There are two things I love more than anything else in this world: football and video games. Sadly, I do not love football video games as much as I used to, but that does not mean that I don’t get to enjoy, and even occasionally get excited about, the two things coming together regardless.
See, my love of football (and of some overlapping stuff like fashion and design) has meant that over the years I’ve become a collector and just general appreciator of football shirts. For my teams, sure, but also just for any shirt that is cool, interesting or otherwise noteworthy.
Which means that I’ve got a very soft spot for football shirts that also feature video games, and that usually means gaming companies appearing as as a sponsor on the front of the kit. A niche topic if ever there was one, but you’d be surprised how popular it is within many people’s wheelhouses, coming up constantly in features and roundups on sports sites, online stores, social media and, uh, major video game websites. Turns out loads of people who are into football shirts are also into video games!
The thing is, all those lists–and I include my own earlier effort here–end up being superficial at best, usually just covering a handful of shirts most fans are already aware of. That’s boring, so I felt like settling in and making a more comprehensive roundup, covering as many leagues, teams and decades as I could find.
I’m not saying this is every shirt ever made that features a video game sponsorship, but…it’s a lot.
Fiorentina
If you asked a casual observer what their favourite video game sponsorship is, or even just the one they thought was the most famous, Fiorentina’s mid-90s Nintendo deal is normally the response. It’s iconic, not just because it’s Nintendo, but because the sponsor matches the club’s colour scheme, and the team at the time could boast legends like Gabriel Batistuta.
Sevilla
Again, it’s Nintendo, and again, it matches the club’s colours. Plus Diego Maradona wore it during his one-season spell at the Spanish side before his ill-fated 1994 World Cup campaign.
Anorthosis
Hello, what’s this? Well, this is an even earlier Nintendo sponsorship. In 1992 the company sponsored Cypriot club Anorthosis, who wore the above shirt in a two-legged tie against Juventus in the UEFA Cup, which saw them lose 10-1 on aggregate. Ah well, at least the kit was great.
Kyoto Sanga
I’ve written extensively about this club and its ties with Nintendo, which run so deep (and feature everything from Mario Sunshine to Splatoon) I can’t possibly condense them into a single paragraph. So go read this instead.
Montpellier
We’re going to see a few PlayStation shirts in this roundup, but this Montpellier kit, for the original console, remains one of the nicest. Another French league club, Monaco, also had a PlayStation 1 sponsorship around the same time.
Auxerre
There may have been others, but when it comes to French clubs and PlayStation sponsorship Auxerre is easily the most famous. The club’s PlayStation contract spanned multiple consoles, from the PS1 through to the PS2, and this wetsuit-like away kit is probably my favourite.
Auxerre
An epilogue! Auxerre and PlayStation went so hand-in-hand that in 2005-06 their Uhlsport kits went as far as moving the manufacturer’s logo under the neck to accommodate a second PlayStation branding on the same shirt, this time for the PSP.
Seattle Sounders
Few video game sponsorships have been as comprehensive as that between Microsoft and the Seattle Sounders, a club that wasn’t just from the same city as the Xbox, but even shared the same volt green colour palette. Their deal, spanning several years, saw Sounders jerseys emblazoned with everything from Xbox to Game Pass to Xbox Live to individual games like Halo and Gears of War. More recently, Xbox also sponsored Fresh Ego FC, a group that uses football “to raise awareness surrounding mental health and racism in football by bringing together top talent from sport and music”.
Arsenal
Another classic, and if you didn’t rank Fiorentina as the most famous video game sponsorship, you’re probably saying this turn-of-the-millennium masterpiece in its place. But Sega’s console didn’t just grace the front of Henry, Bergkamp and co’s shirts; in the same timeframe they also sponsored St Etienne, Deportivo de la Coruña and Sampdoria, whose away shirt replaced Dreamcast with Dreamarena, the console’s ill-fated online service.
Arsenal
As part of the same deal, not every shirt ended up bearing the Dreamcast logo; some (like this away kit) simply used Sega’s branding instead. For a more recent example, in 2023 Sega sponsored London Falcons FC, an amateur LGBTQ+-friendly side.
Tottenham Hotspur
What’s this? Arsenal’s arch-rivals Tottenham sharing a sponsor? Not quite: in the mid-90s Spurs were sponsored by Holsten, a beer company, so the club’s juniors kits had to bear the logo of a company that was a bit more child-friendly, and this contract was up before Sega’s appearance on Arsenal’s kits. This same conundrum was repeated 20 years later, when Crystal Palace, at the time sponsored by an online casino, got an EA Sports sponsorship for their junior sides.
Chelsea
In early 90s Chelsea were sponsored by Commodore, and would wear the logos of both the parent company as well as its Amiga computer. I’ve chosen Amiga for the photo here because other clubs wore the Commodore branding first, and better….
Bayern Munich
…and one of those clubs was German powerhouses Bayern Munich, whose white Commodore sponsors in the mid-80s looked incredible on those all-red shirts. It should be noted that PSG also had Commodore sponsorship for a while, resulting in some fantastic colour-matching on the shirts, as did the already-mentioned Auxerre in the early 90s.
Manchester City
In the late-90s Manchester City struck a deal with British publisher Eidos, the company behind Tomb Raider, the original Deus Ex and Thief.
FC Martigues
FC Martigues, a team in France’s second division, were once sponsored not by Ocean, the once-mighty British publisher, but one of Ocean’s games in particular: the PC version of Jurassic Park, not to be confused with the SNES version, or the Mega Drive version, as all three were different games. What makes this even more interesting is that for the white away shirt they just…made the Jurassic Park logo bigger and replaced the club’s crest with Ocean’s logo, something that would be gross even by today’s standards.
