The Hartberg jersey has the most sponsors in the world

For the 2024/25 season, Hartberg, a team in the Austrian top league, will have two kits. The Home jersey features the club's colors and is a solid blue outfit adorned with a geometric pattern that extends across the entire front of the uniform. A web of black diamonds, triangles, and rectangles utilizes the transition from dark to light shades to become increasingly visible. The same design is used for the Away jersey, a mint green outfit that replicates the transition from dark to light, enhancing a geometric pattern in mint green that, unlike the Home version, gradually fades as the shade lightens until it completely disappears at the bottom. This is an interesting and uncommon stylistic exercise for a nearly forgotten league like the Austrian one. Yet, when we think back to the 2024/25 Hartberg jersey, we won't think of these patterns, but of the sponsors.

Yes, the two Hartberg jerseys can be defined as the football jerseys with the most sponsors ever applied. Between sponsors and official logos, the two jerseys are covered with 15 patches - 13 of these are located just in the central area. The central area is divided into two blocks: in the upper part, there are nine patches almost equally divided between official logos (technical sponsor, club logo, league logo, and sponsor). The lower half of the jersey features four horizontal bands representing other sponsors. Two more bands are applied on the sleeves. And it doesn't stop there. Three more sponsors are applied to the back of the jersey, as well as three large stickers applied between the front and back of the shorts. To complete the picture, there are embroidered writings on the socks representing yet another sponsor. This scheme is repeated for both kits, with the only difference being that the sponsor writings on the home jersey are in white, while on the away jersey, they are in black. There is also a third version, a solid orange uniform carried over from last season, while the goalkeeper kit includes three colors: light blue, fluorescent yellow, and red.

Among the dozens of sponsors on the jersey, the one that stands out the most is surely Profertil, a drug designed to increase male fertility. It may sound like a bizarre choice, but there is a logical explanation in this case. The drug is produced by Lenus Pharma, the pharmaceutical company founded and still chaired by Brigitte Annerl, the Austrian entrepreneur who has been the club's president since 2017. Under Annerl's management, Hartberg has gone from playing in the third division to the Austrian top division, where it has continuously competed since 2018. Despite the team competing only to avoid relegation, Hartberg has built a small cult following on social media over the years precisely because of these sponsor-covered jerseys. It is a curious choice, obviously driven by economic necessity: we are talking about a team representing a small town of 6,000 inhabitants, which, however, could make football history for its jersey, the one with the most sponsors in the world.