Aston Villa have reached an agreement with Visit Rwanda as the club’s new front-of-shirt sponsor.
Villa’s president of business operations, Francesco Calvo, has been tasked with bringing sponsors to the club since joining in July 2025 and has been required to add a front-of-shirt sponsor this summer, following Premier League rules prohibiting betting companies. Driving revenue is paramount in the club’s fight to guard against financial sanctions.
Club sources with knowledge of the deal, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to do so publicly, said the partnership is the most lucrative in Villa’s history, an increase on the previous sponsor, betting company Betano. Club sources claimed the agreement could be worth up to £20million a year if bonuses are met.
Villa have been exploring ways to increase revenue, such as a stadium naming rights partner and a sponsor to the training ground, Bodymoor Heath. Villa revealed their home kit last month, but it went on sale without a front-of-shirt sponsor. Calvo has spent a long period agreeing a front-of-shirt deal and recently finalised the agreement with Visit Rwanda.
In January, Villa announced a training kit sponsor, Egyptian hotel chain El Gouna Red Sea. It is owned by Samih Sawiris, brother of Villa co-owner Nassef Sawiris.
Visit Rwanda’s European partnerships currently include Paris Saint-Germain and Atletico Madrid, but its shirt sleeve deal with Arsenal, after being worth £10million a year, concluded after eight years at the end of last season.
Visit Rwanda serves as the national tourism brand of the country, aiming to promote the nation as a premier travel and investment destination, but it has proven controversial. As previously reported by The Athletic, its sponsorship deals with other European clubs have been the subject of protests and accusations of sportswashing.
Rwanda has been led by president Paul Kagame of the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) party since 2000.
United Nations (UN) reports linked the Rwandan government to the M23, which the UN states is an “armed group” operating in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the mineral-rich nation that borders Rwanda to the west. In February 2025, the UN called on the Rwandan government to “cease support to the M23 and immediately withdraw from DRC territory”.
The UN said the Rwandan army is in “de facto” control of the M23 and, in an August 2025 report, stated it had received “first-hand accounts indicating that at least 319 civilians were killed by M23 fighters, aided by members of the Rwanda Defence Force” a month earlier.
The UK government suspended aid to Rwanda in February 2025 over its support for M23 in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Following the allegations of Rwanda supporting M23, Arsenal, Bayern and PSG supporters staged protests against the country’s commercial ties to their clubs in 2025. PSG fans, for example, launched a ‘Stop Visit Rwanda’ petition, which was signed by more than 75,000 people.
