Comparable deals, category scarcity, media value, and activation upside — a working framework for rights holders and brands.
Front-of-shirt pricing sits at the intersection of comparable deals, category scarcity, projected media value and activation upside. Get any one of them wrong and the deal either fails to close or leaves value on the table.
Below is the working framework we use on every front-of-shirt valuation at Bentley Sports & Media — the four inputs we weigh, how we weight them, and where each of them tends to break down.
1. Comparable deals. Every valuation starts with a comp set. The mistake most rights holders make is anchoring to the biggest number in their tier — a club two divisions above them signed a £4m shirt deal, therefore theirs should be a fraction of that. In reality, comps only work if you control for league position, average attendance, broadcast footprint, social reach and the sector of the sponsor. Two clubs in the same league can have a 3x pricing gap on the shirt because one has a national broadcast profile and the other is a regional side.
The comp set should be at least eight deals, biased towards the last 18 months, and it should include deals that didn't renew. A shirt deal that ran for one cycle and walked away is telling you something about pricing — ignore it and you'll repeat the mistake.
2. Category scarcity. Front-of-shirt is a single inventory unit — one brand, one season. That scarcity has to be priced. If you have five credible brands in the betting category chasing the slot, the market clears higher than the comp set suggests. If you have one interested buyer in a soft category, you'll underprice unless you manufacture competitive tension in the process.
This is where the sales process matters as much as the number. A closed, single-thread negotiation almost always undershoots the market. A structured process with a shortlist and a deadline lets the category tell you what it's worth.
3. Projected media value. Broadcast minutes, social impressions and earned press coverage translate into a media-equivalent value for the sponsor's logo. Independent measurement firms — Nielsen, YouGov Sport, Relo — produce this number for most deals now, and finance teams on the brand side will pull it out of every renewal conversation.
Two rules. Media value is a floor, not a ceiling: a brand that only pays media value is buying impressions, not partnership. And media value only works if you're honest about the discount for shirt clutter, secondary sponsorship, and the fact that a lot of broadcast minutes are close-ups on the ball rather than the crest.
4. Activation upside. The best deals are priced on what the two parties can build together, not just what the property already delivers. A talent activation, a category-first product drop, a joint sweepstakes mechanic — these move the number more than an extra 200,000 broadcast impressions ever will.
The Wolf Competitions x Dagenham & Redbridge deal we brokered for 2026/27 is a live example: the shirt slot alone would have valued at one number, the shirt plus sweepstakes rights plus a confirmed KSI activation moved it into a different bracket entirely, and made the deal multi-year rather than one-and-done.
How to weight them. For a mid-market EFL or National League shirt deal, we typically weight comps at 35%, category scarcity at 25%, projected media value at 20% and activation upside at 20%. For a Premier League or top-tier property, media value climbs and comps drop — the market is thin enough that comps stop being reliable and the audience is deep enough that the media number is the anchor.
Where valuations break down. Three failure modes we see repeatedly: anchoring to a single trophy comp, valuing the inventory in isolation from the sales process, and treating activation as a nice-to-have rather than a pricing input. Fix those three and the number defends itself in a boardroom.
If you're a rights holder pricing your shirt for the next cycle, or a brand trying to sanity-check what you've been quoted, this is the framework we run. Talk to us before you commit to a number.