Burnley Cancels Finotive One Deal as Vertu Motors Steps In
Burnley’s new season will begin with a different name across their chests than the one they spent the summer selling.
Just 42 days after announcing Finotive One as their new front-of-shirt sponsor, the club have torn up the agreement, scrubbing the trading firm from their kits, their website and, effectively, their recent history.
The timing could hardly be more awkward. The decision lands two days before the Premier League opener at Turf Moor against West Ham United, and only a fortnight after Burnley unveiled their cream away strip with all the pomp of a modern super-club.
That launch video now belongs in the bin.
JJ Watt, minority investor and former NFL star, fronted it. James Anderson, the England cricket great, appeared. Arnold Schwarzenegger even popped up. The message was clear: Burnley, and their new partner Finotive One, were thinking big.
Now the club are offering full refunds or exchanges to any supporter who bought a 2026-27 home or away shirt bearing the Finotive One logo. The shirts have vanished from the online store and will not be on sale in the club shop before Sunday’s game. Some fans will stash them away as curios, but most will swap them for the new design carrying Vertu Motors, a UK-wide car dealership already known around Turf Moor.
The first hints of trouble surfaced on Thursday. Sky Sports’ promo for Sunday’s fixture showed a Burnley player – the article named him as Kyle Walker in error, but the key detail was the blank front – wearing a claret shirt with no sponsor at all. Odd, given Vincent Kompany’s side had worn Finotive One throughout pre-season.
Even in last weekend’s Carabao Cup tie against Notts County, the logo sat proudly on the chest. Then the digital clean-up began. Stories announcing the Finotive One partnership disappeared from the club’s official website. By Friday morning, Burnley made it official: the deal was off, “to protect the club’s interests, and those of our supporters”.
No explanation, no detail on the trigger. Just a very public U-turn and a scramble to fill the space.
A familiar sponsorship headache
This is not the first time Burnley have been forced into an abrupt rethink over who they put on their shirts.
LoveBet, an Asian betting brand, signed a three-year agreement but lasted only two, its run cut short after financial problems. That change came just after AIK Capital completed their takeover in December 2020, ushering in a new era under chairman Alan Pace and prompting scrutiny over the club’s ties to gambling.
Pace acknowledged the concern on X, then Twitter, saying the issue would be considered “as part of the overall commercial strategy for the club”. He warned there might be “historic contractual obligations” but promised to review the situation with his team.
The reality since then has been stark. Apart from a one-season partnership with Classic Football Shirts in 2022-23, every front-of-shirt sponsor under AIK Capital has been linked to gambling.
LoveBet gave way to SpreadEx, a fixed-odds and spread betting company. After the respite with Classic Football Shirts, Philippines-based operator W88 arrived. In 2024, Burnley signed a controversial two-year deal with 96.com, a betting website operated by TGP Europe.
That move drew the attention of the Gambling Commission. Burnley and three other clubs received warnings over their links to sites run by TGP Europe, which had already surrendered its British gambling licence. Investigators concluded TGP Europe had failed to carry out “sufficient checks on business partners” and had breached “anti-money laundering rules”.
Under pressure to move away from that landscape, Burnley tried something different.
A gamble that backfired
In the search for a replacement for 96.com, the club turned to Finotive One, a Cyprus-registered company that bills itself as an “all-in-one ecosystem” for traders. Little was publicly understood about its operations or its customer base, but the deal looked attractive enough for Burnley to commit.
On paper, it was the most lucrative offer available. In practice, it has lasted barely six weeks.
With Finotive One gone, Vertu Motors have stepped up from partner to front-of-shirt sponsor at short notice. The dealership group has been involved with Burnley since 2022, but this is a different level of visibility and responsibility.
The terms of the new agreement are unknown, yet one thing is obvious: Burnley’s negotiating position, with the season about to start and a sponsorship gap to fill, would not have been strong. They have salvaged a solution, but not without cost or embarrassment.
As Turf Moor prepares for West Ham’s visit, the story is no longer just about a newly promoted side trying to re-establish themselves. It is about a club still wrestling with its commercial identity, still searching for a stable, uncontroversial name to wear on its chest.
This time, they will hope Vertu Motors stay there long enough for the shirts – and the partnerships behind them – to feel permanent again.
