With all the controversy around Barcelona’s recent away jersey rollout, we take a look at a several other times kit sponsors created issues during a release.
Barcelona’s 2024-25 kit rollout was…interesting, to say the least. There were several hiccups with the launch, such as delays and availability; with much of them seemingly stemming from a singular major fault: the club released a kit that showed an incorrect main sponsor logo.
Well, incorrect may be a stretch.
When the kits were first leaked they brought rave reviews, and for good reason. Their designs were immaculate and the Spotify sponsor emblem looked incredible on the front of the kit. However, right in the midst of Barça’s kit production, Spotify changed its logo.
Barcelona had already released their home kit with the old Spotify logo, but for the away kit, they decided to use the updated version. This caused a delay in the jersey’s release, and made the highly anticipated design difficult to purchase for eager fans.
Multiple versions of the away kit have been released, including one with the old Spotify logo, the updated one, and a sponsorless version. At the time of writing, the updated logo version is only available on Barcelona’s official site. Nike currently only carries the “stadium” version of the kit with the old logo.
Nike has been Barcelona’s kit supplier since 1998, and the fiasco has been a bad look for both the club and the brand. With the chaos still well in progress, let’s look back at a couple of other instances of sponsor-related kit problems in football.
Chelsea’s Race Against the Clock
Just last season gave us another hugely significant kit-sponsor debacle involving a major club. Chelsea began the 2023-24 season with a now infamous sponsorless kit.
The issue was known long before the season began, as Chelsea were in communication with several parties. As time passed, they’d hoped to reach a deal with eventual club sponsors Infinite Athlete before the opening fixture, but it was apparent this would be more hopeful than realistic. It took until the end of September for the partnership to officially be announced and the new sponsored kits to roll out.
The sponsor-free look was a massive hit however, and if you take a trip to the Chelsea FC shop you can still purchase the 2023-24 home kit sans logo. For the 2024-25 season, Chelsea is once again without sponsor, telling of the chaos going on within the club’s front office.
Castore’s Catalog of Errors
Kit sponsors don’t exclusively apply to the logos featured throughout the jersey’s body. It also can mean the supplier as well. After all, these brands pay millions of dollars to have their logo visibly placed on a club’s shirt, and they rack in even more via merch sales.
For some suppliers, it doesn’t always work out, however.
While Barcelona and Chelsea’s issues came in the form of how their kits looked, others have had issues with how their kits performed. While a simple jersey might seem easy enough to nail from a performance perspective, sometimes things go awry.
The lead up to the 2023-24 season was a huge struggle for Aston Villa in this regard. Both their men’s and women’s squads had huge complaints about the quality of the kit provided by Castore, with the most significant being its moisture wicking ability.
In the earliest games Villa played in their new kits, it was shockingly visible how wet they got. Players were drenched, and we could tell. Unsurprisingly, the complaints began to come in, with the main issue being the weight of the shirt as the game went on. At the top level, it’s imperative that kits can absorb moisture at a good enough rate to maintain good performance, a key flaw in Castore’s game.
Consequently, Aston Villa announced midway through last season that they would be making the switch to adidas for the 2024-25 season onwards. They weren’t the only ones, as fellow Castore-sponsored Premier League club Newcastle also jumped ship and are currently sponsored by the Three Stripes as well.
Mass complaints are by no means a new thing for Castore. Many of their clients have had huge quality concerns, most notably Rangers and Wolverhampton Wanderers, and found themselves with kits that would rip during games worryingly often. As if this wasn’t bad enough, there were droves of fans throughout last season who took to social media to voice complaints about the Castore products they received.
Wolves remain in partnership with Castore, but are now the only Premier League club that is still doing so.
