Evertonians finally have their new front-of-shirt sponsor.
CMC Markets were confirmed this week, timed to launch alongside Thursday’s new Everton home kit, and on paper, it solves the problem supporters have been raising since November 2022: a trading platform with no gambling baggage, replacing the club’s record commercial partner.
Except it doesn’t fully solve it. Stake are not, it seems, going anywhere. The gambling operator moves to the sleeve for 2026-27 under a new multi-year agreement, and for a fanbase that has spent three seasons wanting the brand gone entirely, that’s a smaller badge in a less-visible spot rather than the end of any links.
Here’s why so many Evertonians will see this as too little, too late.
Bonnie Blue scandal never went away
In February 2025, the Gambling Commission opened an investigation into a Stake-branded advert filmed outside Nottingham Trent University, in which adult performer Bonnie Blue discussed sleeping with “180 barely-legal 18 year olds.”
The backlash led Stake to give up its UK gambling licence weeks later. The Gambling Commission then formally warned Everton over their duty to ensure fans couldn’t access an unlicensed gambling site through the club’s own branding.
The following year, the Coalition to End Gambling Ads wrote to the club again, alleging Stake remained accessible to UK users via a simple VPN. Everton kept the logo on the shirt regardless.
For a section of supporters, that alone made the partnership hard to defend long before this week’s announcement.
Evertonians never wanted it on the shirt in the first place
This isn’t new. When the 2025-26 kit launched, Evertonians criticised the Stake logo directly on social media, with fans on X describing it as “rancid” and the shirt as “ruined by that godawful sponsor.”
Everton had to make sponsorless shirts available to buy after fans pushed back, and some accused the club of failing to properly advertise that option, as required by Premier League gambling rules.
Supporters have spent two kit cycles trying to avoid wearing that logo. Moving it to the sleeve is unlikely to change how they feel about it.
Always looked like a mismatch with where the club says it’s going
Everton signed Stake in November 2022 as their record commercial partner, at a time when the club was recording annual losses of more than £89m and breaching Profit and Sustainability Rules in back-to-back years.
To critics, the deal read less like ambition and more like a club taking whatever money was on the table.
The Hill Dickinson Stadium is home now, the Friedkin Group have talked openly about rebuilding Everton’s identity, and Andrew Middleton described CMC Markets this week as a brand that “shares our ambitions, our values and our belief in what Everton is becoming.”
Fans will draw their own comparison to what Stake represented.
Why the sleeve switch won’t quiet things down
The Premier League’s front-of-shirt gambling ban forced this change; it wasn’t Everton’s choice to move on from Stake voluntarily.
Every top-flight club losing a gambling shirt sponsor this summer has kept the same partner in some capacity, mostly on sleeves, because the rule only bans the prized front slot.
West Ham have done the same with Boyle Sports. So while CMC Markets removes Stake from the position fans complained about most, the underlying relationship survives — along with the Gambling Commission history and the VPN allegations that plenty of Evertonians hoped the club would leave behind completely, not just move a few inches to one side.
CMC Markets is a genuine upgrade on the shirt front. But for supporters who wanted the whole partnership gone, not just diluted, this is only a partial win.
