Liverpool handed £60m sponsorship boost after Chelsea hit by issue

The extension of the sleeve sponsorship deal between Liverpool and online travel firm Expedia has handed the club another financial boost.

Having been Liverpool's sleeve partner since 2020, when they inked a £10m per year deal over three years, replacing Western Union, Expedia agreed a new deal for a further four years earlier this week.

The deal ties into the commercial plan within the club of retaining sponsors and generating an uplift with each deal cycle, something which was achieved last year with the extension of the main shirt sponsorship with financial firm Standard Chartered. The value of the new deal with Expedia is understood to have seen a significant uplift, although believed to have fallen short of the £20m per year mark.

Whereas the previous deal had been worth a total of £30m to the Reds, the current deal could be worth around double that figure given the increase in value and the additional year on the new deal.

The new deal is understood to be lesser in value that the £20m per year deals that Manchester United signed with blockchain firm DXC and Chelsea inked with cryptocurrency platform WhaleFin last summer. But with the crypto and blockchain markets having suffered bruising periods over the past 12 months, finding that kind of value again was always going to prove a challenge.

Chelsea's partnership with WhaleFin has already been ended early, less than a year into the deal. In December, Amber Group, the owners of WhaleFin, had requested the early termination of the deal with Chelsea as part of cost-cutting measures after they were impacted by the collapse of the doomed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which was declared bankrupt last year.

With a less buoyant crypto and blockchain market, and with Liverpool less inclined to push ahead into such a visible partnership with a firm in the industry at a challenging time for the market, using the values that were achieved by United and Chelsea was always going to be difficult. But in getting a significant rise from Expedia and adding an extra year onto the new deal, it represents strong commercial business from the Reds, whose most recent financial accounts for the year ending May 2022 showed that the club posted £247m in commercial revenues, up £29m year on year.