Exclusive: Newcastle agree £25m deal as Middle Eastern sponsor replaces Fun88, club plans to unveil new sponsor

Some big news has emerged on Friday night, as The Times report that we’ve struck a lucrative sponsorship deal worth £25m-per-season.

The report claims that the front-of-shirt deal has been struck with ‘another Middle Eastern country’ – NOT Saudi Arabia – but gives no details on the exact company involved.

Either way, they will replace Fun88 – their deal with the club expires this summer – and offer a deal worth £17m more per year, with the Asian betting brand previously making the club around £8m-per-season.

It’s thought the club will announce the deal and latest commercial partner in due course, with the deal falling inside the Premier League’s ‘fair market value’ regulations.

Here’s a snippet from The Times’ exclusive from Martin Hardy and Matt Lawton, offering the club a much-needed boost ahead of the 2023/24 season and summer transfer window:

“Newcastle United have agreed a new shirt sponsorship deal worth an estimated £25 million a year.

The Times understands that the new deal is with a company from another Middle Eastern country rather than Saudi Arabia.

Officials at St James’ Park plan to unveil the new commercial partner, who will replace Fun88, a betting company whose agreement with Newcastle predated the £305 million takeover in October 2021 and was worth less than £8 million a year, next month. Newcastle struck an agreement with Fun88 last year to end their front-of-shirt sponsorship two years early.

Newcastle sources insist that the new agreement with a company from the Middle East will fall inside the Premier League’s “fair market value”, a regulation that was introduced in December 2021.”