17. Burnley
Burnley earned a spot in the Europa League with solid, consistent play in the league. Their kits for 2018-19 are not solid at all. The standard Burnley design of claret and blue makes an expected return, but the element that makes it all fall apart is the sponsor.
LaBa360 signed a lucrative deal with Burnley for the right to display its logo on the Clarets’ kits, and the first result of that experiment is a disappointment. The logo doesn’t mesh well with Burnley’s crest at all, with a giant poker chip right in the middle of the shirt.
None of the clubs with betting sites as their main sponsors have particularly attractive logos, which ends up making the kits look worse than they would otherwise. Still, other clubs (the ones that are higher on this list) have managed to incorporate their sponsor into their jersey, so what’s Burnley’s excuse?
They may have made a fair bit of money from the deal with LaBa360, but aesthetically Burnley would have benefited from not having a sponsor at all. Sadly, every club can’t be Sevilla or (previously) Barcelona or Roma. It’s a shame that all of Puma’s efforts designing the rest of the shirt will be wasted due to the garish and downright cartoonish LaBa360 logo. Hopefully the sponsor, manufacturer and club can work out a better use of it in the years to come.
Then again, according to the betting company’s director, “laba” means “legendary luck,” so this may give Burnley a bit of good fortune going forward.