Deals to plaster companies’ names on Premier League players’ chests are more lucrative than ever. So does it matter if British fans haven’t heard of the Chinese bookmaker sponsoring their local team?

When Peter Kenyon watched Middlesbrough draw against Brighton in a battle for promotion to the Premier League, he jumped to his feet and cheered with the rest of the Riverside. Pure joy flooded the ground, but Kenyon’s mind soon began to shift. “The next moment I’m thinking: ‘How the hell do I make this work?’” he says.

As well as being a local lad and fan, Kenyon (no relation to the former Manchester United and Chelsea boss of the same name) is chief executive of Ramsdens, a Middlesbrough pawnbroker and currency exchanger with about 500 staff. Since 2013, Ramsdens has sponsored the team’s shirts. A five-year deal means he still does, now at roughly double the fee – a reported £1m – thanks to a promotion clause in the contract.

“It’s pleasing to see our name out there, but I’m now sitting there thinking: ‘Are people going to come to our website?’” Kenyon says. “We’re a regional company with absolutely no international presence.”

Kenyon is now mixing with giants. Britain’s top 20 teams won almost £226m in shirt deals for this season. That figure has risen from £100m in 2010/11, when the website Sporting Intelligence started collating figures. Deals range from £47m a year (Chevrolet at Manchester United) to £1m at the bottom. “AON pays £10m just to sponsor Man United’s training kit,” says Keiran Maguire, a football finance specialist at the University of Liverpool.

As football attracts record TV audiences to a medium with declining viewing figures, players’ chests have never been more valuable. The league claims viewing figures of three billion in 225 countries, including 857 million in Asia and Oceania. Clubs can expect sponsors to pay more, but does it pay back?

Rob Wilson, who studies football finance at Sheffield Hallam University, says yes – at least at the the top. Take American insurers AIG. “When they sponsored Manchester United in 2006, they were clear that the strategy was to break into the UK and Europe. They didn’t have a significant foothold and now they do, which they put down in no small part to that deal.”“But I think it’s marginal at the bottom of the league,” Maguire adds. That Middlesbrough’s TV income has gone from £4m to at least £100m illustrates how much a leap the team – and Ramsdens – have made. Does Kenyon think it’s worth it? “Ask me next May,” he says, while revealing some early growth in traffic to the Ramsdens website.

Premier League shirts have always reflected the globalisation of football. Japanese electronics were big in the 90s. Then other Asian companies piled in, along with the online betting companies that are integral to sport there. Logos this season include gambling brands BetEast (Swansea), Dafabet from the Philippines (Burnley, Sunderland) as well as China’s K8 (West Brom).

Perhaps most striking are Hull City’s recent kit changes. Last year, relegation spelled an end to its contract with 12Bet, another Asian gambling site. After a frantic search, Flamingo Land stepped in. The family-run Yorkshire zoo and theme park also paid for a smaller logo on the back of Middlesbrough’s kit. Both teams won promotion. “You could call us the luckiest sponsors in football history,” says Gordon Gibb, its chief executive, where ticket sales are up. But Flamingo Land couldn’t step up, and Hull are now sponsored by SportPesa, a Kenyan betting company (there are 276m Premier League viewers in sub-Saharan Africa).

“You never saw Chinese lettering and all these logos in the Championship,” says Kenyon, whose football watching is now more fraught than it once was. He admits it is highly unlikely he will renew the contract should Middlesbrough stay up: “The gulf is enormous, and by then it would just be way beyond our means.”