the week featuring defender Kyle Walker in a Burnley shirt with a conspicuously blank front. No sponsor. No logo. Just claret.

That jarred with what fans had seen all summer. Burnley had worn the Finotive One branding throughout pre-season and as recently as last Saturday in their Carabao Cup first-round tie against Notts County. To see a clean shirt days later raised obvious questions.

The doubts only deepened when all references to Finotive One quietly disappeared from Burnley’s official website and social media channels 24 hours before the announcement. The digital scrub was swift and total, and it told its own story.

A familiar fault line at Turf Moor

For Burnley, this is not an isolated storm. It fits an uneasy pattern.

Since ALK Capital took control, the club’s relationship with shirt sponsors has been choppy. Chairman Alan Pace has spoken publicly about steering Burnley away from the betting industry, yet the front of the shirt has repeatedly returned to gambling brands such as W88 and SpreadEx.

Last year, the Gambling Commission issued warnings to Burnley and several other clubs over their links to sites operated by TGP Europe, following an investigation that exposed failures in anti-money laundering procedures and checks on business partners. That episode sharpened scrutiny on who clubs choose to put on their shirts.

Finotive One was supposed to mark a clean break, a move into a different commercial sector after that turbulence. Instead, the partnership has unravelled before a single league ball has been kicked.

The marketing videos are unusable. The kits are being remade. The sponsor has changed. The questions about Burnley’s commercial judgment remain.

Now, with West Ham arriving and a long Championship season ahead, the club has to prove that the chaos stops with the logo on the front of the shirt – and doesn’t seep into what happens on the pitch.