Chelsea now selling the sponsorless shirts as Infinite Athlete deal remains in limbo

Chelsea’s new (home) shirts were supposed to become available for public purchase only on August 23, but the club have decided to start selling them a week early through the official Megastore (both online and in-person).

This therefore represents a fairly unique opportunity to buy an official sponsorless kit (well, except for the Nike swoosh), which is surely unheard of in modern top flight football. The Megastore warns that you cannot trade in your sponsorless shirt for a sponsored version later, as if anyone would be silly enough to want to do that.

It should be noted that only the slightly cheaper and a bit cheapened “stadium” issue shirts appear to be available. The more expensive “vapor” shirts, which are the actual replicas of the player-issue gear (with the same high-tech materials, etc), don’t seem to be up for sale. But you’re still spending a pretty penny, don’t worry.

You can go with either white or gold lettering on the back, depending on whether you choose league or cup jerseys. Gold is the far superior choice, in my not-so-humble opinion. Far superior.

I wasn’t a huge fan of these shirts when they launched, but they’ve grown on me and the shimmering badge is pretty cool as it reflects the light of your surroundings. The grey camo goalkeeper shirt is also available, and is also excellent.

Presumably these sponsorless shirts will only be available until we announce the new shirt sponsor, which should be the company called “Infinite Athlete”. That deal is evidently still stuck in administrative limbo with the Premier League, who are doing their due-diligence on the proposal under their “fair market value rules”. The fact that this new brand was created just a week prior to us signing them as sponsor, plus the significant discrepancy between their turnover (estimated at $15m after a $37m funding in 2021 for Tempus Ex, their former name) and their expected sponsorship amount (£50m), and the part where they might have close financial ties to one or more of our ownership group, are adding to this delay — which hopefully will be just a delay.

The Premier League could adjudicate that we must agree a lower amount for the sponsorship deal, or worst case, deny it just like they did with Paramount Plus (though that was on entirely different grounds).

It’s unclear if and when they might make a decision, but hopefully soon. So you better cop one of these shirts soon as well if you want one without a sponsor.