English Championship club Nottingham Forest has signed a record-breaking front-of-shirt deal with the Football Index stock market platform.
In an official statement, Nottingham Forest said the deal is the “biggest” sponsorship in the club’s history.
Under the deal, Football Index will appear on Forest’s front-of-shirt from the beginning of the 2019-20 season. The stock market platform will appear on all adults replica shirts but not on junior replica shirts.
Football Index is the world’s first football stock market. It allows traders to buy and sell shares in professional footballers using real currency.
Traders can bet on the future success of players over the long-term, rather than gambling on specific matches or match events.
The platform operates much like a stock market, with traders investing in units of footballers known as futures. When the price of futures rises, traders can sell at a profit.
Football Index takes over the front-of-shirt asset at Nottingham Forest from Irish online sportsbook BetBright.
BetBright signed a one-year deal with Forest at the beginning of the 2018-19 season, but the brand was bought out by 888.com in March this year for a reported fee of £15m.
The deal led to chaos for BetBright users with unsettled bets, as 888.com had bought only the technology behind the BetBright platform, but not the outstanding liabilities on unsettled bets.
Although the deal was signed a week before the Cheltenham Festival, all users had their bets voided and their stakes returned.