CMC Markets is on Everton's shirt — but that's not the real news

If you follow football or finance, you probably saw the headline: CMC Markets is Everton's new shirt sponsor. It's a neat, visible story. But it ran in the same week as a second, quieter CMC announcement — and it was the quiet one that actually mattered. Here's what the shirt coverage mostly skipped past.

What they're saying

From the 2026-27 season, CMC Markets — a FTSE 250 UK broker (FTSE 250 just means one of the 250 biggest UK-listed companies, so a sizeable, publicly-traded firm, not a small shop) — will be Everton's front-of-shirt sponsor. That's the big logo across the front of the players' kit: the most visible and most valuable sponsorship slot a club sells (the small logo on the arm, the "sleeve", is worth far less).

CMC takes that slot from the gambling company Stake.com, which had held it since 2022-23 and now drops down to the sleeve. The switch isn't a coincidence: the Premier League's ban on gambling companies as front-of-shirt sponsors kicks in for 2026-27, so clubs have been finding replacements. (The ban only covers the front of the shirt — gambling logos on sleeves and around stadiums are still allowed, which is why Stake didn't disappear entirely.)

That's the story everyone led with. A broker's name on a Premier League shirt, in front of millions of viewers. Good marketing.

The catch

Here's the part the shirt coverage buried. In the same week, CMC's share price jumped around 53% over two days (roughly £4.58 to £7.00), pushing the company's market cap — the total value of all its shares — above £2 billion for the first time. A move that big doesn't come from a kit deal.

It came from a trading update — the company's own forecast of how much it expects to earn. CMC raised that forecast: net operating income (roughly, its income for the year) is now expected to be at least £550 million, up from a previous range of £460-480m, with EBITDA (a rough measure of operating profit) guidance of about £250m. And the driver wasn't the retail trading app most people picture — it was CMC's B2B platform business, the behind-the-scenes part that sells its trading technology to other financial firms. That's what re-rated the stock, not the football.

So two things happened, and only one of them is really a business story. The shirt deal is marketing — and the reported value hasn't even been officially confirmed by Everton or CMC, so treat any specific figure with caution. The guidance upgrade is the news that actually changed how the market values the company.

Worth keeping the two apart, because a broker's logo on a football club tells you nothing about whether it's a good place to trade. That comes down to fees, spreads, the risk of the products, and how the platform behaves — none of which changed this week. This is a company-news observation, not a suggestion to buy CMC shares or open an account; we don't recommend instruments here. CMC offers spread betting and CFDs — contracts for difference, which are leveraged bets on a price moving up or down without owning the asset, where you put down a little to control a lot and losses can exceed your stake. Those carry a high risk of losing money quickly. For the detail, read the primary sources below.