Cerezo Osaka
Japanese side Cerezo Osaka have had a long relationship with hometown heroes Capcom, which in recent years has seen the publisher’s logo appear everywhere from training shirts to shorts. Their 90s kits, though, with Capcom on the front and back of the shirt, are obviously the most famous.
Tokyo Verdy
Another Japanese club with a famous video game collaboration was Tokyo Verdy in the 90s, who had Konami sponsorships on the sleeves, the front of the kit and sometimes, like above, both at the same time.
Lazio
I hate this sponsorship so much. It’s so lazy–looking like someone just dragged the game’s logo.png onto a shirt and hit “print”, without any thought to scale or colours–but also it’s Lazio, and fuck Lazio.
Corinthians
A decade later than Lazio’s deal, Brazilian side Corinthians also did a sponsorship with Konami for PES2019, which included a licensing deal for the game itself (see above). Note that the PES logo is for some reason at the bottom of the shirt, making it only visible if a player’s jersey was untucked. Fellow Brazilian side Sao Paolo had a similar PES sponsorship that year, too.
JEF United
Back to Japan! JEF United have had a few shirts with Sega sponsorship, some with just the logo, others also featuring Sonic. Not for any game in particular, just because he’s Sonic. I like this keeper shirt worn between 1993-1995 the best.
AFC Wimbledon
Sports Interactive, developers of the Football Manager series, sponsored AFC Wimbledon between 2002-2023, sometimes using their own logo, other times that of the game. Football Manager also appeared on Watford’s kits in 2012.
Swindon Town
Swindon Town–a club that has spent most of the last two decades in the lower two divisions of English league football–had a prominent FIFA sponsorship on the front of their kits for a few years through the 2010s, enough to land them on many of these kinds of roundups, though they weren’t actually the first, that honour going to Accrington Stanley in 2006 and Mansfield Town in 2007.
Club America
This is a fresh one! Bandai Namco had a one-off sponsorship deal with Club America earlier this month, and it’s one of the best: holographic player names and numbers, full of Pac-Man visuals, looked amazing, and the club’s crest was temporarily changed to include Pac-Man as well.
Lyon
For a while in the early 2000s French side Lyon were sponsored by Infogrames, a publisher which at the time was using Atari as a sub-label for their publishing operations. So Atari would sometimes feature on Lyon’s kits as well (Infogrames would later rebrand to Atari in 2003).
Atletico Madrid
For one season in the mid-90s, Atletico Madrid were sponsored by Bandai, which was cool, but even cooler was the fact that for a single game–the Madrid derby with rivals Real–they wore a Tamagotchi kit instead.
Premier League Referees
Not strictly a playing kit, but close enough: for years now EA Sports has had a deal with the Premier League where combinations of EA Sports, FIFA and now EAFC logos have appeared on official’s uniforms.
Stevenage Town
I hate the Lazio + PES deal the most for political reasons, but Stevenage Town’s pathetic Prime Gaming sponsorship from a few years back comes a very close second. It’s just so boring. It’s a pointless service, and even the sponsorship application itself is cheap, looking more like an iron-on transfer. In case you were wondering if things have improved since, Stevenage are currently sponsored by another video game company…Xsolla, a games-focused payments and commerce platform. Boring!
Burnley
When English football started allowing sleeve sponsorships a few years back, mobile publishers like Playdemic were all over it, pushing games like Golf Crash on Burnley’s kit. I like that this photo features Matt Lowton on the right, who while at Villa scored one of the best goals for a terrible side you will ever see.
Everton
See above. While Golf Crush made it look like every Burnley kit was on deep discount at Sports Direct, at least Everton’s Angry Birds deal managed to match the rest of the shirt.
Leyton Orient
For two seasons, between 1995-1997, English club Leyton Orient were sponsored by Acclaim, the publisher riding high with hits like NBA Jam and Mortal Kombat. It should be noted that Orient were not riding quite as high at the time.
Liga MX
In 2024 Activision made a deal with both a sportswear manufacturer (Charly) and six sides playing in Mexico’s Liga MX, which saw each Charly team wear special shirts emblazoned with Call of Duty graphics. Note there were no specific Activision or even Call of Duty logos used; instead each shirt had a sublimated print of stuff like a camouflage pattern or skull logo from the series.
Athletic Club
Another recent one! Earlier this month Spanish side Athletic Club, aka Athletic Bilbao, wore The Last Of Us branding for two games, one across the chest, another on their sleeves. While this is technically for the TV show, it’s a TV show based very closely on a video game, so I’m going to allow it.
Atletico Madrid
Hey, it’s Atletico Madrid again! This time with another limited sponsorship, from the 2004-2005 season, where the team wore a variety of movie tie-ins (including the famous Spider-Man shirt). One of those movies was Resident Evil 2, which for the same rules as The Last Of Us above, I’m going to allow.
Stonewall FC
In 2020 EA Sports began sponsoring Stonewall FC, “the world’s most successful LGBT+ football club”, a deal that continues to this day. Some shirts have featured the EA Sports logo, others that of EA Sports FC, and the club’s full range of kits usually combine to form (or are, like the shirt above, simply in) the colours of the trans flag. They rule.
Juventus
Cygames, the Japanese developer behind games like Granblue Fantasy, has been sponsoring Juventus for a few seasons now, and recently renewed the deal to extend until at least 2026.
Santos
For the Copa Libertadores final in 2021, Brazilian club Santos signed a one-off sponsorship with Epic Games that saw Fortnite’s logo placed centrally (among loads of other sponsors) on the front of their kits. Santos would end up losing the final to Palmeiras.
Sheffield United
Between 2000-2002 Midas Games, a publisher of bargain-bin favourites like American Pool and Go Go Golf, sponsored Sheffield United in what was then still known as Division Two (and is now the Championship).
Thank you for indulging me.
