Burnley Ends Finotive One Deal, Vertu Motors Steps In as Sponsor

The new season has not even kicked a ball at Turf Moor and Burnley are already counting the cost of a major commercial U-turn.

On Friday, just 42 days after announcing Finotive One as their new front-of-shirt partner, the club tore up the agreement. No soft landing, no gradual phase-out. Gone.

Burnley have refused to spell out exactly what triggered the decision, but walking away from a freshly inked main sponsorship deal so close to the Premier League kick-off will not come cheap. The club have offered full refunds or exchanges to any supporter who bought the 2026-27 home or away shirt carrying the Finotive One logo.

For many, that will mean returning shirts that had barely made it out of the bag.

A fortnight ago, the fanfare was in full swing. Burnley unveiled their cream away kit with a glossy, star-packed promotional video. JJ Watt, the former NFL star and minority investor, fronted it. James Anderson, the England cricket great and lifelong Burnley fan, appeared. Even Arnold Schwarzenegger featured.

That video is now redundant. The shirts have vanished from the club’s online store and will not be on sale at Turf Moor before Sunday’s season opener against West Ham United.

Some supporters will stash those Finotive-branded tops away as curiosities, a snapshot of a sponsorship that barely existed. Most will likely take up the club’s offer and swap them for shirts carrying the new sponsor: Vertu Motors, a UK-wide car dealership that has stepped in at the last moment.

The first clues that something was wrong surfaced on Thursday. Sky Sports’ promotional material for Sunday’s game showed Kyle Walker in a Burnley shirt with a blank chest. No sponsor. Odd, given Vincent Kompany’s side had worn Finotive One across their kits throughout pre-season.

Even in last weekend’s Carabao Cup tie against Notts County, the Finotive One logo was still emblazoned on the front of the jersey.

Then came the digital clear-out. Supporters noticed that every story relating to the Finotive One partnership had quietly disappeared from Burnley’s official website. By Friday morning, the club confirmed what many had already suspected: the deal was over.

The statement was brief but telling. The agreement had been scrapped “to protect the club’s interests, and those of our supporters”.

For Burnley, this is not unfamiliar territory.

The Lancashire club have already lived through one aborted main sponsorship. LoveBet, an Asian betting brand, signed a three-year deal but disappeared after two seasons when it ran into financial trouble. That collapse followed the takeover by AIK Capital in December 2020 and arrived at a time when the club was coming under increasing scrutiny for its ties to gambling firms.

New chairman Alan Pace addressed the issue publicly on X, saying the club’s gambling links would be examined “as part of the overall commercial strategy for the club”. He admitted there were “historic contractual obligations” but promised to review the situation with his team for the long term.

The reality since then has been more complicated. Under AIK Capital, betting companies have dominated the front of Burnley’s shirts. The only break in that run came in 2022-23, when Classic Football Shirts took the prime spot for a single season.

Either side of that, the pattern was clear. LoveBet was replaced by SpreadEx, a fixed odds and spread betting firm. After Classic Football Shirts, Philippines-based gambling operator W88 arrived. In 2024, Burnley agreed a controversial two-year deal with 96.com, a betting site run by TGP Europe.

That relationship drew the attention of the Gambling Commission. Last year, Burnley and three other clubs were formally warned 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”.

So when Burnley went looking for a replacement for 96.com, they veered away from the usual suspects. At least on the surface.

Finotive One, registered in Cyprus, bills itself as an “all-in-one ecosystem” for traders. Beyond that, little was publicly clear about its operations or its customer base. On paper, it looked like the most lucrative option on the table a few weeks ago. In practice, it lasted six weeks.

With the Finotive One deal ripped up, Burnley turned to a known quantity. Vertu Motors, already a commercial partner since 2022, stepped up to fill the gap on the front of the shirt.

The terms of the new arrangement have not been disclosed, but the timing leaves Burnley with little leverage. Needing a sponsor days before the season starts is no one’s ideal negotiating position.

What is certain is the damage. A high-profile launch video rendered useless. Stock pulled from sale. Fans queuing for refunds or swaps. Another abrupt end to a front-of-shirt partnership.

For a club trying to reshape its commercial identity after years of gambling logos, Burnley now head into the new campaign with Vertu Motors on their chest and another bruising sponsorship saga in the recent past.