LONDON: The end of the English Premier League season will also be the end of its 15-year title sponsorship by Barclays bank.

Barclays, in effect, is wary of the future. The present three-year deal, launched in 2012, is worth £120m which an increase of almost 50pc on the previous £82m contract.

However, now that Sky and BT Sport have ramped up their TV expenditure to a record £5.1bn from the start of the 2016 season, Barclays believes it cannot match a similar escalation in the sponsorship value.

Any new sponsor will be capitalising on a rare opportunity. The Premier League has boasted only two title sponsors in all its two decades. Barclays’s predecessor was the brewer, Carling, which sponsored the league from 1993 to 2001.

One possibility is that chief executive Richard Scudamore will ‘sell’ the title to a raft of three or four sponsors. However the major clubs, such as Chelsea, the Manchester duo and Arsenal, might be concerned that this would restrict their own marketing potential.

From 2016 English football will have an entirely new ‘look’ since the

Capital One’s support of the League Cup ends then while the FA Cup has just ‘lost’ Budweiser.

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