War on Want has published a league table ranking Premier League clubs by their ties to Israeli actions in Palestine, putting Liverpool FC first in the list and drawing the English game into a fresh row over sponsorship, money and accountability.
The report, titled Red Card: English Premier League Complicity in Israel’s Atrocities Against the Palestinians, placed Arsenal and Spurs level in second, Manchester United and Manchester City level in third, and Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Everton and Fulham tied in fourth. It said at least 15 Premier League sponsors have connections to the military assault on Gaza, the construction of illegal settlements and the wider system of apartheid.
That finding gives the table its force. War on Want said Liverpool’s shirt sponsor, Standard Chartered, provided $15.4bn to 24 complicit businesses between January 2025 and August 2025, while Barclays, which sponsors the Premier League itself, has provided billions to 49 complicit companies. The campaign group is using the rankings to argue that the league’s commercial ties go well beyond branding and into the financing of companies linked to the conflict.
Neil Sammonds, speaking for War on Want, said clubs speak proudly about equality, inclusion and community, but some are using sportswashing to sanitise corporations tied to some of the gravest crimes and humanitarian catastrophes of the time. He said Palestinian footballers are being killed, stadiums are turned into detention camps, and child players are buried beneath rubble. He also argued that the Premier League has shown before that it can act when sponsorship becomes morally toxic, asking why Palestinian lives appear to count for less.
The report lands as pressure grows on sports bodies to explain where their money comes from and what it is helping to legitimise. By ranking clubs rather than only naming sponsors, War on Want has turned a broad political complaint into a direct comparison between the teams fans see every week and the financial relationships behind them.
What happens next is whether any club, sponsor or league executive answers that charge in public, because the report is not just about who tops a table. It is about whether English football is willing to keep treating these links as background noise while the war in Gaza, the expansion of illegal settlements and the wider apartheid system remain part of the same commercial chain.
